D. W. Winnicott: A Biographical Portrait by Brett Kahr Madison, CT:  International Universities Press, 1996,  xxix + 189 pp., $40.00

D. W. Winnicott was one of psychoanalysis' most influential and beloved figures. His innovative concepts and clinically astute observations about “primary maternal preoccupation,” “good-enough” parenting, the “facilitating environment,” regression as a facet of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, true- and false-self experience, transitional phenomena, potential space, playing,

and creativity have deeply enriched the theoretical and clinical landscape of psychoanalysis.

And yet, despite Winnicott's crucial importance in psychoanalysis, he has, like Kohut, received scant in-depth biographical attention. Available portraits tend to romanticize his childhood and his life and are thereby ironically pervaded by a decidedly unWinnicottian tendency to neglect negative experiences such as deprivation and hate. Clare Winnicott's (1978) brief biographical account of her husband's life is illustrative: her husband's childhood “sounds too good to be true. But the truth is that it was good, and try as I will I cannot present it in any other light” (p. 25). Perusal of Winnicott's letters and a poem, and his theoretical writings viewed as a potential source of psychobiographical information, paint an unmistakably different and bleaker picture of his childhood. A poem he wrote when he was 67 called “The Tree” is illustrative: