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This book adds to an expanding literature about the work of one who, because he sought to disciples, had to be discovered by others. Until recently, there was a certain camaraderie among those who had done so, but the multiplying number of conferences and books (such as the one under review) are turning him into the center of a school, with all the accompanying pitfalls both of idealization and of derision.
The title puts the emphasis on the environmental half of Winnicott's 1965 book, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. Because he insisted on the importance of the environment, he was and sometimes still is characterized as one who had lost hold of the vital intrapsychic fountainhead of psychoanalysis as Freud conceived it. I have heard this destructive misreading put forth by analysts who would know better if they cared to read the words that Winnicott wrote. The term "object relations school" is often used not simply as a convenient category of reference, but also to crush out awareness of individual differences among its "members" (there is no organization of object relationists), and to form thereby a convenient category to condemn. Winnicott did not abandon the instincts, ever, as the first chapter of this book (by M. Gerard Fromm) makes clear. But he also believed that a human being is not conceivable outside an interpersonal setting. When he insisted that "there is no such thing as a baby," he was speaking of the omnipresence of the mother. However we formulate our conceptions of the first six months of life, would any of us now disagree?
The book is divided into four sections, a theoretical one concerned with placing him in context, and three others that deal with clinical issues.
The introductory chapter is an authoritative, scholarly affirmation