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In Volume 4, covering the years 1952-1955, we can see packed into a very brief and fast-moving time a Winnicott increasingly reaching into very deep clinical spaces and theorizing with confidence. No wonder, then, that Dominique Scarfone (as the editor of this volume) and Ofra Eshel (as the reviewer) propose that we read Winnicott slowly. As we track this unfolding career, we see exactly how Winnicott's deep, careful observation—as he moves from pediatrics to psychoanalysis—gives him an astonishingly rich base on which to work and think about psychotic process and the necessary, yet fraught, work of regression.
Eshel makes a clear case for the revolutionary aspects of Winnicott's work on regression, both in its links to earliest forms of subjectivity (and the potential for catastrophic early damage) and the clinical transformations in the analyst that will facilitate growth and developmental transformation in the analysand. Creatively bringing new material to illuminate this process, Eshel allows us to experience the potency of regression along with the dreadful and dangerous path the analyst must tread alone in another person's night.
What Eshel terms Winnicott's “radical evolution” during these furiously productive years applies both to his theoretical work and to his sense of his own accomplishments. In stressing the burden and necessity of engaging patients' regressions, Winnicott repeatedly suggests the personal transformations that occur in the analyst that are inspired by those engagements. Perhaps in unfreezing the “failure situation” in his patients, Winnicott himself finally entered a space where he could sustain his deep love for Freud while simultaneously acknowledging his own difference and originality. The urgency, authenticity, and confidence that radiate from the papers in this volume indeed reflect this transformation.
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