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This slender volume tells the story of Donald W. Winnicott (1896-1971), who quietly influenced psychoanalytic theory and practice when alive and will probably continue to do so although now dead for some 20 years. The author of the book, the late Simon Grolnick, was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst; he had had a long-time interest in Winnicott, and was chairman of the Winnicott Committee supervising the Winnicott Archives in the Oscar Diethelm History of Psychiatry Library at the Payne Whitney Psychiatry Hospital at Cornell University Medical School.
In a short biography Grolnick describes Winnicott's family as a comfortable one, economically and socially, living in a pleasant English town. Winnicott was the third child with two older sisters. He decided early to become a doctor, and had entered Cambridge University for medical studies when the First World War broke out. Although deferred as a medical student, he joined the navy and served as a medical orderly. When the war ended he finished his studies and began practicing as a pediatrician.
Winnicott was interested in dreams and in the behavior of children, but it was not known what other factors may have led him, in 1923, to enter analysis with James Strachey, who was already known as the translator of Freud's books. The analysis lasted 10 years, followed by a control supervision with Melanie Klein and a shorter analysis with Joan Riviere. Klein and Riviere were not physicians and were among the first early lay analysts, which was also the case with Strachey, who never completed his medical training.
At this time there were already disagreements between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein as regards the theory and practice of child analysis. Grolnick brings together others then on the psychoanalytic scene as background for Winnicott. Grolnick is not only a faithful reteller of Winnicott's contributions to psychoanalysis, but also his clarifier.
Winnicott was not happy with his own analyses, although he admitted he had learn