Andre Green at the Squiggle

Foundation Jan Abram

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/andre-green-at-the-squiggle-foundation-jan-abram/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

The Clinical Paradigms of Melanie Klein and Donald

Winnicott Comparisons and Dialogues 1st Edition Jan
Abram

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-clinical-paradigms-of-
melanie-klein-and-donald-winnicott-comparisons-and-dialogues-1st-
edition-jan-abram/

Something New 1st Edition Amanda Abram [Abram

https://textbookfull.com/product/something-new-1st-edition-
amanda-abram-abram/

Borderology Cross disciplinary Insights from the Border

Zone Along the Green Belt Jan Selmer Methi

https://textbookfull.com/product/borderology-cross-disciplinary-
insights-from-the-border-zone-along-the-green-belt-jan-selmer-
methi/

The Romans and Trade 1st Edition Andre Tchernia

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-romans-and-trade-1st-
edition-andre-tchernia/
Schizoanalytic Ventures at the End of the World: Film,
Video, Art, and Pedagogical Challenges Jan Jagodzinski

https://textbookfull.com/product/schizoanalytic-ventures-at-the-
end-of-the-world-film-video-art-and-pedagogical-challenges-jan-
jagodzinski/

The Importance of Getting Revenge 1st Edition Abram

Amanda

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-importance-of-getting-
revenge-1st-edition-abram-amanda/

Cosmetic Medicine and Surgery Pierre Andre

https://textbookfull.com/product/cosmetic-medicine-and-surgery-
pierre-andre/

Facebook For Dummies 6th Edition Carolyn Abram

https://textbookfull.com/product/facebook-for-dummies-6th-
edition-carolyn-abram/

Niacin The Real Story Learn about the Wonderful Healing

Properties of Niacin Abram Hoffer

https://textbookfull.com/product/niacin-the-real-story-learn-
about-the-wonderful-healing-properties-of-niacin-abram-hoffer/
 ANDRÉ GREEN
at The Squiggle Foundation
Winnicott Studies Monograph Series
Published and distributed by Karnac Books

Other titles in the series:

The Person Who Is Me: Contemporary Perspectives on the True and False Self
edited by Val Richards

Fathers, Families, and the Outside World

edited by Val Richards

Art, Creativity, Living

edited by Lesley Caldwell

The Elusive Child

edited by Lesley Caldwell

Sex and Sexuality: Winnicottian Perspectives

edited by Lesley Caldwell

Winnicott and the Psychoanalytic Tradition: Interpretation and Other

Psychoanalytic Issues
edited by Lesley Caldwell

Broken Bounds: Contemporary Reflections on the Antisocial Tendency

edited by Christopher Reeves

The Squiggle Foundation is a registered charity set up in 1981 to study and

cultivate the tradition of D. W. Winnicott. For further information, contact
The Administrator, Tel: 07534422117, email: info@squiggle-foundation.org
 ANDRÉ GREEN
at The Squiggle Foundation

revised edition

Edited by

Jan Abram

KARNAC
For
The Squiggle Foundation
First published in 2000 by
H. Karnac (Books) Ltd, London
This revised edition
First published in 2016 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2000, 2016 The Squiggle Foundation
Editor’s preface & acknowledgements and Editor’s foreword
copyright © 2016 Jan Abram
Lectures copyright © 2000 André Green
The rights of André Green and Jan Abram to be identified as the authors of
this work have been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright
Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978–1–78220–390–2
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
In memory of Marion Milner
CONTENTS

acknowledgements ix
about the author and editor xi
editor’s preface & acknowledgements by Jan Abram xiii
editor’s foreword by Jan Abram xvii

1 Experience and thinking in analytic practice (1987) 1

2 Object(s) and subject (1990) 17

3 On thirdness (1991) 39

4 The posthumous Winnicott: on Human Nature (1996) 69

5 The intuition of the negative

in Playing and Reality (1997) 85

references 107
index 111

vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Squiggle Foundation exists to promote knowledge and under-

standing of D. W. Winnicott’s work with the aim of encouraging the
application of his ideas across psychoanalysis and psychiatry, and
education, health, and welfare services. Promoting a “Winnicottian
approach” involves both looking again at his work and exploring
the work of those who re-present, expand, redirect, and challenge
the ideas in order to free them from what might appear to be, or
could actually have been, context-bound determinants. Through this
means we can restate the essential excellence of his good-enough
concepts and formulations and uphold respect for both strength and
vulnerability in all relationships.
The British Psychoanalytical Society marked the enduring
contribution of André Green by convening the conference “The
Greening of Psychoanalysis: An Homage to André Green” in Sep-
tember 2015. In conjunction with this, Jan Abram has produced
some revisions to her edited monograph of the public lectures that
were delivered by him to the Squiggle Foundation between 1987
and 1996 and a further paper presented to the 1997 International
Psychoanalytic Congress in Milan to mark the 25th anniversary of

ix
x acknowledgements

the publication of Playing and Reality. On behalf of the trustees and

members of Squiggle, I want to extend our gratitude to Jan for her
work in preparing the original monograph published in 2000 when
she was director and for her forethought and application in pro-
ducing this new edition. Oliver Rathbone and his team at Karnac
Books continue to support our project, and our gratitude goes to
all of those involved in bringing this edition to fruition.
Professor Adrian Sutton
Director, The Squiggle Foundation
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND EDITOR

André Green [1927–2012] was a training and supervising analyst

for the Paris Psychoanalytic Society where he was also its former
president and director. During his professional life, he held many
international posts: Vice-President of the International Psychoana-
lytical Association; the Freud Memorial Chair at University College
London; Honorary Professor of the University of Buenos Aires;
Member of the Moscow Academy of Humanities Research; Member
of the New York Academy of Sciences; and Honorary Member of the
British Psychoanalytical Society.
Green was the author of numerous articles and at least thirty
books. The first book to be translated into English was a collection
of his papers (originally published in French in 1973), On Pri-
vate Madness, published by Karnac Books in 1986. Following this,
­several subsequent books were translated and published in Eng-
lish, notably: The Tragic Effect; The Fabric of Affect and Psychoanalytic
Discourse; and The Work of the Negative. The body of his work made
a significant contribution to psychoanalysis and continues to have a
profound impact on the evolving psychoanalytic literature.

