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In the preface to his eloquent biography of Donald Woods Winnicott, Kahr writes, “Within the intimate science of psychoanalysis, the theoretical ideas of our foremothers and forefathers cannot be separated from their own personal histories, and this certainly holds true in Winnicott's case” (xxix).
Kahr suggests the autobiographical link to theoretical and clinical creations is found where inner subjectivity and outer experience meet. He takes on the complex task of conveying Winnicott's independence of character and originality of thought as emanating from his own biography and the historical milieu. The book is presented as an abbreviated and preliminary version, following the odyssey of a gifted and creative psychoanalyst. The writing parallels the elegant, complex, straightforward and often deceptively simple words of Winnicott. The fundamental dialectic between the self and the other, the known and the unknown unfold in the biography.
Donald Winnicott, born April 7, 1896, was enveloped in a household that included his parents, two older sisters, an aunt, his nanny, a governess, a cook, and several maids. Kahr emphasizes all Winnicott's “mothers” who provided the playful, enriched holding environment, and the continuity and stability. His childhood home in Plymouth remained unchanged throughout his life, and he returned to it to capture his own history. Kahr alludes to the physical absence of Winnicott's father and his need to enliven and replenish an emotionally depleted and depressed mother Winnicott's close and sustaining relationship with his nanny Allie is briefly noted. His dedication and interest in her well-being until her death is remarkable but not highlighted. In this biography, it is Winnicott's biological mother who is emotionally absent. What seems to be present are profound and affectively laden recollections of involvement with his father despite his relative absence and neglect.
There is a stream of evidence, which is somewhat fragmented, in Kahr's