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Playfully alluding to Winnicott's emphasis on the use of objects, the subtitle of this splendid volume clearly indicates its concentration on literary matters, though in point of fact not all of the papers included are strictly literary, nor are all of the contributions written by literary scholars. What all of the essays share is a thorough appreciation of the creativity of play and a bedrock awareness that “art provides a lifelong refuge to which we can turn as we negotiate our precarious oscillations between illusion and reality” (p. xiii). While the editor has scholars in the humanities in mind as the primary audience for this anthology, the range and sophistication of the contributions are such that clinicians and other students of Winnicott's work will undoubtedly find them of considerable value.
The editor chooses wisely in allowing Winnicott to be represented by the chapter from Playing and Reality called “The Location of Cultural Experience.” What riches it contains! Winnicott begins this chapter by initiating a fresh way of looking at the phenomena Freud discusses under the heading of sublimation. Noting that Freud did not tell us whereabouts in the mind cultural experience may be said to be located, Winnicott goes on to situate the playspace of artspace in the realm of transitional phenomena, the realm in between subject and object, between self and other. Winnicott aligns these ideas with Fairbairn's concept of “object-seeking” (pp. 6, 9) by way of taking the position that transitional phenomena are not governed by instinctuality, his opinion being that “the self…must precede the self's use of instinct” (p. 6). And where is selfhood? Where does it develop? According to one of Winnicott's most powerful concepts, it develops in the realm of potential space, a realm of creative playing and creative living (for