xi
xii about the author and editor

Jan Abram is a training and supervising analyst of the British

Psychoanalytical Society. She worked for the Squiggle Foundation
between 1989 and 2000 and was its director between 1996 and 2000.
She is author of The Language of Winnicott (1st edition 1996, awarded
Outstanding Academic Book of the Year in 1997; 2nd edition 2007).
She is the editor of Donald Winnicott Today (New Library of Psycho­
analysis, 2013). Currently she is Chair of the Scientific Committee for
the British Psychoanalytical Society; Visiting Lecturer for the Tavis-
tock Clinic; Honorary Senior Lecturer, University College London;
and Honorary Professor at the University of Essex. In 2016 she will
be Visiting Professor at the University of Kyoto, Japan. She has pub-
lished numerous articles in both English and French. A selection of
her articles is in preparation for publication as The Surviving Object:
Psychoanalytic Essays on Psychic Survival.
EDITOR’S PREFACE & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

On 22 November 1998, the Squiggle Foundation held a day’s confer-

ence in celebration of the work of André Green, who had just turned
seventy. Michael Parsons and Juliet Mitchell spoke in the morning,
and Gregorio Kohon introduced and chaired the afternoon session
in which Dr Green extemporized on the papers presented in the
morning. It was an excellent and memorable conference. Shortly
after this Cesare Sacerdoti, who at that time owned Karnac Books,
approached me with the idea of editing a small collection of Green’s
papers for the Squiggle Monograph series. Green met this idea
with uncertainty because, he explained, out of the four lectures he
had given to Squiggle audiences, he had actually only written the
fourth—“The Posthumous Winnicott: On Human Nature”—which
he had prepared for a Winnicott centenary lecture in 1996. The
previous three had been lectures given spontaneously from Green’s
extensive notes. I explained that we had tape-recorded each lecture
and that, along with the already written fourth centenary lecture, I
would edit them so that he would “only” have to amend, correct,
and add to the prose. Green was still dubious but agreed to the first
steps being taken.

xiii
xiv editor’s preface & acknowledgements

Early in 1999, work began on the first three lectures that are the
first three chapters of this monograph. First of all Carole Lee-Rob-
bins was commissioned by Squiggle to type up the lectures from the
recordings. This became the “raw material” for the editing process
to start. Although arduous and time consuming, I found this process
fascinating because I had the opportunity to delve into the texts in
an effort to grasp the thinking of André Green.
Given that Green had been an analyst since 1965 and had already
published numerous papers and books in French, perhaps it is not
surprising that the themes flowed quite seamlessly. He was very well
known for being a master extemporizer. As recently as 2007—the
year he turned eighty—according to Rosine Jozef Perelberg’s obitu-
ary he spoke for some nine hours over one weekend on the subject
of the death instinct (Perelberg, 2012). So my editing task entailed
creating sentences and paragraphs. It is important to state that while
certain words and phrases had to be amended, Green meticulously
checked every word before going to press. The sequence of each
lecture was not changed at all.
Once the four lectures were edited to my satisfaction, with some
trepidation I posted them to Green. (At that time, email correspond-
ence was more unusual than using the post.) I wondered how he
would respond to my editing job. Would he recognize the lectures
as his own? To my relief, he was pleased and became very enthu-
siastic about the collection. After further editing and amendments,
the manuscript was ready. Just before publication, André suggested
adding a fifth paper—“The Intuition of the Negative in Playing and
Reality”—that he had written to mark twenty-five years since the
publication of Playing and Reality (1971b). Although the paper had
already been published twice in 1999—once in the International
Journal of Psychoanalysis and then again in The Dead Mother: The
Work of André Green (1999), edited by Gregorio Kohon—both Cesare
Sacerdoti and I agreed that this homage to Winnicott’s work, as it
is, would enhance the collection. Thus, André Green at the Squiggle
Foundation was finally published in 2000 as the third monograph
of Winnicott Studies.
Soon after that, despite the very many publications of Green’s
work in France, a French translation of the monograph was initi-
ated and published as Jouer avec Winnicott [To play with Win-
nicott] in 2005 by Presses Universitaires de France. That edition
 editor’s preface & acknowledgements xv

is differently ordered and excludes the second lecture of this

collection—“Object(s) and Subject”—probably because it is very
much addressed to a British audience. It was replaced with a new
paper André wrote subsequently, entitled “Winnicott in Transition:
Between Freud and Melanie Klein”. The other four chapters that
are in this monograph were translated into French by Martine Lus-
sier and Claire-Marie François-Poncet. In the preface of the French
edition Green describes the collection as a re-baptism of André
Green at the Squiggle Foundation. He goes on to say that Jouer avec
Winnicott could be seen as “. . . a stage in the journey, which once
more revisits, in a different manner without doubt, the work of this
great figure of psychoanalysis. It is possible that, in time, the critic
will recognize the originality and genius of Winnicott. But one can-
not go faster than the music” (Green, 2005, p. xii).
When Gregorio Kohon and Rosine Jozef Perelberg proposed
an André Green conference to the Scientific Committee of the Brit-
ish Psychoanalytical Society, it was met with much enthusiasm.
André Green had been invited to become an honorary member of
the society in 2000. That I was in the post of Chair of the Scientific
Committee for this occasion has been pure happenstance. As has
already been announced by Adrian Sutton, the present director
of Squiggle, in the acknowledgements section of this book, “The
Greening of Psychoanalysis” was a conference organized by the
Scientific Committee of the British Psychoanalytical Society, held
in September 2015 at the BPAS’s venue in Maida Vale. The speak-
ers were: Litza Gutierrez-Green, Gregorio Kohon, Michael Parsons,
Rosine Jozef Perelberg, Jed Sekoff, Fernando Urribarri, and myself.
As I realized that it had been fifteen years since the first publica-
tion of André Green at the Squiggle Foundation, it seemed an appropri-
ate moment to revise the preliminary pages of the first edition and
thus bring the monograph up to date. I am grateful to Adrian Sutton
and Squiggle trustees, as well as Oliver Rathbone, the subsequent
owner of Karnac Books, for agreeing to my suggestion.
For this revised edition the original five chapters are presented
precisely as they were prepared in consultation with Green for the
first edition in 2000—that is, in the chronological order of their
presentation. The additions include some minor amendments to the
preliminary pages, as well as some updating to the section about the
author and editor. This new preface & acknowledgements section is
xvi editor’s preface & acknowledgements

