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There are no unexpected choices in this judicious selection of seminal papers, except perhaps for the inclusion of A clinical study of the effect of a failure of the average expectable environment on a child's mental functioning . The paper, which on the editors' own reckoning is little read, gives an account of a therapeutic consultation with a 6 year-old boy. We are prompted to ask why a paper that is not much read finds its way into an introductory reader where there is an obvious premium on space. The question of inclusion, however, turns out to be more interesting than a quibble over a hierarchy of preferences. It is not simply a matter of drawing attention to a less prominent paper, either. While not on a par with some of the other papers in the collection, nonetheless, Winnicott's consultation with the child foregrounds the different horizons of meaning in his clinical thinking. As with The Piggle (1977), and not only because they both comprise case material, it is a paper in which what is said is what is happening. We find Winnicott here doing all he knew how to do. More than anything else, this means allowing for the child to reach something of his own making, a reach for meaning out of himself. Getting to the heart of what these papers are about, the therapeutic consultation demonstrates that Winnicott was not interested in interpreting the drawings so much as understanding by drawing.
We are brought back in this case and by the commentaries on each of the 14 papers included in the book, to the historical conjuncture in which the papers were initially presented. Of course, the introductory notes to each of the papers do not amount to anything like the “scholarly history of Winnicott and the reception of his ideas in British psychoanalysis” that the editors call for in the conclusion to their general introduction. But the book certainly meets the requirements of the New Library of Psychoanalysis Teaching Series to provide a comprehensive yet accessible intro