Winnicott and Arendt: bridging potential and political spaces

In this article, the author seeks to bridge analytic theory, which is used as an interpretive framework to understand patients' psychic lives, and political philosophy, which accounts for individuals living a life in common as citizens. Specifically, I address how we can understand the relation between the psychosocial space of a parent(s) and child interaction, which becomes part of the child's psychic life, and the political space between and within citizens. The underlying claim is that there is a correlation between political space and the space between parent and child. I use an emended version of Donald Winnicott's concept of potential space and political philosopher Hannah Arendt's notion of the space of appearances to suggest connections between the consulting room and political space.