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This book is in the New Library of Psychoanalysis Teaching Series and consists of 14 of Winnicott's key papers chosen to give an overall view of the development of his ideas and practice. However, the book should not just be judged on Winnicott, but more on the extensive and detailed editing by Lesley Caldwell and Angela Joyce, acknowledged academic and clinical experts on Winnicott.
The excellent introduction consists of a clear summary of the four main areas of Winnicott's work: the relational environment and the place of infant sexuality, aggression and destructiveness, illusion and transitional phenomena, and the theory and practice of psychoanalysis with adults and children. There are also biographical notes and sections on how Winnicott's work was influenced by Freud, Klein and others including short sections on Jung and Lacan. The links and differences between Winnicott and Klein are well dealt with here. At the beginning of the book there is also a chart with dates of papers and important events in his life. This chart makes clear the vast amount of writing Winnicott did, both to a psychoanalytic and a wider audience; no one has since come near him in his ability to put psychoanalysis before the public in such a convincing and appealing way.
At the beginning of each paper there is a box with details of other papers written by Winnicott around the same time and contemporary papers on similar subjects, which incidentally provides an interesting short history of psychoanalytic writing in Britain from the 1940s-1960s, and then an extensive introduction by the editors. At the end of most papers, including those written near the end of his life, is another small box that lists ideas that Winnicott was developing in the paper, helping the reader to bear in mind these developments in later papers. All this information provides a short but comprehensive description of Winnicott's life and work, contextualizing the papers chosen here. It must have been a hard choice lim