added and my editor’s foreword is slightly expanded to highlight

the way in which Green built on Winnicott’s work. I also make
brief reference to how Green’s work on the father’s role in psychic
development drew my attention to Winnicott’s very late proposal
of the father as a whole object in the newborn. Over time, this has
influenced my understanding of paternal functioning and psychic
change in the analysing situation. Essentially, however, my fore-
word remains a brief introduction to the Greenian themes set out
in the five chapters of this monograph.
Although Winnicott’s work is increasingly being recognized
in the psychoanalytic literature and beyond, especially in the past
fifteen years, I would agree with Green’s conclusion in his preface
to Jouer avec Winnicott that Winnicott’s genius is still to be fully com-
prehended. I hope that this newly revised monograph will facilitate
continued and further study of Winnicott’s thought, enhanced as
it is here through a Greenian lens. Green certainly knew his Win-
nicott, which he read with scholarly care. He was inspirational in
his supervision, teaching, lecturing, and writing and is still very
much missed by many of us who so much looked forward to his
visits to London. I never tire of reading his work, which will con-
tinue to nourish my evolving ideas about the theory and practice
of psychoanalysis.
Jan Abram
EDITOR’S FOREWORD

Jan Abram

Absence and a piece of chocolate

André Green gave his first lecture to the Squiggle Foundation on

3 March 1987. Alexander Newman, the founder and first director of
Squiggle, introduced Dr Green and informed the audience that his
collection of papers had just been published in English (although
most of the papers had been published in French during the 1970s),
entitled On Private Madness (1986), and was available for sale in the
bookshop. Newman, who was a likeable and eccentric Jungian ana-
lyst, followed this by saying that it was a book he had read “from
cover to cover, with little understanding and much interest”. This
stimulated smiles and laughter from those in the audience used to
Newman’s dry sense of humour, and some quizzical looks from
those of us who were newcomers to Newman and Squiggle.
Green seemed to be completely unfazed, however, and sim-
ply looked over his spectacles at Newman without a smile. For a
moment it was uncertain how he would respond, but after a beat he
said, almost as if rehearsed, that probably Alexander Newman was
really saying that he had read his book with great understanding

xvii
xviii editor’s foreword

and little interest! The audience very much enjoyed this response
of Green’s. Then, turning to the audience, Green said, “I don’t
know what your reactions will be in terms of understanding and
interest after this lecture, because probably I have some difficulties
in understanding myself with more or less interest.” There was
spontaneous laughter, and the audience relaxed.
For me, Green’s particular response to Newman in this memo-
rable exchange, which was recorded, captures a special quality of
Green. On one level he was a great showman, who loved enter-
taining his audience and, as he says at the beginning of Chapter 4,
“Winnicott and myself have at least one point in common: we enjoy
lecturing” (p. 69). This enjoyment was very apparent. He relished
a good scientific argument because he was passionate about psy-
choanalysis, as he understood it.
That first lecture, on 3 March 1987, was entitled “Experience
and Thinking in Analytic Practice”, and for an hour and a half
nobody moved; at least that is how I remember it. Interest is too
mild a word—I think we were fascinated and intrigued—almost
spellbound. As for understanding—there were several themes
that probably passed many of us by. I came to realize that this is
what Alexander Newman and André Green were alluding to in
their playful exchange: the quite different analytic environments
between the French and Anglo-Saxon psychoanalytic worlds.
When listening to a new speaker discuss a familiar topic—psy-
choanalysis—in an unfamiliar way—French psychoanalysis—what
exactly do we take away with us and why? I am struck that I came
away from that lecture with some specific impressions. Green was
clearly an experienced analyst and Freudian scholar who was very
interested and well read in the work of Winnicott. As a man, he
conveyed warmth, through his dry sense of humour, and compas-
sion, through his respect for the patient’s suffering. The other seem-
ingly banal memory I retained was that Green lived and worked
in an apartment in Paris, and that he liked a piece of chocolate
after his lunch. When I came to study the text of that first lecture,
I realized that my memory related to the denouement of the clini-
cal illustration in the paper, where Green introduces his concept
of the negative.
After lunching out, Green had met his patient, coincidentally,
at the entrance to his apartment. They had taken the lift together,
 editor’s foreword xix

