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In their lucid introduction the editors suggest that, warts and all, D. W. Winnicott has much to offer the practising clinician—especially those working with more disturbed patients. The warts are approached non-defensively. As the editors point out, Winnicott's writings could be maddeningly elusive, while his appreciation for the importance of the early mother-child relationship lends itself to a kind of naive romanticism. Yet the editors clearly believe that Winnicott offers a unique developmental perspective that has led to the understanding of certain clinical phenomena in new and useful ways. Reading a heretofore unpublished article by Winnicott (from 1968) in this volume gives one a sense of what the editors are describing. Winnicott starts this article with a number of insightful comments on the nature of nonverbal communication, along with a description of a subtle clinical interaction with a silent patient. While one is intrigued and stimulated by Winnicott's ideas, there is also a good deal of frustration. Thoughts never seem to be brought to conclusions, other ideas suddenly intervene, and one is left with a fragmented picture. At times one gets the impression that Winnicott's manner of writing was based upon his view of the necessity for an absence of definitive boundaries for the creative process to occur. In this sense, his work seems to have been designed to stimulate others rather than claim the correctness of his own views.
This book stresses the importance Winnicott placed on the mother-infant/mother-child dyad for the development of the self, and all the contributions speak to this issue in the context of clinical work. The editors believe that the clinical relevance of Winnicott's contributions has been neglected, especially in the United States, and it is the task of righting this wrong they set for themselves. The material in the book is organized around four sections. The first section compares Winnicott's work to other psychoanalyt