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This chapter reviews five empirically supported principles of personality development: cumulative continuity (i.e., increasing trait stability across development), maturity (i.e., persons grow more socially adapted across development), social investment (i.e., commitment to socially conventional roles promotes maturity), corresponsiveness (i.e., persons choose environments that support their personalities), and plasticity (i.e., personality change can occur throughout the life course). Evidence for each of these principles is reviewed. Finally, implications for psychopathology are drawn. ...Less

In this essay, Winnicott writes of the importance of the family as a localized element in a society, an element orientated to the task of dealing with the arrival of a new individual. Behind the idea of the family, is the recognition of the individual small child’s initial need of a simplified version of society, used for the purposes of essential emotional growth. Winnicott sees maturity as the growth of the individual in relation to society appropriate to the age of the child, and resulting eventually in the individual’s capacity to identify with society without too great a sacrifice of individual impulse. He also asserts that parents know more about their children’s needs than society does, because the parents are immediately involved. ...Less

In this paper, Winnicott discusses how Democracy is a ‘society well-adjusted to its healthy individual members’. To study the emotional development of society is to study the individual and the element of maturity. A community is never composed of 100% of healthy, mature individuals, and it is important to know what proportion of mature individuals is necessary if there is to be an innate democratic tendency, or what proportion of antisocial individuals a society can contain without submergence of innate democratic tendency. The democratic burden falls on those who are maturing as individuals, and who can add a social sense to their personal development. To some extent, in the democratic election mature people elect temporary parents, which means that to some extent the electors remain children. Connected to this is a fear of women, which has led to so few women in positions of political power. Winnicott concludes that the democratic tendency can be strengthened by a study of the psychology of social as well as of individual maturity. ...Less

Winnicott takes the ideas of Bowlby on grief and mourning in infancy to task and argues that his own idea presents a very different point of view. For Winnicott the capacity to mourn implies maturity, something not associated with infancy. Winnicott includes references to the work of Melanie Klein. ...Less

In this paper, Winnicott discusses the link between the concept of maturity, personal adult health and personality. Everyone, Winnicott contends, is divided into a true and a false self. He writes that in health the false self is to some extent the adaptation we all make to live within a given society, the caretaker of the true self. However, in what might be termed a false self disorder, in severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, the true self is compromised and depleted by the false self and the capacity for spontaneous living is jeopardised. ...Less

In this paper, Winnicott argues that it is valuable to recognize the fact of dependence. He describes the various stages of steady development of the growing child from absolute dependence through lessening degrees of dependence and towards independence. ...Less

In this lecture to the British Student Health Association, Winnicott explains his views on development, growth and the immaturity inherent in adolescence. ...

In this paper, Winnicott states that the care of babies and children is complicated by destructive episodes that may need management and understanding. Human aggression is seen by Winnicott as innate and as both a normal reaction to frustration and also as evidence of life energy. He also sees a child’s striking out at the external world as inevitable reality testing. He speaks of a child’s dreaming, playing and fantasising as part of the processes of making aggression manageable, and he also highlights constructive urges alongside the destructive side. He points out that love and hate, creating and destroying are part of the same process for a child, and learning how to manage this is part of the child coming to maturity and harnessing these innate aggressive forces to the task of living, loving, playing and (eventually) working. ...Less

In this paper, Winnicott discusses the idea of maturity as a maturity appropriate for a particular age. An intact family is fundamental to healthy development and if the family is threatened this becomes very clear. For each family the actual father and mother are alive in the inner psychic reality of the children. But individuals need to become independent of their families for psychic health. Adult political institutions unconsciously reproduce home and family constellations. Children carry unconscious dependence on their actual father and mother, and it is within this dependence that the growing child’s need for independence can be safely asserted. An important feature of emotional development and maturity is the individual’s capacity, after acting out, to rediscover the original maternal care, parental provision and family stability, on which that individual was dependent in the early stages of life. ...Less

In this presentation to a panel discussion at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society, Winnicott discusses what matters for the child in health and in crisis. He argues that we need to provide an environment for the child that lays down the foundations of good mental health throughout life. He recognizes that there may be children who need more help due to immaturity in development; he examines stages of child dependency in detail and the gradual move towards greater independence and a social sense. The child’s capacity to develop object relations and to achieve a good personality structure is important for Winnicott, and he also believes parents who have the capacity to identify with their children make a great contribution to this growth. ...Less

In this chapter, Winnicott proposes that, in maturity, the environment is something individuals can contribute to and take responsibility for. Adolescents need the stability of the home and school environment against which to grow and rebel. Latency-age children need to be able to take a stable environment for granted and may suffer if home life breaks down. During pre-latency, children need a safe parental couple and home to work out the aspects of the triangular situation. Winnicott refers to many of the disturbances and disruptions of normal family life and their impact on the growing child, including the disturbing experiences of hospitalisation for small children. Emotional growth with an appropriate and sensitive mothering figure enables the child to adapt and become emotionally integrated. Very early narcissistic states and very early dependence—from which independence may follow—are also described. Regression to an earlier stage of dependence may occur during psychotherapy and may have a healing quality if the intense pain associated with dependence can be tolerated. ...Less