D.W. Winnicott, Julian of Norwich, and the Good-Enough Mother/Mystic

By Hannah Lucas

American Imago, Volume 81, Number 3, Fall 2024, pp. 401-428

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press: https://doi.org/10.1353/aim.2024.a940329

This new article examines the theological resonances in D. W. Winnicott’s theory of motherhood and infant development, bringing to light possible inheritances from the medieval mystical tradition. Considered against Winnicott’s own Wesleyan upbringing and later conversion to Anglicanism, a close reading of his personal writings reveals a personal identification with the Christ-figure and evidence of medievalism in his work that has not been previously recognized. The discussion then compares Winnicott’s paradigm of the “good-enough mother” with the language of maternal “enoughness” in the Revelations of fourteenth-century theologian, Julian of Norwich. This comparison uncovers a shared preoccupation with maternal love and sustained devotional practice, and what I call Julian’s “ordinary-language theology” is put forward as a potential precedent for what Adam Phillips has termed Winnicott’s “ordinary-language psychoanalysis.”

Hannah Lucas is the Newby Trust Research Fellow at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Her research lies at the intersection of literary history, the medical humanities, theology, and philosophy—focused on medieval contemplative texts, and the relationship between the medieval and the modern.