Which Winnicott?

Tea with Winnicott is a charming book—and the value of charm is not to be underestimated in these utterly charm-deprived times. I believe that, beyond being charming, Tea will be usefully informative to a wide audience—not just for students, its intended audience, but for professionals as well. There is an amazing amount of information in this book about Winnicott’s life and work and about the culture of psychoanalysis and English society itself during the first three fourths of the 20th century. The playful premise of the book is a “posthumous interview” the prominent psychoanalytic historian Brett Kahr has arranged with the great English psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, with the assistance of Mrs. Joyce Coles, Winnicott’s secretary from 1947 until his death in 1971. The book reflects Winnicott’s own playfulness, of course one of his major theoretical interests. At the beginning is a list of the dramatis personae, beginning with Winnicott and Coles, with the dates of their deaths, and then “Professor Brett Kahr, interviewer. (Not yet deceased.)” Similarly, the engaging illustrations by Alison Bechdel, primarily of Winnicott, contribute to this sense of whimsy. She has strong Winicottian credentials herself—her graphic book Are You My Mother? (Bechdel, 2013) can also be thought of as a good introduction to Winnicott’s theory.

The book is the first in a new series from Karnac: “Interviews with Icons.” Kahr is preparing another book with the same format, but with Sigmund Freud as the interview subject. (Coffee With Freud was published earlier this year.) Kahr is a leading historian of psychoanalysis; he has written and edited several other books, including the first biography of Winnicott (D. W. Winnicott, A Biographical Portrait), published in 1996 to mark Winnicott’s centenary. He also has yet another book about Winnicott coming out this year: Winnicott’s Anni Horribiles: The Creation of

“Hate in the Counter-Transference.” It is an expansion of his fascinating 2011