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Winnicott's name is known to every analyst in England, and also to many others who work or deal with children, through his broadcasts and popular writings (see my reviews in this journal, Vol. 4, No. 1). The present volume, subtitled Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis, is a record of how Winnicott became his essential self. We see him first as a pre-analytic paediatrician, next as a psycho-analyst under the impact of Melanie Klein's school. The third and largest section of the book contains his most original and important contributions. It is impossible to summarize these and all too easy to culogize.
For the benefit of those readers who do not live in England it could be said that Winnicott's main contribution concerns the derivation of psychotic defences from the disturbed infant-mother relationship. Winnicott's gift for succinct formulations (it may seem deceptively simple to the unwary) is remarkable (“Weaning implies successful feeding, and disillusionment implies the successful provision of opportunity for illusion”).
For the reasons stated it would be obviously wrong to assume that only those analysts who work with children would benefit from reading and re-reading Winnicott's papers. All those who are concerned with the treatment of psychotic or borderline psychotic patients and who believe in the importance of continuity of mental life from infancy will find invaluable information here.
The only way in which 1 can hope to say anything about the book at all that is not merely repetitious is by taking up one or two points which seem particularly challenging to the Jungian reader.
I think it is fair to say that all that which we know as archetypal imagery would appear to Winnicott merely as secondary psychic elaboration of emotional and physiological experiences. The question, therefore, is whether instinctual experiences can occur in analysis without the re-awakening of infantile imagery or memories. This question is inevitably linked with that of causality.