Editorial

Recent issues of the Journal have focused on the work of Francis Tustin (August 1995), Anna Freud (December 1995) and Michael Fordham (April 1996). As a continuation of this endeavour to integrate the work of past great thinkers with present developments, we are very pleased to be able to publish this commemorative edition of the Journal to honour the centenary of the birth of Donald W. Winnicott.

Born on 7 April 1896, Donald Winnicott was a true pioneer in his work, rooted as it was in the National Health Service, and focusing principally on babies, young children and their mothers, and later older children when he became involved with the difficulties following the evacuation of young people during the Second World War. In his thinking, too, his pioneering spirit caused him to re-examine contemporary psychoanalytic concepts, to elaborate controversial new ideas and to offer creative lines of thought for the future. Winnicott did not found a training school, but he offered ways of thinking which were to pre-figure much of today's practice and research, giving us ideas which remain fresh, usable and exciting. In this edition we have been very struck by how the different authors have taken Winnicott's original thought and seemingly free associated to it, to develop their own thinking and practice.

Brett Kahr, who is currently writing a biography of Winnicott, sets him in his historical context, and gives many indications of the ways in which he was influential in the setting up of our profession, reviewing the major events of his prolific and productive life.

There follow two papers which demonstrate the lively and important research work which Winnicott's thinking inspired and continues to inspire. Judith Jackson's paper ‘An experimental investigation of Winnicott's set situation’ describes her research in South Africa with white, black and institutionalized infants. She showed the fruits of this research, undertaken in 1966, to Winnicott himself, and it is particularl