A book by Roland Barthes.

First impressions

Barthes obliquely refers to Winnicott's "Fear of Breakdown": fearing a catastrophe that has already occurred. This in its way is the story of Oedipus, his own moment of recognition.

Cf. Recognizing the Stranger: “Oedipus is the criminal he seeks.”

For Barthes, the fear he experiences is in a dream of his mother dying, in agony. His mother is dead; he writes that his fear is of a catastrophe that has occurred.

The key thing in Winnicott, though, is that the fear the patient experiences is of a thing that happened, but not to the patient—because there was no patient at the time for it to happen to. This is clearly not the case for Barthes.

Backlinks

The following pages link to this page:

• Recognizing the Stranger
• Roland Barthes
• The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious