Editorial

The compilation of this issue has been inspired by the life and work of Donald Winnicott (DWW). The inspiration for this choice came from presentations at the Tavistock Relationships (TR) conference, “Winnicott and the Couple”, held in London on 11 November 2017. Couple and Family Psychoanalysis is delighted, through these pages, to have this opportunity to be part of the ongoing international conversation about the applications of Winnicott to couple and family psychotherapy that was given new impetus at that event.

For many practitioners, Winnicott's teaching has provided a trusted psychological home (recalling Home is Where We Start From (Winnicott, 1986)), if not a transitional object. It functions as a “good enough”, comforting known, even in the face of an unknown, or more Bionian, “nameless dread”, sometimes stirred up by the vicissitudes of practice. One notable benefit of a conference, and indeed of a journal or publication, is that participants and readers can use it to take a fresh look at a familiar object from a particular, perhaps unfamiliar, perspective. Winnicott's interest in our earliest dyadic (infant-mother) relationship has, of course, long been seminal for all who practice therapeutically from an object relations stance with those in troubled intimate relationships. The essential inter-dependency of close relationships and the holding environment created by the carer offer models of bonds that can be readily envisaged and translated. Might we therefore posit that in fact there is “no such thing” as a couple, there is always a couple and their relationship?

The articles in this issue are prefaced by a “Personal View” from the notable Winnicott scholar, Deborah Anna Luepnitz. In “Oedipus simplex: The British blind spot”, she urges us to read Freud more closely, and reminds us that, although extraordinarily perceptive, like his contemporaries Winnicott's view was also limited by blind spots towards sexuality.

We are fortunate that all three key speak