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In this issue of JAPA Review of Books, we offer the seventh installment in a series on The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott, curated by guest editors Phillip Blumberg and Adrienne Harris. In a review essay on Volume 7 , titled “Winnicott at Work,” Glen Gabbard brings us a Winnicott who, despite feeling wounded and at times overlooked or misunderstood by his colleagues, nonetheless worked tirelessly to educate the public and—significantly—to provide space for listening. During this period, Winnicott enriched our understanding of some of his most enduring and impactful ideas, particularly of the importance of preserving silence, at times, for the gradual emergence of patients' capacity to “recognize who they are.” As Gabbard states, “We have learned from Winnicott to listen carefully to the patient's perspective and recognize that patients are attempting in their own way to let us know who they are.”
How do psychoanalytic concepts percolate into popular culture? Often their influence is pervasive but subtle; sometimes they are rendered as preposterous shadows of themselves. Occasionally, a psychoanalyst who is also a gifted writer—or a talented author with serious psychoanalytic chops—takes hold of a psychoanalytic concept and presents it in a way that captures the public imagination, helping others see the world through a psychoanalytic lens. In her book essay, Laura Whitman—a psychoanalyst who treats children, adolescents, and adults—looks at three works rooted in an essentially psychoanalytic view of development across the human lifespan. In The Rough Patch, Daphne de Marneffe combines her work as a couples therapist with her reading of psychoanalytic theory