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In this last collection of his essays—bound by shared thematic material, but not serial in structure—the late British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott reveals the qualities of mind and emotion that won him the esteem and love of coworkers over a period of forty years: a respect for theory and hypothesis tempered by strict devotion to the individual patient's situation and specific phenomenology; a reverence for established formulations and a responsiveness to the new materials evoked in his therapeutic space; a dedication to psychoanalysis as a science without neglecting the human orientation of his work, without neglecting the creative human possibilities a human science must take into account; an ability to probe the complexities of early object relationships without mystification; and, most important, I think, a strong desire to relieve suffering without preempting the ability and need of the patient to make his own interpretations, to come to selfhood, as much as possible, in his own way.
Specifically, Winnicott is interested in the intermediate space between subjective representation of an object and its objective perception. This space, paradoxically, is neither real nor unreal. It is a realm of psychic reality with which we are familiar in play phenomena—a symbolic space that is both inside and outside the subject (the infant).
It is assumed here that the task of reality-acceptance is never completed, that no human being is free from the strain of relating inner and outer reality, and that relief from this strain is provided by an intermediate area of experience which is not challenged (arts, religion, etc.). This intermediate area is in direct continuity with the play area of the small child who is “lost” in play.