In 1964, Donald Winnicott worked with a delightful little girl, Gabrielle, whom her parents called “The Piggle.” His work with the Piggle extended over 16 psychotherapy sessions. The first six took place from the time she was 2 years, 4 months old to when she was almost 3; the next six from when she was 3 to 4 years old; and the last four from when she was 4, ending when she was 5 years, 2 months old.
In the letters they wrote to Winnicott, the Piggle’s parents come across as a conscientious, articulate and very proper English couple who are at a loss in coping with their little girl’s anxiety and recurring nightmares. They reach out to Winnicott to help alleviate her distress (Winnicott, D. H., 1987). From the copious notes kept by Winnicott describing his numerous interactions with the Piggle as they worked, or more accurately, played together, it’s possible to describe the psychosocial development of an intelligent, engaging toddler from the perspectives of:
- Piaget and his focus on the child’s independent discovery from the Sensorimotor Internalization of Schemes sub-stage (18 to 24 months), through the Preoperational Symbolic Function sub-stage (2 to 4 years) and well into the Intuitive Thought sub-stage (4 to 7 years) (Piaget, J., 1926)
- Bowlby’s focus on attachment in early childhood from the Clear-Cut attachment phase (6-8 to 18 months) to the Formation of a Reciprocal Relationship stage (18 months to 2 years) and the problems that can occur at each stage (Bowlby, J., 1999).
- Vygotsky’s focus on the child’s assisted discovery through his social learning theory which emphasizes the importance of social interactions in cognitive development, the role of a more knowledgeable person (MKP) in these social interactions and the child’s Zone of Proximal Development, i.e., the distance between a child’s ability to perform a task under adult guidance versus the child’s ability to perform the task alone (Vygotsky, L. S., 1978)
- Erickson’s conflictual stages of Trust vs. Mistrust (birth to 18 months), Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (2 to 3 years) and Initiative vs. Guilt (3 to 5 years) (Erickson, E. H.,1950), and
- Kohlberg’s first two Preconventional levels of moral development from the Punishment and Obedience Orientation to the Instrumental Purpose Orientation (Kohlberg, L., 1969).
In a first letter from her mother:
“She was breast fed for nine months [and]…so remarkably composed as a baby, sure of herself. She had great poise and hardly ever cried when she fell. From the earliest times she showed very passionate feelings toward her father and was somewhat high handed with her mother. But she had a little sister, Susan, now seven months old, when she [Piggle] was 21 months old, which I considered far too early. Both this and our anxiety about it seemed to bring about a great change in her.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 5-6).
Thus, from her birth to 12 months of age, the Piggle’s trust in her mother and father was for the most part established during her Basic Trust vs. Mistrust stage of development (Erickson, 1950). Then her mother became pregnant with Susan when Piggle was 12 months old. Nine months later Susan was born, just before the start of Piggle’s Trust vs. Autonomy stage of development (Erickson, 1950). Her developmental struggles, which started a little before and continued through this stage, are described in another letter from her mother in which we get a vivid sense of a distressed toddler’s frantic manipulation of primitive symbols:
“When Susan was born, [Piggle] seemed thrown out of her mold, cut off from her sources of nourishment. It is hurtful to see her so diminished. Also, things became tense between us [mother and father]. She calls out to us late at night revealing two strands of fantasy. In one, she has a black mummy and daddy. The black mummy comes in after her late at night and says ‘Where are my yams?’ as she points to her breasts, pulling them to make them larger. Sometimes she’s put into the toilet by the black mummy who lives in her tummy and can be talked to on the telephone. The black mummy is often ill and difficult to make better. In another, she calls out over and over ‘Tell me about the babacar, all about the babacar.’ The black mummy and daddy are often in the babacar together, or some man alone. Occasionally, a black Piggle is there too. [She] hardly plays with any concentration now…she is either the baba or, more often, the mummy: ‘The Pigga gone away, gone to the babacar. The Pigga is black. Both Pigga’s are bad. Mummy, cry about the babacar!’ I told her I had written to Dr.Winnicott who understands about babacars and black mummys; since [then] she has ceased her nightly pleading: ‘Tell me about the babacar.’ Twice she asked me, as if out of the blue: ‘Mummy, take me to Dr. Winnicott.’ (Winnicott, 1987, p. 5-7).
At this point, the Piggle is in the last of Piaget’s six sensorimotor substages, the Internalization of schemes, in which she’s engaged in a very moving struggle to develop her ability to use primitive symbols to form enduring mental representations and develop insights about the troubling world around her: anxious mommy, anxious daddy and, above all, the baba who came in a babacar (Piaget, 1926). There is also a strong sense that the Piggle is not getting the reassurance she needs from her troubled parents in an important phase of attachment: the formation of reciprocal relationships (Bowlby, 1999). Thus the Piggle’s strivings can further be understood as pleas for reassurance in the face of the inconsistent availability of her worried parents and her need for a Dr.Winnicott to lessen her anxiety.
