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“What is it to be seen in the right way? As who you are? A splash of color? A blur in the crowd. Something spectacular but untouchable.”1 So writes the poet Ada Limon speaking to the subjective experience of being seen and of not being seen. When is it joyful and when is it inhibiting of a true self?
Such existential thoughts are also at the heart of Jan Abram’s The Surviving Object. This book is a rejuvenated collection of her essays on the dual concept of an intrapsychic surviving and non-surviving object—a concept based on her interpretations of Winnicott’s thoughts on destruction, dependency, and psychic development. The essays are a master class on some of Winnicott’s most compelling theoretical contributions and an example of how those contributions live on in the creative interpretations of those who make use of his work to make their own meaning.
Jan Abram, a training analyst and fellow at the British Psychoanalytical Society and a visiting professor at University College London, is a well-published and highly regarded Winnicott scholar. Her most significant writings include the remarkable The Language of Winnicott2—1997 Outstanding Academic Book of the year—and her 2013 editing of Donald Winnicott Today.3 Her work contributes to our ongoing appreciation for the enormity of Winnicott’s psychoanalytic legacy and how it informs subsequent theoretical contributions. Abram’s comfort level with important British and French psychoanalytic thinkers brings a richer dimension to her formulations on how Winnicott’s thinking continues to influence the creative gestures of newer generations of psychanalysts around the globe.