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Time, not our time, rings the bell: On D.W. Winnicott's Engagement with T.S. Eliot - Tobias Jenkins

D.W. Winnicott’s decision to title his unfinished autobiography, Not Less Than Everything (1971), after a line from T.S Eliot hints at the important influence the poet had on him. In this paper, I review Winnicott’s engagement with Eliot, beginning in his 1949 paper ‘Birth Memories, Birth Trauma and Anxiety,’ and consider the important role of Claire Winnicott and Masud Khan as mediators of the poet’s work for him. In particular, I demonstrate how the conception of temporality put forward in ‘Fear of Breakdown’ (1974) is indebted to the non-linear time of Eliot’s Four Quartets (1943), and argue that the Winnicottian unconscious might therefore be thought of as more Eliotic than Freudian. 

Tobias Jenkins completed an AHRC-funded doctorate at King's College London on W.R. Bion's engagement with literary modernism. He holds an MSc in Theoretical Psychoanalytical Studies (UCL) and works as an honorary psychotherapist at Camden Psychotherapy Unit (having previously held posts in West London NHS). He is the director of the Squiggle Foundation, a charity that promotes the work of D.W. Winnicott, and is currently researching the history of the British Independent Tradition. 

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