Stewie, Meet Dr. Winnicott

In his 1949 paper, “Hate in the Counter-Transference” D.W. Winnicott, a British pediatrician and psychoanalyst describes the love-hate relationship a mother has for her infant baby. He outlined several reasons why a mother would harbor such harsh feelings towards her baby and some of his reasons are highlighted as follows:

“The baby is an interference with her private life, a challenge to preoccupation.”
“He is ruthless, treats her as scum, an unpaid servant, a slave.”
“She has to love him, excretions and all, at any rate at the beginning, till he has doubts about himself.”
“He tries to hurt her, periodically bites her, all in love.”
“He shows disillusionment about her.”
“His excited love is cupboard love, so that having got what he wants he throws her away like orange peel.”
“At first he does not know at all what she does or what she sacrifices for him.”
“He is suspicious, refuses her good food, and makes her doubt herself, but eats well with his aunt.”
“After an awful morning with him she goes out, and he smiles at a stranger, who says ‘Isn’t he sweet!’”

When I first read Winnicott’s paper for a psychoanalytic study group, I thought that this guy must be joking or off his rocker.  Although I thought his reasons why a mother would hate her baby were hilarious and disturbing, I as a mother, reluctantly admit there was a grain of truth in them.  I commented to my study group that Winnicott has accurately described 50 years early, a cartoon character called Stewie on the TV show Family Guy.

Stewie is the sophisticated, intelligent, and mischievous to a sociopathic extent two-year old infant son of Peter and Lois Griffin and who was for a time being, preoccupied with matricide.  Few episodes show him fantasizing of killing his mother and vice-versa, and his anger at his mother for deciding to wean him off from breastfeeding. He makes many derogatory comments about his family in their presence, especially to his mother.

Let’s imagine Winnicott is still alive today and that Stewie is a real live person.  His mother, Lois is frustrated and has had it with Stewie, and decides to take him for professional mental help.  Winnicott accepts to treat Stewie.  Winnicott is no stranger to children like Stewie.  In fact, he altruistically on his wife’s behest, took in a young orphan boy in his home for three months, “three months of hell” as he said.  Winnicott described the boy as “the most loveable and most maddening of children.”  On several occasions when the boy misbehaved, Winnicott went as far as to shut the boy out of the house and at the same time telling the boy what happened made Winnicott hate him.  Winnicott learned from fathering the boy to be able to tolerate his own hatred towards the boy without losing his temper and murdering him.  The boy ended up doing well, attended a prestigious school.

Winnicott’s goal when working with a child like Stewie is not to make him well behaved and loveable, but to help Lois tolerate her hate towards Stewie, not express her hate to him as harm, and to be patient with hers and his hate towards each other.  As a result of better tolerating and understanding her hate towards her baby, Lois would then be free to love Stewie.  Stewie, in return would then feel loved by Lois.