Chapter 17 Winnicott and American Analysts1

… I feel we are all trying to express the same things …

Since the publication in 1953 of Winnicott’s paper, ‘Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena,’ his writings have exercised a profound impact on how American psychoanalysts think about the mother-infant relationship, the vicissitudes of development, and creativity. The impact of the work of American psychoanalysts on Winnicott is less well appreciated, however. A close reading of his writings and correspondence reveals, in fact, that he had many personal and professional contacts with Americans, both analysts and non-analysts, and was deeply impressed, and influenced, by their work. Through his reading, reviewing, and encounters at professional gatherings, Winnicott was familiar with the theoretical and clinical contributions of both child and adult American analysts. This includes the writings of Heinz Hartmann (1894–1970), Ernst Kris (1900–1957), and Phyllis Greenacre (1894–1989), leading exponents of American ego psychology, whose impact on his work he himself pointed out (Winnicott 1967b). Winnicott wrote to Greenacre as early as May 1949.

I have just read to the British Psychoanalytical Society the preliminary stage of a lecture on birth experience, birth trauma, and anxiety. Your work on this subject had escaped me, and I have now read your recent writings and I find that my point of view is very much indeed the same as yours … I am extremely impressed with

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your three articles, and hope that in the course of time we may be in personal contact. In case you want to know what sort of a person I am, I am enclosing a reprint, and a pamphlet for mothers which is about to be published … also you would see an article by me in the so-called International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Volume XXVI, Parts 3 & 4. 1945 [‘Primitive Emotional Development’]. If ever I am in the States I shall make a bee-line for your Clinic

In this letter Winnicott is referrin