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This paper was written in 1977 when I was asked to contribute to an issue of the French journal L'Arc which was to be devoted entirely to papers about Winnicott.1
In this paper I have decided to limit myself to certain ideas of D. W. Winnicott's that seem to have been most fertilizing for my own thinking. To do this I will take as my starting-point a reference of his to the drawing of the two jugs that I made in the 1930s. I have also chosen this drawing because it foreshadowed, for me, the image of overlapping circles made many years later by my patient, Susan, an image which had, still later, become a kind of flag or model for my own thinking about my work with patients and with myself.
Winnicott's reference to my drawing was in his paper about the place for cultural experience.2 It occurs when he is talking about how the baby comes to be able to make use of the symbol of union and becomes more able to allow for and benefit from separation and a separation that is not a separation, but a form of union. As I have said, my drawing had been made from nature years before I ever knew of Winnicott or his work. The two jugs were placed side by side, one slightly in front of the other so that they could, in fact, be seen as two circles overlapping.3 As I have said my concern in making the drawing had been with observing how shadows cut across or bring about a merging of boundaries; his response to it was to say that I had drawn his attention to the tremendous significance that there can be in the interplay of edges. My concern now in using the image is with the area of overlap in the circles just because it is