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Clare Winnicott is best remembered within the psychoanalytic world as the wife of her more renowned husband Donald, in her widowhood as a staunch, sometimes ruthless, guardian of his legacy, and in her final years as a capable, if not especially original, analyst. Latterly, with the publication first of Kahr's (1996) monograph of Winnicott, and then of Rodman's more recent and fuller biography (2003), interest has focussed on Clare's role as her husband's partner and in some sense the manager of his practical affairs. Particular attention, some of it critical, has been directed at her early wartime involvement with Donald and at assessing her part in the breakdown of his first marriage. An undoubted spur to this was the virtual suppression of information about his first wife in earlier accounts of Winnicott's life and development, including notably her own, information that is now slowly beginning to emerge. All of which has served to counterbalance the earlier idyllic, if somewhat colourless, portrait of her as efficient but self-effacing, a foil to her more effervescent husband.
In spite of this recent re-evaluation of her role as Winnicott's wife, Clare herself has remained surprisingly elusive. Almost unknown, even to those with more than a passing interest in her husband's work, is the fact that she was a significant figure in public life, a true pioneer of the social work profession, a notable lecturer and administrator, and perhaps most relevant of all, an important theorist of family casework and communication with children whose views carried great weight during the third quarter of the 20th century.
This, therefore, is a timely book. It seeks to portray Clare Winnicott as a figure in her own right. In doing so, it largely avoids gossip and conjecture about the personal dimension of her relationship with Winnicott before their marriage and about her interactions with the fractious Winnicott confraternity that survived him. Instead, it comprises a clear portra