Donald Winnicott – The Capacity for Concern
Ethics as the Foundation of Metamodern Psychoanalysis
Vladimir Nemet
Introduction: Trauma as an Unspeakable Ethical Disappointment
Psychological problems are often understood as the consequences of psychological trauma. Following a traumatic experience a person develops various ways of preventing the trauma from recurring. Psychological defenses and resistances emerge in an attempt to protect the person from a world experienced as “unreliable”.
But what exactly is psychological trauma? What makes a disappointment traumatic?
In this article, I interpret trauma as a form of disappointment in which we experience the world as indifferent to us. Whether the disappointment concerns our parents, friends, or partners, or arises from illness, a traffic accident, or a natural disaster, such experiences evoke a similar existential feeling. It is as though the world were telling us: You do not matter to me. I do not care about you.
This brings the phenomenon of care to the center of our understanding of psychological suffering. From childhood to death, one of our fundamental human needs is to have someone care for us. The sudden realization that no one truly cares can be unbearable. Yet our need to care for someone else is equally important. Human beings do not merely need to be loved, accepted, or recognized. We also need someone to become important to us, someone whose well-being awakens a sense of responsibility and a desire to act on their behalf.
The mere presence of a Thou is not enough. We are engaged in an eternal search for the Great Thou.
Trauma does not begin when the world hurts us, but when we lose faith that we matter enough for anyone to care about us.
This understanding of trauma leads to a broader question: what role does care play in the formation of human personality? To explore this question, I turn to Donald Winnicott’s concept of the capacity for concern and reconsider it from the perspective of the theory of parallel identities and metamodern psychoanalysis.
Metamodern Psychoanalysis
Metamodernism seeks to reestablish the significance of a world whose meaning was called into question by postmodern deconstruction. This does not mean a simple return to traditional values or an attempt to restore a single, unquestionable authority. Postmodern deconstruction sought to demonstrate that our grand narratives are historically conditioned, unstable, and subject to relations of power.
Contrary to that in metamodernism the metanarratives of the Great I and the Great Thou emerge once again.
We may ask: what actually gives them their greatness and significance? The answer is: their potential for care!
If we examine the virtues of the great individuals who have served as our historical verticals, we find that their greatness has often included an ethical dimension: a concern for the Other that precedes, or gives meaning to, their strength, knowledge, or beauty.
Metamodernism thus reestablishes the verticals of the Great I and the Great Thou, but their greatness is no longer measured primarily by power or knowledge. It is measured by their capacity to care for the Other—that is, by their ethics.
Parallel Identities
While metamodernism seeks to reestablish the significance of the Great I and the Great Thou, the theory of parallel identities elaborates the internal dynamics of their relationship.
It begins with the assumption that human personality is shaped by two fundamental perspectives, the Great I and the Great Thou, which cannot be reduced to one another or ultimately united into a third, all-encompassing position. The rapid alternation between these two perspectives over time gives rise to what we call human consciousness or personality.
Nevertheless, the Great I and the Great Thou remain separate yet interconnected verticals. Their difference is not an obstacle to be eliminated in order to achieve psychological maturity. On the contrary, the capacity to tolerate this difference is one of the conditions for a mature relationship with oneself and the Other.
Care is one of the ways in which this relationship comes to life. Through care, the Great I and the Great Thou become more than abstract ideas: they become living dimensions of our experience.
This is also where the question of trauma acquires a deeper significance. If our sense of self is shaped through the relationship between the I and the Thou, then the failure of care can threaten not only our trust in the world but also our experience of our own significance within it. Conversely, the possibility of caring for another person can restore a sense of meaning that cannot be achieved through self-affirmation alone.
Donald Winnicott: The Development of the Capacity for Concern
Winnicott’s 1963 paper “The Development of the Capacity for Concern” represents an important psychoanalytic attempt to understand human development not merely in terms of identity, self-esteem, or the capacity to love, but also in terms of the capacity to genuinely care about another human being. His contribution is particularly evident in the way he connects love, aggression, and responsibility.
Like Melanie Klein, Winnicott recognizes that a child can experience love and aggression toward the same person. Initially, however, the child struggles to bring these feelings together. The person the child loves and the person toward whom destructive fantasies are directed have not yet been fully integrated into a single experience. This separation is described through the psychoanalytic concept of splitting.
As the capacity for concern develops, the child gradually recognizes that the person toward whom they feel aggression is the same person on whom they depend and whom they love. The mother is no longer merely a source of gratification or an object toward which aggressive impulses are directed. She becomes a person whose well-being matters to the child.
The child thus begins to recognize that their feelings and actions have consequences for the Other. From this recognition emerge a sense of responsibility, guilt, and the desire to repair the damage.
Unlike Melanie Klein, Winnicott places particular emphasis on the mother’s personhood, as well as her capacity to survive the child’s aggressive fantasies and provide an experience of a relationship that is not destroyed by the child’s aggression. The child gradually discovers that the person they love can withstand their destructive impulses and that the relationship can continue to exist despite them.
Winnicott thus introduces an important developmental idea: maturity is not merely the capacity to love the Other, but also the capacity to recognize the Other’s vulnerability, to care about them, and to accept responsibility for the consequences of one’s own actions. Such maturity also preserves the profound significance of the other person, the parent, and the world.
From this perspective, I regard Winnicott as an important precursor of metamodernism.
Winnicott recognized the capacity for concern as a foundation of human maturity. Metamodern psychoanalysis takes this insight further by understanding care as the beginning of the Other’s ascent toward an ethical vertical—the Great Thou.
A Critique of Winnicott: Care as an Innate Potential
For Winnicott, the capacity for concern develops through the child’s relationship with the mother, the gradual integration of love and aggression, and the emergence of responsibility. It is a developmental achievement shaped by the quality of early relationships.
I propose a different emphasis. Care is an innate human potential whose realization depends on our encounter with the Other. This does not mean that a mature capacity for care is fully developed at birth. Rather, the possibility of an ethical relationship is not merely the final product of a successfully integrated personality. It is a potential that comes to fruition in the encounter with the Other..
This distinction also changes the way I understand psychological splitting.
The splitting described by Klein and Winnicott primarily concerns the child’s difficulty in integrating love and aggression toward the same person. From the perspective of the theory of parallel identities, however, the fundamental split lies not only within the individual, between different feelings and impulses, but also between the I and the Thou—that is, between the Great I and the Great Thou.
These two verticals are not simply opposites, nor does their difference necessarily constitute a conflict. Their relationship creates a paradox that cannot be finally resolved. This is the distinction between conflict and paradox: a conflict can, in principle, be resolved, whereas a paradox generates a lasting tension that must be endured.
In this case, the paradox is: How can I preserve my own ethical worth while simultaneously recognizing the irreducible ethical worth of the Other?
If I conclude that there is nothing good in other people, that everyone is selfish, manipulative, or incapable of genuine care, I can preserve the conviction that my own perspective is the only ethically valuable one. I no longer have to endure the tension between the Great I and the Great Thou. But the price of this defense is extraordinarily high. The world loses its ethical vertical, and relationships become arenas of struggle, disappointment, and mutual devaluation. A person may thereby protect themselves from vulnerability while simultaneously losing the possibility of allowing the Other to truly matter to them.
From this perspective, care is not something that personality must first develop before it can enter into an ethical relationship. It is a potential that awaits an encounter with the Other in order to become real.
Metamodern Psychoanalysis: Mutual Care
The preceding argument leads to the central proposition of metamodern psychoanalysis: the two fundamental verticals of human existence, the Great I and the Great Thou, must be brought into a living relationship through mutual care.
In the psychoanalytic relationship, this means that the analyst helps the client not only by understanding them, accepting them, or enabling them to develop a more stable sense of self. The analyst also offers an experience of a relationship in which care and ethics are not merely subjects of conversation, but living possibilities of human encounter.
Such a relationship does not require the analyst to be perfect, never make mistakes, or always know what is best for the client. The analyst’s ethical value lies not in infallibility, but in how they respond to the client’s vulnerability, difference, and autonomy. The client can gradually experience being important to someone without having to become an extension of that person. They can experience care that does not demand submission, gratitude, or the renunciation of their own perspective.
Yet the therapeutic relationship does not end with the client learning to receive care. Another essential dimension is the development of the capacity to care for the Other without losing oneself. The client gradually discovers their own potential to care about the analyst’s well-being, even though such a possibility may have been unimaginable to them at the beginning of the analysis.
The movement is therefore reciprocal. The analyst’s care creates the possibility for the client to experience the Other as ethically significant. Over time, the client may discover that the analyst is not merely someone who provides care, but someone whose well-being can also matter to them. The relationship becomes a space in which both the Great I and the Great Thou can emerge through care without being reduced to one another.
This is why I do not regard care merely as a characteristic of a mature personality. Care is one of the ways in which personality itself comes into being. Human beings do not first complete their development and only then begin to care for others. Care is not merely something that happens between two people. It is what enables them to become who they are.
In short:
I care, therefore I am.
In the continuous movement between the Great I and the Great Thou, caring for the Other becomes a path toward what we could never become on our own.