The Piggle finds Winnicott sitting on the floor playing with toys.
Winnicott: “Bring teddy over here. I want to show him the toys.”
(She immediately brings teddy over, helps to show me the toys, starts playing with them herself)
Piggle: “Here’s another one and here’s another (picking up the trucks and engines)”
Winnicott: “Are the toys the Sush baby (which she calls Susan, her baby sister)?”
Piggle: “I was a baby. I was in a cot. I was asleep. Just had the bottle.”
Winnicott (helping her with the story): “And then there was another baby.”
Piggle (picking up a toy axle): “Where did this come from?”
Winnicott (helping her): “Where did the baby come from?”
Piggle: “De cot.”
(Gets frightened. Tries to push a toy figure into the driver’s seat of a toy car but the figure is too big)
“It won’t go it. It’s stuck.”
Winnicott: “Do you have frightening dreams?
Piggle: “About the babacar”
(Abruptly starts tidying up, packing the toys into boxes in a very deliberate manner)
“I’d like to fetch daddy and mummy.”
(Moving to the waiting room)
“I’ve tidied up.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 10-11).
Three things stand out in the above exchange. First, the Piggle makes good use of pretend play and animism, i.e., treats inanimate objects (the toy axle) as if they had life-like qualities, in Piaget’s Symbolic Function Substage to express her not yet logical thinking about the new baby (Piaget, 1926). Second, Winnicott immediately engages the Piggle in play, encouraging her to use the toys to express her feelings in a context of guided participation with a more knowledgeable person in her zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). Third, at the end of the exchange, when the Piggle has difficulty fitting the toy figure into the driver’s seat of a toy car, she feels a sudden burst of shame because – still in the throes of Erickson’s Autonomy vs. Shame Stage – she literally fails to fit the new baby into her life (Erickson, 1950).
In a note from the Piggle’s mother after the first session:
“We see a great change in the Piggle. She was not naughty and was nice to the baby but she was not herself. She wouldn’t let anybody call her Piggle. She would say ‘I’m the mummy. I’m the baby. Piggle is black.’ Piggle has a way of symbolizing her experiences. The babacar was linked with black, black mummy, black Piggle. She also developed a high pitched clatter that wasn’t hers. As soon as Susan was born, the Piggle needed much more attention. When we tried to sing her a song [that] we sang to her during her infancy, she cried out bitterly ‘Stop. Don’t sing this song!’ (Winnicott, 1987, p. 13).
Three things are apparent in the above note. First, the Piggle is expressing Piagetian egocentrism, i.e., purely her own point of view in describing mummy and the baby, as opposed to their respective points of view (Piaget, 1926). Second, black Piggle seems to be an expression of the Piggle’s shame in failing to make sense of the new baby (Erickson, 1950). Third, the Piggle is resistant when she gets the infant song from her parents, which is clearly not enough at this stage of her attachment to them, and black mummy sounds like a protest (Bowlby, 1999). I’m tempted to ask here how Winnicott might have responded to the Piggle’s egocentric strivings. Perhaps in a Vygotsky-like manner by simply saying to the Piggle:
Tell me about mummy.
Tell me about black Piggle.
Tell me about the baby.
Also, it’s easy to understand why mommy and daddy, in their anxious, troubled state, gave the Piggle a less than optimal Bowlbyesque response. Furthermore, as Winnicott notes after the first session:
“The parents are worried. They weren’t able to see the positive aspects of the child’s ability to solve things by internal processes.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 15).
Winnicott doesn’t allude to Piaget, his contemporary (they were both born in 1896) in this note, but he clearly appreciates the confusion of the Piggle’s parents in trying to understand her primitive manipulation of symbols (Piaget, 1926)
In another note from the Piggle’s mother:
“Piggle imagines that sometimes mummy must fall and hurt herself and then she makes mummy better” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 16).
Here, the Piggle is in the midst of the conflicted Ericksonian process of exerting control in her relationship with her mother in the context of her own and mommy’s anxiety. What better way to exert control than by having mummy fall and hurt herself and then making her better (Erickson, 1950)
In a letter from the Piggle’s father:
“The day after she saw you, she spent the day in the carrycot sucking a bottle but then gave up. She’s now alternately the baby and the big mummy (a very indulgent one) but never herself. She will not allow us to call her by her name. “The Pigga,” she says, gone away. Is black. Both Piggas are black.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 18).
Here we see the Piggle’s temporary regression to Erickson’s Trust vs. Mistrust stage (Erickson, 1950), followed by her primitive manipulation of symbols in Piaget’s Internalization of Schemes Substage (Piaget, 1926) and then her shame in failing to exert personal control and independence in the Erickson’s Autonomy vs. Shame stage (Erickson, 1950).
