Winnie the Pooh

This is a piece about Winnie the Pooh who lived in the 100 Acre Wood where he had lots of friends.: Christopher Robin, Owl, Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore. Kanga and Rabbit. (Have I forgotten anybody?) When they got in a muddle he helped them out and when he got in a muddle, they helped him out. And he needed his friends just as much as they needed him. Which is how all good friendships work.

I want to spend some time getting to know this group of friends and see what we can make of them. Starting with where they live would be a good idea. The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott observed that “home is where we start from.” So, home for this group is the 100 acre wood. Woods are important places. They represent stability and protection. We all love walking through woods.

But there is also a darker side to woods. Things are killed in woods. Owls, foxes and badgers kill other creatures in order to survive. Along with “All things bright and beautiful” nature is also “red in tooth and claw.” The 100 acre wood will have been no different. And whilst nobody physically dies in Winnie the Pooh, the emotions are there. A depressive Eeyore has to live with the manic Tigger. The young and feckless Roo has to live alongside the elder statesman Owl. As with any family, conflict was unavoidable, and necessary. Much as Tigger would have exasperated Eeyore, the former’s optimism would have offered Eeyore the possibility of Hope. Reciprocally we might think that Tigger could learn that quietness need not always be feared. So the home of 100 Acre Wood was a containing place that could hold both light and shadow. Which is probably as good a definition of “home” as we will come across.

Having looked at the context for the story, it might be interesting to look at some of the characters. My own favourite is the lugubrious Eeyore. He isn’t going to be fooled into thinking that everything is automatically and necessarily going to work out well. This way he can’t be hurt when people let him down. In one of the stories, his house is blown away. He always knew this would happen. Didn’t it always? Yet despite himself, his friends always help him out. Most infuriating. It is as if someone had offered Diogenes a proper home.

Then comes Tigger, ostensibly Eeyore’s polar opposite. Tigger always seems to land on his feet- all four at once. And just as often treads on someone else’s feet in the process. At first sight, he has nothing in common with Eeyore. On a close look, however, he uses bouncing in the same way that Eeyore uses melancholia. Tigger just uses a manic defence to keep at bay his existential anxieties. They are much more alike than either of them might want to admit!

At this point it is worth considering the 100 Acre Wood so that it tells us something about ourselves. “To make conscious the unconscious” as Freud put it. We all have our Tigger moments and our Eeyore moments. We also have our Piglet moments and so on. Depending on many factors we will all have a dominant personality trait. We may be more prone to an Eeyorish depression; a Tiggerish mania or a Rooish dependency. The process of emotional growth is the work of integrating these parts of ourselves in the same way that families have to accommodate children with their differences but who are still part of one family – hard though that is to comprehend at times!

To finish I want to suggest that all these characters reflect Christopher Robin’s inner world. And these in turn all reflect A. A. Milne’s inner world, and ours. In psychoanalytic language they are internal objects and part objects. Or “bits of ourselves” to put it more colloquially. So, when we read Winnie the Pooh we are reading both backwards and forwards. We are reading “forwards” in that we can look at the inner worlds of the characters in the stories. how they relate to each other, their world, themselves. Then we can look “backwards” to Christopher Robin and his world. Then we can look at the world of A. A. Milne and his hopes and dreams. Which begins to make a complex picture seemingly a long way from the simplicity of the 100 Acre Wood. Yet as counsellors and therapists we do this work all the time. Our patients bring themselves to therapy. But they also bring their partners, children, work, friends etc., as well as their relationship with us and all that represents. It is a sort of 3D chess game. It is this dynamic that makes the work so rich and rewarding. Mostly! (Occasionally also deeply frustrating and confusing.)

Let me leave the last word to Winnie the Pooh who would have made a very good therapist. He observed “I am not lost for I know where I am. But, however, where I am may be lost”.

Filed under: Counselling , Dreams , Hope , Mindfullness , Narratives , Psychoanalysis , Psychotherapy , Reflective Practice , Religion , The Inner World , Ways of Being Tagged: 100 Acre Wood , Christopher Robin , Kanga , Owl , Piglet , Roo , Tigger , Winnie the Pooh