Winnicott in Topeka: Ego Psychology, American Culture, and Object Relations

D. W. Winnicott (1963c) presented “The Development of the Capacity for Concern” at the Topeka Psychoanalytic Society on October 12, 1962.1 The Topeka Society was closely tied to the Menninger Clinics. “Menninger” was the leading psychiatric and psychoanalytic center in the U.S., at a time when analysis was the dominant force on the American mental health scene and prominent in popular culture. Its leaders, Karl and Will Menninger, were the best-known psychiatrists in the nation. The multidisciplinary program included extensive inpatient and outpatient treatment facilities for both adults and children, and large training and research programs. It was also one of the most active centers for the development of ego psychology, which had become the hegemonic orientation in North American analysis. In retrospect, the discussions of Winnicott's paper at the Topeka Society, by Robert Wallerstein (1962) and H. G. van der Waals (1962), reflect the ambition, promise, and limitations of that paradigm and its complex relations with the British object relations schools. I have obtained the text of van der Waals's