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Healthy Life: Care, Cura and Flourishing

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Donald Winnicott and the Politics of Care

Part of the book series: Studies in the Psychosocial ((STIP))

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Abstract

This chapter provides an account of the centrality of care in Winnicott’s conception of flourishing. Locating Winnicott’s perspective, and psychoanalysis more broadly, in relation to philosophical understandings of flourishing originating in ancient Greece, the chapter draws attention to the relationship between the experience of being cared for and the development of specific capacities, including the capacity to care, in Winnicott’s account. The chapter also considers the implications of Winnicott’s perception of the interrelation of care and capacities for understanding the relationship between flourishing and society.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Incidentally, recent translators, Smith and Trazaskoma, offer a different reading, translating “cura” as “worry.” On their reading, the myth is a playful take on human foibles. In short, the human life is characterised by worry and then death (Apollodorus and Hyginus 2007, 166–67). Smith and Trazaskoma do not note the dual meaning of care, as both solicitude and worry, unlike Reich.

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  1. School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

    Joanna Kellond

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Kellond, J. (2022). Healthy Life: Care, Cura and Flourishing. In: Donald Winnicott and the Politics of Care. Studies in the Psychosocial. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91437-0_2

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