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Newman's book is built around key words from Winnicott's work. Entries stretch alphabetically from Absolute Dependence to Worst (Not being Seen or Heard is the Worst that Can Happen). They consist of quotations, many of them substantial, from Winnicott, woven together with Newman's own commentary and clinical illustrations. Some entries are quite short, others longer; others are followed by extensions which Newman calls ‘Elaborations’. Each quotation ends with an extremely detailed and useful list of references to the word/concept in Winnicott's writings.
The ‘critical dictionary’ format has become a familiar one to us in our field but, Newman stresses, this book is not that: it is offered, rather, as a kind of ‘portable’ Winnicott - first and foremost a compilation of selected quotations and extracts designed to excite people into reading texts. It is also a celebration of the power of Winnicott's ideas.
The basis of the book is material generated for, and by, regular series of lectures and seminars given by Newman over more than 20 years, beginning soon after Winnicott's death. (Newman was founder of what was later to be christened - at Clare Winnicott's wish - the Squiggle Foundation.) There can be no doubt, from the book, that Newman knows his Winnicott inside out, and is still full of curiosity about his ideas as well as a kind of awe at their power and originality.
Newman sets out to redress what he feels to be some important imbalances in our knowledge of Winnicott's work. Firstly, it is his contention that Winnicott has not actually been widely read: his quiet voice has been drowned out by ‘ambitious and louder mouths insistently intent not only on founding schools and indoctrinating followers, but hell-bent on such strife that little else could be heard above the clamour’ (p. 7). (Newman rarely misses a chance to get in a dig, on Winnicott's behalf, at Klein and her followers.) We remember Masud Khan's observation that it was Winnicott's fate to be ‘politely d