DE LA GESTUL SPONTAN LA EXPERIENȚA CREATIVITĂȚII
FROM THE SPONTANEOUS GESTURE TO THE EXPERIENCE OF CREATIVITY

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims at giving a coherent interpretation of Winnicott’s concept of the „mirror-role of the mother’s face”. As we are going to try to demonstrate, following one of Winnicott’s letters to Klein, in order that a gesture, be it spontaneous or creative, could be met, it has to first of all be reflected by someone else, in this case, by the mother. Therefore, we are going to present, in a Heideggerian manner, a phenomenological analysis of gestures, as this is found in Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars, so that we can prove that gestures reflect a unified comportment, which in Winnicott’s words would mean the „true self”. Before analyzing Winnicott’s conception, we are going to turn towards some insights from Lacan’s mirror stage. We are also going to search for the relation between the true self and the spontaneous gesture in one of Winnicott’s earlier papers. The last chapter will consist of an analysis of Winnicott’s view on creativity, and as we want to demonstrate, creativity is possible only if the other person, namely alterity, validates, confirms, or recognizes the spontaneous gesture. Our main thesis is that if the mother meets the child’s spontaneous gesture, he or she is going to introject the mother’s image, which in effect, will give the child’s enough trust in the world, so that he or she will start to take a creative glance towards reality. We will focus especially on the situation in which the mother responds to the infant’s gesture by smiling.

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