and he had ushered her into the waiting room. As there were a
couple of minutes before the session time, Green had gone to his
kitchen to eat a piece of chocolate. When he came to fetch the
patient on time, the first thing she asked was, “Did you eat some
chocolate?” The patient had felt tantalized by what her analyst had
been doing during the two minutes of his absence. This seemingly
banal event between Green and his patient had coincided with the
announcement of a forthcoming break in the previous session (p.
12). The clinical material beautifully illustrates the development of
his concept of the negative associated with Freud’s theory of nega-
tion. Green points out that there are two aspects of the negative. In
one there is destruction and foreclosure—an attack on insight and
the analytic setting—while the other—the work of the negative—con-
stitutes the very process of psychoanalytic treatment bringing the
unconscious scenes into consciousness. What happened around the
chocolate between Green and his patient facilitated a new shift in
the patient that illustrated psychic change. “It is only if the patient
can experience that feeling of movement in the session that I think
he will be able to continue moving and working outside the session
in the world” (p. 15).
Green does not talk about repetition, nor about enactment, but,
rather, about actualization.1 For Green, the analytic experience with
every patient will involve actualizations that convey the patient’s
internal constructions within the analytic relationship. “What goes
on between these two partners, analyst and analysand, is a histori-
cal process in that it deals with the way in which history is consti-
tuted in a person: how it works, how it becomes effective” (p. 2).
Green defined the historical process thus:
For the psyche, the historical could be defined as a combina-
tion of:
—what has happened
—what has not happened
—what could have happened
—what has happened to somebody else but not to me

1
Professor Joseph Sandler, a long-term colleague and friend of André
Green, also uses the term “actualization” to explore his ideas on affect and role
responsiveness (Sandler, 1976a, 1976b).
xx editor’s foreword

—what could not have happened

—and finally—to summarize all these alternatives about
what has happened—a statement that one would not have
even dreamed of as a representation of what really hap-
pened. [pp. 2–3]

So what is the past? Following Freud, André Green was emphasizing

that there is no such thing as the past in psychoanalysis, but, rather,
the past constitutes the subject’s elaborations of the above set of
variables. And the analytic situation stimulates actualizations of the
patient’s unconscious constructions.

French and British psychoanalysis

“. . . you cannot speak of love unless you include an object.” [p. 29]

Nina Farhi became Squiggle’s second director in 1989, and she

invited Green to give his second public lecture on 2 June 1990. By
this time, André Green was quite well known to the London psycho-
analytic community, and the tickets for that lecture sold very quickly.
In her introduction to the talk, Farhi commented on the differences
between French and Anglo-Saxon analytic cultures—the British, she
said, celebrate empiricism and pragmatism, and the French celebrate
intellectualism and abstraction. Farhi went on to say how it was clear
from his work, and his previous lecture two years earlier, that Green
recognized the deep abstraction to be found in Winnicott’s work.
As if anticipating Green’s paper to be written in 1997 (Chapter 5,
this volume), Farhi added that Playing and Reality (1971b) “is one of
the most fundamental works in the field of psychoanalysis which
embraces both traditions”. The lecture on that occasion was entitled
“Object(s) and Subject”, in which Green offered further elaborations
on the nature of object(s) and subject relationships. The lecture was
very much a paper addressed to a British audience, which started
with an examination of the way the terms—object and subject—have
evolved differently in British and French psychoanalysis. Early in
the paper Green explains that writing his notes in French to be deliv-
ered in English led to certain problems. For example, he explained,
he wanted to say, “Le Moi se prend pour moi”, which translates as “The
 editor’s foreword xxi

ego mistakes itself for me” (p. 19). The ego cannot be the totality of
the personality, and, Green pointed out, it was “. . . an extraordinary
theoretical leap when Freud began to think of the ego as one agency
of the personality” (p. 19). Soon after this statement Green claims
that, to his mind, “. . . the whole of the psychic structure is based on
‘thirdness’”, and he adds in parentheses “(but this is another topic
for another lecture)” (p. 20). And, in fact, a year later he did come
to give his paper “On Thirdness”, which happened to be his third
visit to a Squiggle audience (see below). There are many themes to
glean from this second lecture associated with Winnicott’s thought.
Green always remained mindful that he was addressing a Squiggle
audience, and, to my recollection, of all the lecturers who visited
Squiggle and whom I listened to, André Green was among the few
who had clearly studied Winnicott’s work in depth. For example, in
this second lecture he makes an important theoretical link between
the work of Lacan and Winnicott.
The conceptualization that to be a subject “. . . is the necessary
condition to form a relationship with the Other” is one we owe to
Lacan, Green states, and he follows this with:

The subject’s recognition of what it is made up of and what it

tries to achieve cannot occur unless he is recognized by another
subject—the Other—who is marked by corresponding short-
comings but is capable of looking at the subject with the ability
to put together some of the fragments—the bits and pieces of its
history—that the ego’s struggle has failed to integrate. [p. 23]

This notion of “recognition”, Green claims, is not present in either

Freud’s or Klein’s work, but, he suggests, “. . . Winnicott’s work
pleads for this interpretation”. This is where Green shows his appre-
ciation of Winnicott’s conceptual innovations. The notion of “rec-
ognition” as a concept in Winnicott’s work is there right from the
beginning and crystallizes in his paper “Mirror-Role of Mother and
Family in Child Development” (Chapter 9 of Playing and Reality). This
is the paper in which Winnicott identifies the individual’s “historical
process” as the movement from apperception towards perception,
from object relating towards use of an object. For this developmental
achievement to take place, however, the infant depends on being
seen, that is, recognized by the object, the m/Other—who is able to
identify with the infant’s state of helplessness.
xxii editor’s foreword

When I look I am seen, so I exist.

I can now afford to look and see.
I now look creatively and what I apperceive I also perceive.
In fact I take care not to see what is not there to be seen (unless
I am tired). [Winnicott, 1971a, p. 114]

By the conclusion of this second lecture, Green is turning towards

his notion of thirdness and the importance of the father. He wished
to remind his Squiggle (and British) audience that the father had a
crucial role to play in the structuring of the psyche, as if we had for-
gotten, and he states: “The function of the father—this is what Lacan
emphasized—is that he is the agent who separates the child from
the body of the mother” (p. 36). However, there is, Winnicott latterly
proposed, a different father who precedes the separating father, and
this takes us to the third lecture.

On thirdness

“This is the crux of the matter: that one day this paradise has to come
to an end, that two in one becomes two who are kept apart, and this is
why a third is needed.” [p. 63]

Nina Farhi invited André Green for a third time to discuss the theme
that was pushing itself through in the second lecture—that is, third-
ness. There was high expectation for this lecture planned for late
May 1991, not quite a year after the previous one of June 1990. Again
tickets sold out very quickly.
In this third lecture Green challenges Winnicott’s declaration
that “There’s no such thing as a baby” by saying that “there is no
such thing as a mother–infant relationship” (p. 44). He synthe-
sizes the thought of Charles Sanders Peirce, a nineteenth-century
semiotician, with both Freud and Winnicott, and thus creates a
new psychoanalytic object—thirdness. The multidimensional qual-
ity and complexity of this paper conveys the very essence of
thirdness—symbolization and the art of thinking. In my original
introduction for the first edition of this collection I pointed out
that in studying this paper I was reminded of Winnicott’s posthu-
 editor’s foreword xxiii

mously published paper, “The Use of an Object in the Context of

Moses and Monotheism” (written in 1969), first published in Psycho-
analytic Explorations (1989), where Winnicott writes:
It is easy to make the assumption that because the mother starts
as a part object or as a conglomeration of part objects the father
comes into ego-grasp in the same way. But I suggest that in a
favourable case the father starts off as a whole (i.e. as father,
not as mother surrogate) and later becomes endowed with a
significant part object, that he starts off as an integrate in the
ego’s organisation and in the mental conceptualisation of the
baby. [p. 243]

In 2000 I went on to say that Winnicott had never denied the impor-
tance of the third for the baby’s healthy development, but perhaps
it is easy to forget this when, as he confessed in 1957, he did so
much wish to speak to mothers (Winnicott, 1957). The notion of an
“integrate” in Winnicott’s very late work continued to intrigue me,
caught up with Green’s rejoinder to Winnicott that there is no such
thing as a mother–infant relationship.
Interestingly, as we have just seen in the second lecture, fol-
lowing Lacan’s emphasis, Green states that the father’s importance
is to separate the infant from the mother’s body. But in this third
lecture, Green, following Winnicott’s work, confirms that, although
the father cannot be a distinct object from the infant’s point of view
at the very beginning, he nevertheless does exist through being
present in the mother’s mind as a potential third:
. . . this is the journey from father residing internally in the
mother’s mind to the stage when he becomes present in the
child’s perception of his existence as well as his representa-
tion. [p. 46]

Here, Green, who is following Winnicott’s notion of early devel-

opmental processes, suggests that the father in the mother’s mind
constitutes potential thirdness, which will lead to effective thirdness
(presumably in the context of a facilitating environment) by the time
the child is able to perceive the Other (rather than apperceive, which
is the earlier stage). Thus the capacity to reach the oedipal dimension
is a developmental achievement. Green goes on to propose that dur-
ing the phase of psychic development when the father is (only) in the
xxiv editor’s foreword

mother’s mind (potential thirdness), he is the “other of the object”,

or that which is not the subject (p. 45), because, Green argued, the
third element is not restricted to the person of the father: it is also
symbolic. Here Green demonstrates his homage to Lacan’s concept
of the paternal metaphor (Lacan, 1956–57).
In my recent proposal I linked Green’s “other of the object”
with Winnicott’s proposal of an “integrate”. It seems to me that
Winnicott’s notion constitutes a concept of an “early father”. Via
the (good-enough) mother, the father in the mother’s mind, I
suggest, is attached to her paternal imago, from where it is psy-
chically transmitted to the nascent psyche of her infant; there in
the nascent psyche it becomes an “integrate”, like a seed, which
has the potential to grow into a paternal imago. Following Win-
nicott, who proposed that the integrate constitutes, for the infant,
the first glimpse of the father as a whole object, it seems to me
that, therefore, the “integrate” is paternal. This is my interpreta-
tion of Winnicott’s very late proposal and why I am proposing
the concept of a “paternal integrate” that has emanated, at source,
from the father’s psyche and body through his psychic and sexual
intercourse with the mother’s psyche and body. I developed this
argument to suggest that the parallel in analytic experience is that
the third in the analyst’s mind facilitates paternal functioning in
psychoanalytic treatment. Thus, the analyst’s capacity to action
paternal functioning will, in turn, lead to psychic change for the
analytic pair (Abram, 2015).

On Human Nature

On 29 June 1996, Green gave his fourth lecture to Squiggle—“The

Posthumous Winnicott: On Human Nature”. This latter lecture was
one of six in celebration of Winnicott’s centenary year. It was another
memorable occasion with an audience at full capacity of over 400
people at Regent’s College. Green paid full tribute to Winnicott’s
profound contribution to psychoanalysis as demonstrated in his
posthumously published book—Human Nature (1988)—and com-
pared it to Freud’s An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940a). Green
writes that it is “. . . a transitional writing between the unsaid and
 editor’s foreword xxv

the published” . . . “[a] book . . . [that] both is and is not the text”
. . . “fragments of an unfinished symphony” (p. 69, 70). He begins
by saying he came to two conclusions after reading Human Nature.
The first was “how Donald W. Winnicott’s recapitulation was in
continuation with Freud’s work. . . . he did not break off with Freud
but rather completed his work”. The second was how much of an
independent thinker Green considered Winnicott to be—a “true
leader of the independent stream in the British Psycho-Analytical
Society” (p. 70).

