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This thought-provoking, well-written, and well-organized book is a compendium of commentaries regarding a case study by Donald Winnicott of the treatment of a child, Gabrielle, whose family nickname was “the Piggle.” Even though his work with this child consisted of 16 sessions over 2½ years, Winnicott called it an “analysis,” stirring up controversy. Winnicott conducted the treatment from 1964 to 1966 and later wanted his notes as well as those of the child's parents published. His wife, Clare, brought them posthumously to press via Hogarth in 1977 and Penguin in 1980, with many reprints. Winnicott had presented the case to a group from the International Association of Psycho-Analysis in 1969 with the unusual format of having one of his former students, Itzak Ramsey, supervise the case with Winnicott as the supervisee (!). The auditorium was filled to the rafters with analysts and students. I remember being in a class in Philadelphia where there was similar excitement and, as I recall, a feeling of delight.
At the time, Winnicott was a leading light in the Independent School of the British Psychoanalytic Institute, which following the Controversial Discussions of 1942-1944 had divided into three training programs with a Kleinian, a Freudian, and an eclectic faculty and emphasis. He had been well received in America and elsewhere, had published voluminously, and was pressed for time, which partly explains the smaller number of sessions of this case, which he conducted, as he said, au partage (“on demand,” as requested by patient and family), and with the additional nontypical use of the parents as “cotherapists,” mostly by correspondence and telephone. Gabrielle's mother was herself a therapist who had worked with Winnicott in the past.