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The newly published 12-volume set of the collected works of D.W. Winnicott is reviewed. In addition to describing the content of this work, the author attempts to capture how evocative his experience was in reading it. This collection is much more than the sum of its parts. Indeed, it is an important contribution to a deeper understanding and appreciation of Winnicott and his work.
The Collected Works of D.W. Winnicott was more than 30 years in the making. Following his wife Clare’s death in 1984, various members the Winnicott Trust were involved in this project. While the goal may have been to produce a Winnicottian version of the Standard Edition, the result is much more. What makes this work truly notable are the efforts to preserve the voice and tone of Winnicott himself. The Collected Works spans six decades of writing. This permits the reader to walk alongside Winnicott as he developed from a young pediatrician to a psychoanalyst, melding psychoanalytic knowledge with pediatrics and child-rearing. We see him first falling in love with the Kleinian school, then developing his own, independent thoughts. Throughout his career Winnicott wrote to many audiences, each possessing different degrees of knowledge about the topics that he addressed. Those involved in creating his collected works therefore strove to make the essence of his work accessible to the general public; to young professionals; to non-English readers; and of course to psychoanalysts, analytic therapists, and Winnicott scholars.
The Collected Works comprises 12 volumes, with his works arrayed chronologically. The foreword to these volumes was written by Christopher Bollas, and each volume begins with introductory remarks by Winnicottian scholars. Winnicott’s writing begins with personal letters to his family in 1911, with accounts of his medical
practice as a young physician, and follows all the way through writings that have been published posthumously. The authors also incorporated previously unp