“A kind of French Winnicott”

André Green wrote “The Intuition of the Negative in Playing and

Reality” for a conference in Milan to celebrate the twenty-fifth anni-
versary of the publication of Winnicott’s posthumously published
book. Winnicott had worked on the collection but had never seen
the final publication because he died on 25 January 1971, and it was
published later that year, along with Therapeutic Consultations in
Child Psychiatry (1971c).
It is understandable why Green suggested including this paper
because the chapter is another homage to Winnicott, who inspired
Green’s concept of the negative. Green begins the paper by saying
it was especially the Winnicott of Playing and Reality that was his
inspiration related to the themes of absence, loss, and transitional
phenomena. Incidentally, this paper contains another unusual
clinical illustration from Green’s work when he discusses seeing
a patient who had been treated by Winnicott himself. The patient
had been told that Dr Green was “a kind of French Winnicott”.
After starting work with this patient under difficult geographi-
cal circumstances, Green realized that this was the patient to whom
Winnicott refers in the third and final section of his paper, “Transi-
tional Objects and Transitional Phenomena” (Chapter 1 in Playing
and Reality).2 Winnicott’s clinical example is used to illustrate the
patient’s inability to keep the Other in mind. For this patient it was

2
This clinical example was not included in the original text first presented
in 1951 and published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 1953.
xxvi editor’s foreword

the analyst who was not there who felt more real than the analyst
who was there. Winnicott, in Chapter 7 of Playing and R ­ eality,
theorized this striking stage of infantile development, in which he
vividly depicts the process of internalization in relation to the way
in which the mother times her absence:
The feeling of the mother’s existence lasts x minutes. If the
mother is away more than x minutes, then the imago fades,
and along with this the baby’s capacity to use the symbol of
the union ceases. The baby is distressed, but this distress is
soon mended because the mother returns in x + y minutes. In x
+ y minutes the baby has not become altered. But in x + y + z
minutes the baby has become traumatized. In x + y + z minutes
the mother’s return does not mend the baby’s altered state.
Trauma implies that the baby has experienced a break in life’s
continuity, so that primitive defences now become organized to
defend against a repetition of “unthinkable anxiety” or a return
of the acute confusional state that belongs to disintegration of
nascent ego structure. [1971b, p. 97]

And so this fifth chapter is a further illustration of Green’s hom-

age and debt to Winnicott’s late work in which he explores and
discusses how Winnicott’s fine-tuning to the infant’s sensitivity to
the mother’s absence leads to a problem with internalizing. Green
develops these ideas into his concept of the negative, which he had
discussed in his first lecture to Squiggle.
Winnicott’s dialogue with both Freud and Klein led to his out-
standing clinical innovations (Abram, 2012). In these five chapters
André Green’s creative dialogue with Winnicott richly highlights
and deepens the psychoanalysis we have today.
 ANDRÉ GREEN
at The Squiggle Foundation
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
E si na festividade
D’aquelle martyr frechado
Se dá á todo o culpado
Remissão e liberdade,
De Deus na Natividade,
Á que já de agora assisto,
Muito mais logar tem isto,
E com tanta mais razão
Quanto vai por medição
De São Sebastião á Christo.

Nós os abaixo assignados

Pedimos com humildade,
Ou fundados na piedade,
Ou na amizade fiados,
Que d’esses grilhões malvados
Por seu duro e infame tracto,
Solteis o prêzo malato,
Porque tem bons fiadores
Nestes vossos servidores,
De que ha de ser bom mulato.
 Á ANTONIA
MOÇA PARDA DE PERNAMIRIM CHAMADA VULGARMENTE
CATONA

Que pouco sabe de amor

Quem viu, formosa Catona,
Que ha nessa celeste zona
Astro ou luminar maior.
Tambem a violeta é flor,
E mais é negra a violeta,
E si bem póde um poeta
Uma flor negra estimar,
Tambem eu posso adorar
Nos céus um pardo planeta.

Catona é moça luzida,

Que á pouco custo se asseia,
Entende-se como feia,
Mas é formosa entendida:
Escuza-se commedida,
E ajusta-se envergonhada,
Não é tão desapegada
Que negue á uma alma esperança,
Porque emquanto a não alcança,
Não morra desesperada.
Piza airoso e compassado,
Sabe-se airosa mover,
Calça que é folgar de ver,
E mais anda a pé folgado:
Conversa bem sem cuidado,
Ri sizuda na occasião,
Escuta com attenção,
Responde com seu desdem,
E inda assim responde bem,
E bemquista a sem razão.

É parda de tal talento,

Que a mais branca e a mais bella,
Podéra trocar com ella
A côr pelo entendimento
A um prodigio, um portento;
E si vos espanta ver,
Que adrêde me ando a perder;
Dá-me por desculpa amor,
Que é femea trajada em flor,
E sol mentido em mulher.
 Á MESMA CATONA
DESPEDINDO-SE O AUCTOR DE PERNAMIRIM PARA A VILLA
DE S. FRANCISCO

Não vos pude merecer,

Pois vos não pude agradar,
Mas eu hei de me vingar,
Catona, em mais vos querer;
Vós sempre á me aborrecer
Com odio mortal e atroz,
E eu a seguir-vos veloz,
Si sois veremos emfim
Mais firme em fugir-me a mim,
Que eu em seguir-vos á vós.

Quizera vos persuadir,

Porque vos saibaes haver,
Que sou mais firme em querer,
Que vós ligeira em fugir:
Eu não hei de desistir
D’esta minha pretenção,
Quer vós o approveis, quer não,
Porque vêr me importaria
Si talvez faz a porfia
O que não fez a razão.
Mil vezes o tempo faz
O que á razão não conveio,
Metterei pois tempo em meio,
Porque elle nos metta em paz:
Vós estaes muito tenaz
Em dar-me um e outro não,
E eu, levado da affeição,
Espero tempo melhor,
Onde o que não obra amor
Vença o tempo, obre a razão.

