Why read the biography of a psychoanalyst? Theoretical innovators generally like to present their new ideas as having arisen purely out of clinical necessity, out of the need to improvise new ways of understanding and treating patients who seemed unanalyzable under the existing paradigm. But biography can illuminate other sides of what fuels creative innovation, putting the work into its historical, cultural, and personal context. In this unusually clear and well-written biography of D.W. Winnicott, F. Robert Rodman presents a compelling example of how an analyst's ongoing struggle with his own unresolved issues fueled both his theoretical innovations and his capacity to empathize with a broad variety of difficult patients. At the same time, the author masterfully recreates the cultural milieu of mid-century British psychoanalysis in which Winnicott lived and his ideas were formed.

Although Winnicott was raised in a superficially happy and intact family, Rodman suggests that happiness was founded on severe strictures on any disruptive