From her father:
“During the day, after having a good time, she says ‘Cry Mummy, why? Because of the babcar.’ She usually links the babacar with the black mummy but in the last few days a good mummy has come into the picture. The rather anxious and prim little voice that does not seem her own is not so much in evidence. She uses it mainly to talk about her baba which is her doll. With Susan, the Sush Baba, she has a good relationship. She’s compassionate with her and they often make rude noises together to their great mutual pleasure.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 18)
Here a very bright and curious toddler uses primitive symbols and animism to understand her mummy’s distress in addition to making sense of the new Sush [Susan] baba by role playing good mummy with her baba doll. (Piaget, 1926). Then the fun part for little Piggle and the Sush Baba: Making rude noises together!
From her father:
“She mentioned several times regretfully that Dr.Winnicott doesn’t know about the babacar. She asked me to take her to see Dr. Winnicott, then the next day asked me not to. Then she played taking trainloads of toys to London to play and to talk. The last few days, I had to be the Pigga and she the Mummy.
Piggle (as Mummy): ‘I’ll take you to Dr. W. Say, no.’
Me: Why?
Piggle: ‘Because I need you to say no.’ (Winnicott, 1987, p. 18-19)
The above is a good example of the Piggle’s need to assert her sense of personal control in Erickson’s Autonomy vs. Shame Stage of development (Erickson, 1950).
From her father:
“After a nightmare last night about the babacar, the black mummy who wants her yams and made the Piggle black and her neck hard, she said: ‘The babcar is’ite.’
Me: What does “ite’ mean?
She said she would tell Dr. Winnicott.
There’s a new fantasy that she repeats with many elaborations about everyone going splosh, splosh in the mud or in “moo’s brrrrr.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 19)
Here the Piggle is again using primitive symbols (Piaget, 1926) in her frantic strivings to make sense of mummy’s distress by perhaps flip-flopping or displacing the baba wants black mummy’s yams in real life to the black mummy wants my yams in her nightmare (Freud, 1900).
In another letter from her mother:
“I overheard her talking in bed: ‘Don’t cry little baby. The Sush baba is here, the Sush baba is here.’ She tells me it’s nice to have a sister. But I feel she is managing at great cost to herself. She is often much more naughty, kicks and screams at going to bed, says urgently: ‘I am a baby. I am a baby!’ She has great difficulty going to sleep: ‘because of the babacar. The babacar takes blackness from me to you and then I am frightened of you. I am frightened of the black pigga. I am bad.’ She is frightened of the black mummy and the black Pigga: ‘because they make me black.’ Yesterday she told me: ‘The black mummy scratched my face, pulled off my yams, made me all dirty and killed me with “brrrrr.’ I said she must be wishing for a nice, clean mummy again and she told me she had one when she was a little baby. She seems very pleased that you will see her but she still plays:
‘You are the Piggle. I am the mummy. I’ll take you to Dr. Winnicott, say no!
Me: Why?’
Piggle: (with a furtive smile, as if disguising the babacar) ‘To tell him about the babacandle.’
It’s a great relief to us that you will see her. Knowing that you have matters in hand has made our behavior more natural. She talks about going to see you, to tell you about the babacar which now seems to be carrying blackness from one person to the other.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 21)
The above is an extremely moving illustration, first and foremost, of the Piggle’s valiant struggle to cope with her mother’s anxiety and confusion in responding to her attachment needs in her formation of reciprocal relationships stage of development. Piggle comforting the Sush baba is really what this brave little girl needs from her anxious mother (Bowlby, 1999). Second, the Piggle gives us a rich illustration of her ability to manipulate primitive symbols in her efforts to handle her anxiety over the arrival of the new baby, i.e., the black mummy and the black pigga who make her black (Piaget, 1926). Finally, in spite of her high level of anxiety, courageous Piggle still manages to assert her autonomy by switching roles with mummy, You are the Piggle. I am the mummy. and alluding to an independent relationship with Dr. Winnicott in which mummy is obviously being kept out of the loop (Erickson, 1950). One wonders at this point if good Dr. Winnicott will be up to dealing with this delightfully empathic little girl.
In the next session, as usual, the Piggle finds Winnicott sitting on the floor with the toys.
Piggle: “Can I have one toy?”
Winnicott: “Winnicott very greedy baby. Want all the toys.”
Piggle (Takes one toy out to her father in the waiting room and tells him): “Baby want all the toys.”
Piggle: (Brings the toy back, pleased at Winnicott for being greedy) “Now the Winnicott baby has all the toys. I’ll go to daddy.”
Winnicott (as she’s leaving): “You are afraid of the greedy Winnicott baby, the baby that came out of the Piggle and that loves the Piggle and wants to eat her.”
