Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

I have read with much appreciation the recent book review of Winnicott’s Collected Works by Rachel Chaplin, (IJP, 2018, 99: 765–769). His many papers and letters, published and unpublished, have found safe harbour in this act of international scholarship, and the reviewer is to be congratulated for a marvellous compression of its many features, not the least of which is a completely digitized reference volume, where analysts and scholars can look up any topic or colleague whose work Winnicott ever wrote about.

Of course, and of necessity, much material has received scant attention in Chaplin’s review; and I here call particular attention to the many “Introductions” that begin each of the 12 volumes, which in themselves, give us an up-to-date opportunity to both review and debate various facets of current Winnicott scholarship. He appeared to be on a truly ecumenical search for psychoanalytic truth aptly represented by the many contemporary colleagues with whose work he interacted. Caldwell and Joyce (2011) have called attention to the many analytic theorists with whom Winnicott sought generative dialogue—from Jacques Lacan, Michael Fordham, (the London Jungian), Michael Balint, and of course, Melanie Klein herself and members of her London group.

In many ways, Winnicott’s multi-layered relationship to Klein—for many years as supporter before he turned away from her views—continues to be a controversial area for debate. And as a result, I found it interesting to read what the various analytic commentators had to say about this relationship; so, I set out to read what might be new, additive or debatable about what we already know about his long-term collaboration with Klein, (which lasted from 1935 to 1951) and how we might now understand what new light the new documents in these Collected Works might shed.

Right from the start, when his analyst of the 1920s, James Strachey relayed that if Winnicott wanted to learn something of child analysis, he needed to co