Catona, a minha esperança

Me dá por conselho são,
Que espere, porque o rifão
Diz que quem espera alcança:
Tudo tem certa mudança,
O bem males ameaça,
O mal para bem se passa,
Que como a fortuna joga,
O braço que hoje me affoga,
Talvez amanhã me abraça.
 Á ANNICA
UMA MULATA DA CAJAHYBA

Annica, o que me quereis,

Que tanto me enfeitiçaes,
Uma vez quando cantaes,
E outra quando appareceis?
Si por matar-me o fazeis,
Fazei esse crime atroz
De matar-me sós por sós,
Para que eu tenha o soccorro,
Que vendo que por vós morro,
Viva de morrer por vós.

Matar-me eu o soffrerei,
Mas soffrei tambem chegar-me,
Que ter asco de matar-me
Jámais o consentirei:
Fugir e matar não sei,
Anna, como o conseguis?
Mas si a minha sorte o quiz
E vós, Anna, o intentaes,
Não podeis matar-me mais
Do que quando me fugis.
Chegae e matar-me já:
Não chegando estou já morto;
Coisa que se me tem absorto,
Matar-me quem não me dá:
Chegae, Anna, para cá,
Para dar-me essa ferida,
Porque fugir de corrida
E matar-me d’essa sorte,
Si o vejo na minha morte,
O não vi na minha vida.

Não sei que pós foram estes

Que na alma me derramastes?
Não sei com que me matastes?
Não sei o que me fizestes?
Sei que aqui me apparecestes,
E vendo-vos com antolhos,
Topei com tantos abrolhos
Na vossa dura conquista,
Que me tirastes a vista
E me quebrastes os olhos.
 Á UMA MULATA
DE PERNAMIRIM CHAMADA LUZIA

Parti o bolo, Luzia,

Que a mim mesmo me acommoda:
Não deis a fatia toda,
Dae-me parte da fatia:
Quem pede como eu pedia,
Pede tudo o que lhe importa
E acceita o que se lhe corta,
E quem dá com manha e arte
Seus dados sempre reparte,
Si tem mais pobres á porta.

Não é bem que tudo eu cobre,

E é bem que um pouco me deis;
Dae-me um pouco e alegrar-me-heis:
Com pouco se alegra o pobre;
Não deis coisa que me sóbre,
Dai-me siquer um bocado;
Mas o que vos persuado
Que deis com manha e com arte,
Dando vós e de tal parte,
Sempre será grande o dado.
Si á todos cinco sentidos
Não tendes coisa que dar,
Dae ao de vêr e apalpar,
Os dois sejam preferidos:
Não deis que ouvir aos ouvidos,
Mas dae aos olhos que vêr
E ao tacto em que se entreter;
Deitemos á bom partir
Os dois sentidos a rir
E os demais a padecer

As mãos folgam de apalpar,

Os olhos folgam de vêr,
Os dois logrem seu prazer,
Os tres sintam seu pezar:
Que depois que isto lograr,
Virá o mais por seu pé,
Que inda que ninguem me dê,
Nem eu o tome á ninguem,
Morrerá vosso desdem
Ás forças de minha fé.
 A ANTONIA
MOÇA PARDA, CHAMADA A MARIMBONDA, QUE MORAVA NA
RUA DA POEIRA, E A VIU O P. NO CAMPO DA PALMA DEBAIXO
DE UMA URUPEMBA EM CASA DE UMA AMIGA. ALLUDE AO
REMEDIO SYMPATHICO DE SE QUEIMAR A CASA DOS
MARIMBONDOS, PARA SE EXTINGUIR LOGO A DÓR DAS
SUAS PICADAS

Fui hoje ao Campo da Palma,

Onde com subito estrondo
Me investiu um marimbondo,
Que me picou dentro da alma:
Era já passada a calma,
E eu me sentia encalmado,
Corrido e injuriado,
Porque sendo obrigação
Metter-lhe eu o meu ferrão,
Eu fui o que vim picado.

Fiz por fecha-lo na mão,

Mas o marimbondo azedo
Me picava em qualquer dedo
E escapava por então:
Desesperada funcção
Foi esta, pois me fui pondo
Tão abolhado em redondo
Por cara, peito e vasios,
Que estou com febres e frios
Morrendo do marimbondo.
Dizem que a vingança está
Em lhe saber eu da casa,
Porque deixando-lh’a em braza,
Um fogo outro abrandará:
Mas temo não arderá,
Por mais que toda uma matta
Lhe applique com mão ingrata,
Porque o que eu lhe hei de pôr
Ha de ser fogo de amor,
Que inda que abraza, não mata.

Nesta afflicção tão penosa

D’onde me virá o soccorro?
Morrerei, pois por quem morro,
Morro uma morte formosa:
Esta dôr tão tormentosa
Me levará de maneira,
Que, ou ella queira ou não queira,
Em chegando á sua rua,
Si acaso se mostrar crua,
Tudo irá numa poeira.
 SAUDOSO
DE PERNAMIRIM, E POR OCCASIÃO DE HAVER VISTO NA
VILLA DE S. FRANCISCO, ONDE ESTAVA, UM MOLEQUE
CHAMADO MOÇORONGO, ESCREVE A UM AMIGO D’AQUELLE
SITIO

ROMANCE

Veiu aqui o Moçorongo

Tão occulto e escondido,
Que não sei si o tenha a elle,
Si a vós por meu inimigo.

Chegou terça feira á tarde,

Metteu-se em casa de Chico,
Passou a tarde e a noite,
E o peior é que dormindo.

Porque havia de dormir

O Moçorongo maldicto,
Sabendo que estava eu
Desvelado e affligido?

Amanheceu quarta feira,

Chegou o nosso Arcebispo,
Gastou-se toda a manhã
Com visitas e visitos.

Deu meio dia, e fui eu

Para casa dos amigos
Esfaimado como um cão,
E como um lobo faminto.
Quando o cão do Moçorongo
Sahiu do seu escondrijo,
E sem lhe occorrer o encontro
Deu de focinhos commigo.