Piggle (Brings daddy, who hasn’t a clue about what’s going on, back in with her; performs acrobatics on his lap and lands on the floor between his legs): “I’m a baby too.”
Winnicott (helping her in the game): “I want to be the only baby. I want all the toys.”
Piggle: “You got all the toys.
Winnicott: “Yes, but I want to be the only baby. I don’t want there to be any more babies.”
Piggle (as she gets on her father’s lap): “I’m the baby too.”
Winnicott: “I want to be the only baby.’ (In a softer voice) “Shall I be cross?”
Piggle: “Yes.” (Winnicott, 1987, p 27-30).
In the above exchange, Winnicott again engages the Piggle in play; helping her along with the game as the more knowledgeable person; empathizing with her and modeling her deeper feelings by encouraging her to give voice to the forgotten baby (Vygotsky, 1978). Also, the Piggle in playing the baby makes good use of her father as a surrogate mother, demonstrating her mental ability to formulate designs of objects that are not present (Piaget, 1926).
In a subsequent letter from her mother:
“In some ways that I cannot define, I feel that she is better; she has gone through a period when she was bored, listless and discontented, and at times wantonly destructive – tearing things up or breaking or soiling them. Now she gives one more the feeling of living life, and she is less mannered and unnatural. I had not realized previously how much she is haunted by guilt and the responsibility for her destructiveness. She mentions, in a most agonized manner, breakages of weeks ago that I hardly took any notice of at the time. I smacked her when she persistently tried to lift my skirts in a shop and then forgot about it. Two weeks later, she said: ‘Mummy, I won’t lift your skirts in a shop.’ Or when I carried Susan, her baby sister, I knocked her against the door and she cried.
The Piggle: ‘That was your fault.’
I: “Yes, that was my fault.”
Piggle (very concerned) “Will you dream about it?”
She is as worried as ever at night about being made black by black mummy and the babacar.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 51-52)
In the above, the Piggle is in the throes of a punishment vs. obedience orientation in her pre-conventional stage of moral development (Kohlberg, 1969). Imagine the Piggle as a Kohlbergian toddler Heinz struggling with the following dilemma: If I behave, mommy will forget me and I will die. If I misbehave, I will be made black by the black mommy and the babacar and have bad dreams. The Piggle may be a long way from Kohlberg’s, perhaps unattainable, post-conventional stage of moral development but she nonetheless deeply moves us with her struggle.
From her mother:
“Talk about dead things has lately become prominent. Last night, she very urgently wanted to tell me about the black mummy It started in the usual sing song voice:
Piggle: “The black mummy says ‘Where are my yams, where are my yams?’ The black mummy has got a seaside and a swing.’
I had taken her to the seaside for the first time and she loves swings. I said she did not seem to want the black mummy to have such good things.
She: “No. I want to spoil them. I want to spoil your things. I had big yams and she wanted them.’
Then she seemed to get mixed up and said I wanted her yams and looked very confused. I said she had small yams and when she was bigger she would have big ones.
Piggle: “Yes, when I can cook.”
I had told her when I came in that I must hurry, as I was cooking supper for daddy and myself.
I: “You have already started to be able to cook. You did make a baked custard.”
Piggle: “Yes, I can only cook dead things.
(copying my phrase)
Life is difficult. It hurts me.”
She mentions you occasionally rather casually, e.g., suddenly says she wants to go and play with Dr. W’s toys and tell him about the black mummy.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 52-53)
What’s striking about the above exchange is that for the first time the Piggle’s mother portrays her daughter talking to her in the same way that she talks to Winnicott. And her mother, responding as the more knowledgeable person, tries to reassure the Piggle that she will grow bigger yams and reminds her that she’s already baked a custard (Vygotsky, 1978). But talking to mommy isn’t enough. The Piggle still needs to play with Dr. Winnicott.
From her mother:
“This is to confirm that the Piggle will come with her father to see you. For two days running now she has asked to suck my yams after she had gone to bed at night. She asked with such intensity that I let her.
I: Why?
Piggle: “I want to suck them like a lollipop.”
Afterward, she asked me for something she could suck and chew that would go down into her tummy. Then she was frightened of the black mummy again and wanted to go to Dr. Winnicott. When I told her the day she was going:
Piggle: “And the day after and the day after that.”
Then when I left her room I heard heart-broken crying.
Piggle: “I want my baby, my baby, my Galli-galli-baby.”
Galli-galli baby is the name of her baby doll around which much of her activities used to pivot, though no longer as much now. It is also her way of pronouncing her own name, Gabrielle which she has not yet been able to pronounce properly.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 53)
Here the Piggle gets an insufficient response to her need for greater attachment from her ambivalent mother (Bowlby, 1999). One can imagine this good and very proper English mother way back in 1964, grounded in an ethic of spare the rod and spoil the child. Yet she did do her best. She was what Winnicott described earlier in 1958 as a good enough mother (Winnicott, 1975).
