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As the title suggests, this book is a truly comprehensive treasure trove of Winnicottian concepts, which has been gathered together in an original and useful way. Jan Abram is ideally suited to offer a scholarly and pleasing work such as this, as she is the current Director of the Squiggle Foundation, the London-based organization which studies and cultivates the tradition of D.W. Winnicott.
In the preface, Abram explains the rationale and format of the book as follows:
The strong desire to make Winnicott's work more accessible resulted in my organisation of his themes into this lexicon of 22 words and phrases, which represent the major theories in Winnicott's work….
Page 143Each entry is a journey through his papers, spanning almost forty years, to illuminate the breadth and depth of the concepts as well as the substance and clarity of the theories. My aim has been to guide impartially, so that the reader may personally discover the intricate aspects of Winnicott's celebration of human creativity.
As a result, this book is not an ordinary dictionary. It is more of an exploration and each reader is likely to gather his or her own personal experience and knowledge of Winnicott's work in the process. In reviewing the book, I hope that I have used it as the author intended, dipping into its different sections and cross-referencing from one section to another. For me, this has been a fascinating experience which I hope I can encourage others to try.
Part of Winnicott's philosophy was to discourage the establishment of what might have become a hard-line Winnicottian school of thought within psychoanalysis. However, the disadvantage of this view has been that there has been a reluctance to gather Winnicott's thinking together into an organized form, as this seems to run counter to the way in which Winnicott hoped his ideas would be used. We learn that Harry Karnac's chronological and alphabetical bibliography on Winnicott's papers was not being compiled until Abram started her rese