the good-enough semester
Thursday 10 April 2008 | 2 cookies in the jar
The good-enough mother…starts off with an almost complete adaptation to her infant’s needs, and as time proceeds she adapts less and less completely, gradually, according to the infant’s growing ability to deal with her failure. (DW Winnicott, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena,” 1951)
The patient makes use of the analyst’s failures. Failures there must be, and indeed there is no attempt to give perfect adaptation. (”Clinical Varieties of Transference,” 1955-56)
Maternal failures produce phases of reaction to impingement and these reactions interrupt the “going on being” of the infant. An excess of this reacting produces not frustration but a threat of annihilation…a very real primitive anxiety, long antedating any anxiety that includes the word death in its description. […] The first ego organization comes from the experience of threats of annihilation which do not lead to annihilation and from which, repeatedly, there is recovery. (”Primary Maternal Preoccupation,” 1956)
It’s not right, but it’s okay. (Whitney Houston)
2 cookies in the jar
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“Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien,” right? I had a long conversation with a friend this week about how useful a fantasy (ahem, goal) is for motivating us, and how you mourn when you have to let go of the fantasy, but in that messy-can-be-good way, the reality that seeps into the space opened up by the gone-away fantasy is just by nature of its realness, better than the fantasy. Still, good enough can be uncomfortable.
Or, as some of my resident colleagues have pointed out—sometimes perfect is the enemy of good. And sometimes good is the enemy of adequate.
Per usual, oleoptene says it beautifully. It’s messy if you’re doing it right, etc. (And no matter how messy, I still think your students are damn lucky folk.)