From another session with Winnicott and her father:
“Piggle was being very positive toward her father, kneeling up and sucking his thumb (I didn’t know at this stage that she had been sucking his thumb, curled up in his lap on the train). I said that she was scared because of the [earlier] game in which I had become the angry Piggle. By this time father had got his coat off and was trying to cope in his shirtsleeves.
Winnicott: “Winnicott is the angry Piggle and the Piggle was being the baby born using daddy instead of mummy. She was frightened of me because she knew how angry I must be, and the new baby was sucking daddy’s thumb (i.e., mummy’s breast)”
She looked at me in a particular way.
Winnicott: “Have I become black?”
Piggle (thinking a little, then shaking her head): “No.”
Winnicott: “I am the black mummy.”
Much jerking and sucking of father’s thumb.
Winnicott: “The Piggle wants daddy all to herself so mummy turns black and wants to put Gabrielle in the dustbin.”
She appeared pleased with this, playing with daddy’s tie and said something about pretending that the black mummy wasn’t there and that this had something to do with the dark night. Along with this was the idea of making mummy go black. I said something about being born again, this time from daddy. About how daddy was doing up his shoes and Gabrielle was getting up on his back.
Piggle (to daddy): “Can I climb up you again?”
Winnicott: “Making mummy go black.”
Piggle: “Mummy wants to be daddy’s little girl.”
She had plenty of energy and would have gone on with this kind of game but daddy had had enough and began to say no. It was very hot weather. It was also near the end of the time I had allotted her.
Winnicott: “The black mummy is now Winnicott and he’s going to send the Piggle away. He is going to put the Piggle in the wastepaper basket, like the water lily.”
The session ended and she was very friendly. I stayed where I was being the black angry mummy who wanted to be daddy’s little girl and was jealous of Gabrielle. At the same time I was Gabrielle being jealous of the new baby with mother. [Piggle] ran to the door. As she waved, her last words were: ‘Mother wants to be daddy’s little girl.’
By phone that evening, I learned about her having come [on the train] curled up and sucking daddy’s thumb. After the session, she changed into a more grown up girl. She was at ease and very happy. Moreover, she was observing everything on the way home, seeing cats and other animals, eating food and giving no trouble. She has become openly positive in her relation to her father and had lost the regressive behavior…[In the evening] her uncle came and at first she was shy but then she was very nice and friendly. Eventually, going to bed, she said out of the blue: ‘I don’t know who is uncle Tom and who is daddy.’ I thought that…the remark had reference to the way she used me and her father according to how she wanted to use us so that we changed roles as the game altered…What mattered was…[her] experience of being understood.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 60-62).
In the above session, the Piggle makes good use of Winnicott and her father in developing her still primitive symbolic reasoning through the use of objects, i.e., Winnicott as mummy and daddy as mummy (Piaget, 1926). And of course Winnicott as the more knowledgeable person facilitates the whole playful process (Vygotsky, 1978). What is particularly moving to me is Winnicott’s deep appreciation, after the session, of the Piggle’s need for validation – her crucial need to be understood by the people she loves – which is life-sustaining.
In a letter from her mother:
“The Piggle has asked several times to see you, and yesterday in her play she took trainloads of toys to London. She suggested staying with her grandmother [whom she calls la-la-la] who lives near London. She took about three hours to go to sleep. For a few days now she would not let me kiss her, in case I make her black. ; but she has been much more affectionate toward me and has kissed me spontaneously, which she has never done before. The other night, she told me that I was a nice mummy and then proceeded to scrape me. She said she was scraping the black off, and then she tried to blow it off the pillow.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 63-64).
What’s striking about this report is the Piggle’s decreased anxiety in her relationship with her mother; in no small measure due to her play work with Winnicott. Now the Piggle can quite amiably scrape the black off mummy as if she were playing with Winnicott (Vygotsky, 1978). What also comes through is the Piggle’s stronger sense of personal control and autonomy (Erickson, 1950) as she applies what she’s learned from Winnicott to her relationship with her mother.
From a session with Winnicott as the Piggle plays with toys:
“She held up a [toy] handle which was tied to some string. She wanted me to put it on the engine so that she could pull it around the room. She was pleased about this. I said something about it being a baby Gabrielle that she was remembering and she said ‘No, it’s a little sister.’ Then suddenly, ‘Look at this lovely picture.’ (a portrait of a very serious little girl of six or seven, rather old fashioned, that I keep in my room).
Piggle: “It’s a girl older than me. She is older than me like I am older than the Sush Baby. She (Susan) can walk without holding anything now.
(demonstrates walking and running and walking and then falling down)
And she can get up.”
