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It is good to see a study of Winnicott taking its rightful place in the fine Modern Masters Series, which Fontana have been producing under the editorship of Frank Kermode for a quarter of a century. Their aim is to acquaint an intelligent but non-specialist readership with the basic thinking and outlook of the key figures in the development of 20th Century philosophical and psychological thought. Winnicott's inclusion in the series is a testimony to the growing recognition of his importance not only as a clinician and psychoanalyst, but also as contributor to the philosophy of developmental psychology. Good, too, to see a member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists as the author of this study. Adam Phillips has done an excellent job of intelligent, critical exposition, working within the fairly exacting limits of space that seem to be placed on contributors to this series.
His achievement is the more remarkable in that Winnicott's writings are far from easy to condense, for all their frequent over-lapping of themes and occasional diffuseness. His ideas seemed to grow as if from a creative interaction of his whole self, all his sensitivity and intellect, with the diverse worlds of adult analytic patients, ordinary mothers with their toddlers, the deprived