Alegrei-me, e enfadei-me,
Que ha casos em que é preciso
Que se mostre ao mesmo tempo
Alegre um peito e mofino.

Amofinou-me a traição
Com que elle esteve escondido,
E alegrei-me de encontrar
Com gente d’esse districto.

Perguntei logo por vós,

Por Ignacio e Antonico,
Por Luzia e por Catona,
E mais gente d’esse sitio.

Todos estão com saude,

Me disse o crioulo esquivo,
Um tanto triste da cara,
Pouco alegre do focinho.

Mas eu fiz-lhe muita festa,

Assim por ser seu amigo,
Como por ser cousa vossa,
E neste pasto nascido.

Perguntei si me escreveras,
Zombou d’isso, e deu-me um trinco
Zombou com cara risonha,
Trincou com dedo tangido.
D’isto formo a minha queixa,
D’isto fico mui sentido,
Pois sei que tendes papel,
Tinteiro, penna e juizo.

Mais andar lá nos veremos,

E vereis que de sentido
Vos hei de estrugir a vozes,
E me hei de espojar a gritos.

Meus recados a Luzia,

E que estou já de caminho,
Porque só ella me farta,
E á fome aqui me entizico.
 ESCREVE
TAMBEM QUEIXOSO A SEU AMIGO IGNACIO, MORADOR EM
PERNAMIRIM, EM QUEM FALLA NO ROMANCE ANTECEDENTE.

ROMANCE

Senhor Ignacio, é possivel

Que quizestes desdizer
D’aquella boa opinião
Que eu tinha na vossa fé?

É possivel que um amigo,

De que tanto confiei,
Nem por escripto me falla,
Nem em pessoa me vê?

É possivel que uma ausencia

Tanta potestade tem,
Que ao vivo morto reputa
No que toca ao bem querer?

Si isto em vós a ausencia faz,

Como em meu peito o não fez?
Não sois vós o meu ausente,
Que em meu peito viveis?

O certo é, meu amigo,

Disse amigo, mas errei,
Que não sois amigo já,
Sois o meu socio talvez.
Fostes socio nos caminhos
D’aquella terra infiel,
Onde Luzia traidora,
E Catona descortez,

Me privaram dos sentidos,

E me deixaram crueis
O corpo uma chaga viva
A golpes de seus desdens.

Mas eu me não queixo d’ellas,

Que de nenhuma mulher,
Má ou boa, ha de queixar-se
Homem que juizo tem.

Queixo-mo de vosso tio,

Que se foi por me empecer
Esta terceira jornada
Para acabar o entremez.

Praza a Deus que ache Simoa,

A quem amante foi ver,
Como ha de achar Antonica
Farta de xesmininez.

D’aquella Antonica fallo,

Que pôz no negro poder
Das Quitas, para que a guardem,
E a guardarem ao revez.

Que a Silvestre a entregaram,

O qual, como vós sabeis,
Apezar dos dias sanctos
Lhe deu tanto que fazer.
Mas pois em Pernamirim,
E em suas cousas toquei,
Neste mesmo assumpto quero
Me façais uma mercê.

Dizei-me si está o Antonio

Recolhido a seu vergel,
Onde era geral Adão
Das Evas que Deus lhe deu.

E si acaso tiver vindo,

Vos peço que lhe mandeis
Este romance fechado
Em um molhado papel.

Porque no molhado veja

O chôro com que lancei
Estes versinhos tão tristes
Por amar e querer bem,

A elle, que me fugiu

D’esta casa, ha mais de um mez,
E á Catona que o imita
No esquivo e no infiel.

E com isto, e outro tanto

Que me fica por dizer,
Adeus, até que tenhais
Quem vos traga a meu vergel.
 Á ANTONIO DE ANDRADE
SENDO DESPENSEIRO DA MISERICORDIA

Senhor Antonio de Andrade,

Não sei si vos gabe mais
As franquezas naturaes,
Ou si a christã charidade:
Toda esta nossa Irmandade,
Que á pasmos emmudeceis,
Vendo as obras que fazeis,
Não sabe decidir não
Si egualaes o amor de irmão,
Ou si de pae o excedeis.

Ou, senhor, vós sois parente

De toda esta enfermaria,
Ou vos vem por recta via
Ser pae de todo o doente:
Quem vos vê tão diligente,
Tão caritativo e tão
Inclinado á compaixão,
Dirá de absorto e pasmado,
Que entretanto mal curado,
Só vós fostes homem são.
Aquella mesma piedade,
A que vos move um doente,
Vos mostra evidentemente
Homem são na qualidade:
De qualquer enfermidade
São aphorismos não vãos,
Que enfermarão mil irmãos:
Mas si o contrario se alude
Somente a vossa saude
Foi contagio de mil sãos.

Quem não sarou d’esta vez

Fica muito temeroso,
Que lhe ha de ser mui penoso
Acabar-se-vos o mez:
Ninguem jámais isto fez,
Nem é coisa contingente
O ficar toda esta gente
Com perigo tão atroz,
Que se acabe o mez á vós
Para mal de outro doente.
 AO CAPITÃO
JOÃO RODRIGUES DOS REIS, HOMEM GENEROSO E
ALENTADO, GRANDE AMIGO DO P.

Meu capitão dos Infantes,

Que por vossas boas artes,
Sois homem de muitas partes,
Nascendo só em Abrantes:
Por vossos ditos galantes,
Discretos e cortezãos,
E por largueza de mãos
Á todos nos pareceis
Não sómente João dos Reis,
Si não o rei dos Joãos.

O principe, que de juro

Senhorêa os corações,
Como lá disse Camões,
Que sois vós o conjecturo:
Tanto nisto me asseguro,
Que em ver como procedeis,
Presumo que descendeis
De algum principe de França,
D’onde tendes por herança
Esse appellido dos Reis.