(also demonstrated)
Winnicott: “So she doesn’t need her mummy all the time now.”
Gabrielle: “No. Soon she will grow bigger and do without mummy or daddy, and Gabrielle will be able to do without Winnicott or without anybody at all. Someone will say: What are you doing? [and Gabrielle answers] That’s my place. I want to go to your place. Get out of the way.”
She was illustrating a King of the Castle game with Gabrielle establishing her own identify and expecting it to be challenged.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 79-80).
Here the Piggle moves decisively away from egocentrism toward a sharper designation of living objects who are different than her and she uses the portrait of the older girl to demonstrate this new found ability (Piaget, 1926). Furthermore, in an explicit demonstration of autonomy without a hint of shame, she first corrects Winnicott, telling him it’s not Gabrielle being pulled around with a string but her little sister; and this is followed by a spirited assertion that she can be king of the castle in the face of challenge (Erickson, 1950).
In the next session, Gabrielle enters straight away, letting her father go to the waiting room, begins playing with toys:
Gabrielle: “I have seen him before several times
(as she takes one of the soft animals from the general mess of small toys)
This is something to fit onto the truck; sometimes Susan gets excited in the morning. I called to the grownups: Susan is excited! She says: ‘My big sister’s up.’ She wakes mummy and daddy in the night; a little monster. Mama! Dada! She has to have a bottle in the night!
(All this time playing with the toys)
This one isn’t going to fit onto it.
(Showing me a truck with no hook)
…I pointed out to her that she was trying to make some kind of thing out of a lot of parts and this meant making one thing out of Susan, Winnicott, mummy and daddy. These were separate things inside her, but she could not make them join up into one thing. She was now singing while pushing the train, and she got hold of the string which was all caught up around one of the wooden engines. She said something about a bundle and got me to help her.
Gabrielle: “A little bit of string. Put it on.
(Talking to herself)
We have decided Susan is really a little monster. We call her Mrs. Hickabout. Simon and the king. Kickabout Round and Round the Coal Fire. A little girl burning chestnuts. This little girl’s taking a long time.
[An allusion to a nursery rhyme and Gabrielle mimicking her father’s comment about Susan taking a long time]
About the black mummy. She comes every night. I can’t do anything. She’s very difficult. She gets on my bed. She is not allowed to touch. No, this is my bed. I’m going to have it. I’ve got to sleep in it. Daddy and mummy are in bed in another room. No, that’s my bed! No! No! No! That’s my bed. That’s the black mummy. Two little Turks.
(apparently a comment from someone [about] the two children)
Daddy may say I’m vile.
Winnicott: “What’s vile?”
Gabrielle: “People are naughty…Susan was sad at Gabrielle going away to London. (In a sing-song voice)
Oh, when will my big sister come back? She needs me to help when she uses the potty. This morning I opened the toilet; she came in to me; wanted me to take something off to do bolly. I have a great worry every night. It’s the black mummy. I want my bed. She hasn’t got one. There’s no mackintosh so I must get wet. She takes no care of her little girls.
Winnicott: “You are talking about your mummy and how she didn’t know how to care for you.”
Gabrielle: “Mummy does know. It’s the mummy with the black face very horrid.”
Winnicott: “Do you hate her?”
Gabrielle: “I don’t know what’s happening to me. Goodness, I am being forced out of bed by the black mummy and I’ve got such a nice bed.”
[speaking to herself]
No, Piggle, you haven’t got a nice bed. She is angry with mummy. You have got such a horrid bed for this horrid girl! The black mummy likes me. She thinks I am dead. It’s bull to see me. She doesn’t know about children or babies. The black mummy doesn’t know about babies.
Winnicott: “Your mummy didn’t know about babies when she had you, but you taught her to be a good mother to Susan.”
Gabrielle: “Susan is terribly sad if I go out shopping and she is happy when I come back.”
(With great sadness)
“Oh mummy, mummy, mummy! I don’t want a nice big sister who will kiss when she is sad and to go away. You have got toys behind your back. It’s difficult to get them out. Here are some houses. Susan woke me up in the night once.”
Winnicott: “Oh what a nuisance.”
[At this point Gabrielle was inactive and Winnicott notes that he may have drowsed off briefly.Then Gabrielle asks him to draw a tiger on a yellow electric bulb]
Gabrielle: “That’s lovely. I have seen this one before. I shall show daddy. For a long time mummy didn’t want a baby and then she wanted a boy but she had a girl. We are going to have a boy when we are grown up. Me and Susan. We will have to find a daddy man to marry.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 111-116).
