Preface

Winnicott’s writings amount to well over 600 published papers as can be seen in Knud Hjulmand’s Complete Bibliography 2007. In addition there is an uncalculated amount of unpublished material in the Winnicott archives in London and New York (see the Appendix for more information on the publications and archives). In the past few years there have been many interesting findings in the Winnicott archives as will be seen in this volume (see Chapters 14, 17 and 18).

My aim for this volume is to focus on the revolutionary nature of Winnicott’s theoretical matrix. Each paper presents a rare in-depth analysis of Winnicott’s conceptualizations. The core themes in each chapter, including Winnicott’s own, highlight the prominence of early psychic development, both internal – intra-psychic, and interpersonally – inter-psychic. It is this prominence that constitutes a revolution in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and thus advances the Freudian project.

In the Introduction the main arguments of each paper are woven together to show how each author examines Winnicott’s writings in original and generative ways. The chapters are grouped into three sections and each part begins with a re-publication of a selected Winnicott paper to set the scene for the themes and explorations of the subsequent chapters:

These four complementary introductions illuminate the evolution of Winnicott’s work and together offer a comprehensive panorama of the theoretical matrix.