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“It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear;” Italo Calvino (1974, p. 106) reminds us. Keep this thought in mind as you read Simon Grolnick's text. The book is puzzling; ambivalent in its appreciation of Winnicott and confusing in its exposition. It is a difficult text for me to situate within the psychoanalytic literary world. This is due, I believe, to the fact that my hearing of Winnicott is different from Grolnick's.
Perusing the table of contents and acknowledging the expository goal of the work, one is impressed with the breadth of topics addressed. Chapter headings cover such areas as “Winnicottian Principles,” (ch. 3), “Developmental Lines Involving the Self and Its Functions,” (ch. 5), “The Development of The Intermediate World and Its Relationship To Creativity” (ch. 7), and “How to Do Winnicottian Therapy” (ch. 9). While the range of perspectives that Grolnick addresses is broad, many sections of the work reflect confusion about the audience intended. Is it the educated layman, the beginning therapist, or the seasoned psychoanalyst? The text seems to be addressed to all three categories of readers. Were the text simply addressed to the interested and educated layman, many of my difficulties with it would be obviated, but not all.
Winnicott, I believe, can best be approached and appreciated as operating not within a system, even the object relations school, but rather in the tradition of the poet, someone evocative of insight, informative for thought and simultaneously reluctant to proselytize in any way. What Winnicott makes possible through his writings is a personal, imaginative exploration of human growth.