What a moving exchange between the Piggle and good Dr. Winnicott! While our courageous three year-old initially uses inanimate toys to make sense of her struggle to symbolize her stressful world, she quickly goes on to express her own and others’ points of view. And for the first time black Piggle is completely absent as Gabrielle clearly distinguishes between black mummy and a protesting real Piggle. She is also quite clear in describing Susan vis-a-vis her sometimes devoted, sometimes vexed older sister. Our precocious three year-old also appears to be pushing the envelope, moving from Piaget’s illogical Symbolic Function Substage into the more logical Intuitive Thought Substage (Piaget, 1926). And, of course, more knowledgeable person Winnicott not only helps clarify Gabrielle’s moving efforts to make sense out of her mother’s stress in coping with two little girls, but also empowers her by saying you taught her to be a good mother to Susan (Vygotsky, 1978). Finally, in view of her clear assertions of control and initiative, especially with regard to her and Susan having to find a daddy man to marry to make boys in order to fulfill the deeper wish of her mother, our empathetic little heroine has moved definitively into Erickson’s Initiative vs. Guilt Stage (Erickson, 1950).
In the next session, As Gabrielle plays with toys:
Gabrielle: “I haven’t seen you in a long time so I was shy when I came to see you, and I shan’t see you tomorrow nor tomorrow nor tomorrow.”
Winnicott: “Are you sad about this?”
Gabrielle: “Yes. I like to see you every day but can’t because I have to go to school. I am supposed to go to school.”
Winnicott: “You used to come here to be mended but now you come because you like it. When you came to be mended, you came whether you had to go to school or not. But now you just like it. You don’t come so often. That is sad.”
Gabrielle: “When I come to see you, I am your visitor. You are my visitor when you come to Oxford. Isn’t that strange? Perhaps you will come after Christmas.”
Winnicott: “Is there anything to be mended about you today?”
Gabrielle: “No. I don’t break anymore. Now I break things up into pieces.
(Referring to a toy she’d mended)
This screw went in.”
Winnicott: “Yes, you mended it yourself and you can mend yourself.
…(Here she asked me to help her mend a train she was in difficulties with)
Gabrielle: “You are a doctor, a real doctor. That is why you are called Dr. Winnicott.”
Winnicott: “Do you like to be mended or do you like to come for pleasure?”
(Very definitively)
Gabrielle: “For pleasure because then I can play more.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 168-169).
In this exchange, Gabrielle gives ample proof of her ability to reason and use her considerable knowledge base to understand why things are the way they are in her Intuitive Thought Substage (Piaget, 1926). She’s also quite clear at this point in taking the initiative to mend herself and telling Winnicott that she now likes to come for pleasure. Now, comfortably into her Initiative vs. Guilt Substage, she appears to be on verge of developing a larger sense of purpose (Erickson, 1950).
A new game with Winnicott:
“She now instituted a game which was the main part of her communication [in this session]. It had roots in the past so we were able to use all sorts of short cuts…We kneel close together opposite each other…[taking a cylindrical ruler] she rolls it into me and that kills me. I die and she hides. Then I come alive and I can’t find her…By the time we had done this many times, and sometimes I was the one killing her, it became clear that it had to do with sadness…if she killed me, then when I recovered I couldn’t remember her. This was represented by her hiding, but I did eventually find her and then I said: Oh, I remember what it was I had forgotten. Although this game contained great pleasure, anxiety and sorrow were latent. Whoever was hiding had to leave a leg or something showing so that the agony of not being able to remember the lost person would not be prolonged or absolute…Gradually, the game altered by specializing in its hiding aspect…I had to creep around the back of the desk where she was hiding and then there were both of us there…Eventually I had to [burst out] from under the curtains which seemed to be a kind of birth.
“Then I had to become a house and she crept inside the house, rapidly becoming bigger until I could not contain her any longer and pushed her out. As the game developed, I said: I hate you, as I pushed her out. This game she found exciting. She suddenly got a pain between her legs and soon afterwards went out to pass water. The climax of this was getting in touch with the mother’s need to get rid of the baby when it is too big. Associated with this is sadness about getting bigger and older, and finding it more difficult to play this game of being inside mother and getting born.
The session ended with a period in which she took the two curtains in the middle of the room and rushed backwards and forwards with them.”
Gabrielle: “I am the wind. Look out!” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 182-184).
In this game with Winnicott, Gabrielle appears to be expressing her understanding of the impending separation from him as well as her capacity to handle the separation with gusto in her Initiative vs. Guilt Substage (Erickson, 1950). She is also using the game to solidify her symbolic images and internalization of the concept of separation in her Intuitive Thought Substage (Piaget, 1926). Finally, there’s another richer aspect to the game that Winnicott touches on with his sensitive comment that although this game contained great pleasure, anxiety and sorrow were latent. Here I believe he’s appreciating the deeper emotional value of their separation ritual in which they both simultaneously experience the loss of each other as well as the thrill of moving onward to new adventures (Black, Evan-Imber, 1992). However, being the proper English psychoanalyst that he is, Winnicott must interpret this as “Working through the reactions to extended separations and preparing for termination.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 184).
