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A quick glance at the first page of the largest psychoanalytical literature database, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEP-Web), reveals something interesting: on the list of the most read papers are, from first to third, Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena, Hate in the Counter-transference, and The Theory of Parent-Infant Relationship. All can now be considered classics written by Donald Woods Winnicott, who is also listed in the ninth position, with Fear of Breakdown.
Many hypotheses can help us understand the long-lasting predominance of the main representative of the British middle-group of psychoanalysts. It is safe to say that Winnicott's ideas regarding subjective development, the role of maternal care, the nature and function of transitional objects and potential space, false and true selves, among many others, are anything but dated. Their clinical significance seems to be both well settled and unquestionably expanding. Like most pioneer psychoanalysts, moreover, Winnicott's range of interests was not restricted only to the therapeutic features of the Freudian discovery. Especially in his later years, he was inclined to apply his insights on human development, relationships, and subjectivity to a field that can loosely be termed “political.”
However, Winnicott's explicit and potential contributions for political reflection have mostly been underappreciated, deemed either too naïve or obscured by an unappealing optimism. So, despite its ouverture character, the volume organized by Matthew Bowker and Amy Buzby, Donald Winnicott and Political Theory: Recentering the Subject, seems to be a strong push in the direction of what David McIvor calls in the book a “Winnicottian turn in contemporary political theory” (p. 208), a movement that seems to be already happening. We can see clearly in the Introduction a polemic emerging against a certain doxa that