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The Facilitating Environment, the GWSCSW conference on the contributions of D.W. and Clare Winnicott to social work practice, was held on May 1, 2004.
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GWSCSW Winnicott Conference
THE FACILITATING ENVIRONMENT: The Contributions of Clare and Donald Winnicott to Social Work Practice
A distinguished array of presenters from across the U.S. and England came together at the GWSCSW conference on May 1, 2004, to examine the contributions of Clare and Donald Winnicott to social work practice. GWSCSW Vice President Joel Kanter, editor of Face to Face with Children: The Life and Legacy of Clare Winnicott, presented the keynote address.
Other speakers included Olive Stevenson, a student and colleague of the Winnicotts and one the leading figures in British social work; F. Gerard Fromm, director of the Erik H. Erikson Institute for Education and Research of the Austen Riggs Center and editor of The Facilitating Environment: Clinical Applications of Winnicott’s Theory; William Meyer, Duke University and past-president of the NMCOP; Gerry Schamess, Smith College School for Social Work; Jane Pettit, a supervisee of Clare Winnicott, and Martha Chescheir, a faculty member at the Clinical Social Work Institute and the Washington School of Psychiatry..
The Facilitating Environment was co-sponsored by the International Institute for Object Relations Therapy (IIORT) and the Clinical Social Work Institute. Plenary sessions with a historical focus, as well as breakout sessions addressing such contemporary topics as corrections, gender confusion, cross-cultural treatment, group treatment of adolescent mothers, and case management of severe mental illness, were featured. The day concluded with a panel discussion of personal reminiscences about the Winnicotts.
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RESOURCE LIST
Works relating to D.W. and Clare Winnicott
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INTERNET RESOURCES RELATING TO D.W. and Clare Winnicott
Audio clip of D.W. Winnicott: http://www.app-nhs.org.uk/
Holmes, Jeremy: Foreword to Face to Face with Children: The Life and Work of Clare Winnicott: http://www.psychanalyse.lu/articles/CR-Holmes_Kanter.htm
Kanter, Joel: The Untold Story of Clare and Donald Winnicott: How Social Work Influenced Modern Psychoanalysis: http://www.psychanalyse.lu/articles/KanterUntoldStory.htm
Kanter, Joel: Community-Based Management of Psychotic Clients: The Contributions of DW and Clare Winnicott: http://www.psychanalyse.lu/articles/KanterManagement.htm
Kanter, Joel: Therapeutic Change in Everyday Life: A Unique Challenge for Social Work:
http://psychematters.com/papers/kanter.htm
Kanter, Joel: Beyond Psychotherapy: Therapeutic Relationships in Community Care:
http://psychematters.com/papers/kanter.htm
King, Pearl: Reflections on Clare Winnicott: http://www.psychanalyse.lu/articles/CR-KingClareWinnicott.htm
Ogden, Thomas. “Reading Winnicott”: http://www.psychematters.com/papers/ogden2.htm
Szollosy, Michael. Winnicott’s Potential Spaces: Using Psychoanalytic Theory to Redress the Crises of Postmodern Culture: http://www.psychematters.com/papers/szollosy.htm
Winnicott, Clare. Communicating with Children: http://www.psychanalyse.lu/articles/CWinnicottCommunicatingChildren.htm
D.W. Winnicott Webpage: http://www.mythosandlogos.com/Winnicott.html
D.W. Winnicott Bibliography and Links: http://psychematters.com/bibliographies/winnicott.htm
Squiggle Foundation: http://www.squiggle-foundation.org.uk/
Winnicott Listserve: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/winnicott/join
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D.W. Winnicott's advice to social workers
In an address to social workers, D. W. Winnicott offered his listing of the essential tasks for social workers treating clients with severe mental illnesses:
- You apply yourself to the case.
- You get to know what it feels like to be your client.
- You become reliable for the limited field of your professional responsibility.
- You behave yourself professionally.
- You concern yourself with your client's problems.
- You accept being in the position of a subjective object in the client's life, while at the same time you keep both feet on the ground.
- You accept love, and even the in-love state, without flinching and without
acting-out your response.- You accept hate and meet it with strength rather than with revenge.
- You tolerate your client's illogicality, unreliability, suspicion, muddle, fecklessness, meanness, etc. etc., and recognize all these unpleasantness as symptoms of distress.
(In private life these same things would make you keep at a distance.)- You are not frightened, nor do you become overcome with guilt-feelings when your client goes mad, disintegrates, runs out in the street in a nightdress, attempts suicide and perhaps succeeds. If murder threatens you call in the police to help not only yourself but also your client.
- In all these emergencies you recognize the client's call for help, or a cry of despair because of loss of hope of help. In all these respects you are, in your... professional area, a person deeply involved in feeling, yet at the same time detached in that you know that you have no responsibility for the fact of you client's illness, and you know the limits of your powers to alter a crisis situation. If you can hold the situation together the possibility is that the crisis will resolve itself, and then it will be because of you that a result is achieved (p. 229).
Citation: Winnicott, D. W. (1963b). The mentally ill in your caseload. Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International Universities Press, 1965.