In the last session with Winnicott (Gabrielle now five years, two months old):
“She asked for the [cylindrical ruler and we] had 25 minutes of the old game which was played without great excitement but with an intensity that belongs to games played at the age of five. She rolled the steam roller toward me, and when it hit my knees I died. When I was dead, she hid. By now we knew all the routes toward corners only too well. In the course of the game, she took up her positions one after the other. I had to come alive, begin to remember that there was someone else whom I had forgotten and then gradually search for her. Then at last I would find her. Sometimes it was she who died in the same way; then she searched for me. She went on until she was satisfied she had had enough of this.
…Then she began taking out toys and emptied [a] bucket. For a time she was joining up a train, talking intelligibly but to herself. Once she said ‘look at a long train I’ve made.’ But it was not long because she was remembering what it was like in the earlier sessions…
Winnicott: “You are reminding yourself what the toys used to mean to you when you were a little Piggle instead of a big Gabrielle.”
Gabrielle: “Let’s play again.”
[Then] she carefully put a few toys she had taken out…and tidied them up under the book shelf. While she was doing this she was handling a basket and other toys in a loving way and saying things such as: ‘There you are.’ In the course of this, her head touched my elbow. This was not something deliberate, nor did she shrink from it. It just happened. She put the dog away in its envelope and said goodbye. And she put the lamb next to the envelope. Then she said ‘Now!’ – meaning that we were going…into something new.”
We got up and at first it seemed as if we were going to have more steam-roller play (hide and seek).What she did, however, was find a child’s picture book. I sat down with her and we turned over its leaves…Then she found [another] picture book with a story. I went over the story with her as she turned the pages…Whenever possible, she gave the names of the animals, and she was very happy and contented. I gave her the chance to talk to me about things; the word black came into one of the stories and I reminded her of the black mummy.
Winnicott: “You are very shy to tell me some of the things that you think.
She assented but this seemed rather half-hearted.
Winnicott: “I know when you are really shy, and that is when you want to tell me that you love me.”
She was very positive in her gesture of assent.” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 195-198).
In this subtle, very tender last session, Gabrielle plays a final separation game with Winnicott which he of course facilitates as her more knowledgeable person therapist (Vygotsky, 1978). But the game is not enough for Gabrielle. She must also use the toys this one last time to review and internally summarize the distance she’s travelled from being little Piggle to big Gabrielle in a demonstration of her more complex mental processes in her Intuitive Thought Substage (Piaget, 1926). Yet the toys are still not enough to express what she’s feeling and Gabrielle hints at this by unconsciously moving closer to Winnicott and touching him. Then in a last exquisite display of empathic attunement, Winnicott validates what she’s feeling. You want to tell me that you love me, he tells her in a final, loving gesture, the last of the many gestures that helped Gabrielle heal from the earlier, stressful misattunements of her bewildered, anxious mother (Bowlby, 1999).
In a final, insightful letter from her very articulate mother, we get a postscript on Gabrielle as well as a keener sense of the deeper emotional currents in her last two parting rituals with Winnicott:
“Gabrielle is unselfconscious – a spontaneous girl, very much part of a group of contemporaries at school. She seems to have regained the poise that she had lost before she started treatment. Around the age of eight she had some learning difficulties (was bored at school and did not learn to read easily), but she is now very competent at her work, and always able to find something interesting in it. She is domestic rather than tomboyish in her inclinations. To be a teacher of biology seems at the moment to be what she wants to do. It is her certainty of values, her inner independence of judgment, and also perhaps a way of being in touch with people on many wave-lengths, that make one wonder whether the leaven of some satisfying experience of being understood on a deep level may not be…still a work…The sad news of Dr. Winnicott’s death was brought by a casual visitor, and her immediate reactions were shrouded in the social situation. Dr. Winnicott had prepared her for the eventuality of his death in a most sensitive way, and she has since mentioned this session once or twice as if somehow [fitting it] into place.
Dr. Winnicott used to take notes during the sessions, and Gabrielle thinks that he was writing his autobiography and that she somehow came to be involved in a small corner of it: ‘He used to write and I used to play.’” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 200-201).
And lastly, a simple note of appreciation from me on the work of Vygotsky and Winnicott who, along with Piaget, were both born in 1896. Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development is the conceptual equivalent of Winnicott’s Potential Space or Creation Space. For each of these empathic, interpersonally gifted men, the zone of proximal development or creation space is a cultural substrate in which play permits, not just children, but teenagers, young adults and older adults to move, grow, heal and realize their hidden potentials (Da Silva, Nilce, 249).
What a challenge for marriage and family and couples therapists today to engage adult couples struggling with trust and emotional intimacy in creative and potentially healing play. But this is a subject for another paper.
