Reading Winnicott brings together a selection of papers by the psychoanalyst and paediatrician Donald Winnicott, providing an insight into his work and charting its impact on the well-being of mothers, babies, children and families. With individual introductions summarising the key features of each of Winnicott’s papers this book not only offers an overview of Winnicott’s work, but also links it with Freud and later theorists. Areas of discussion include: the relational environment and the place of infantile sexuality aggression and destructiveness illusion and transitional phenomena theory and practice of psychoanalysis of adults and children. As such Reading Winnicott will be essential reading for all students wanting to learn more about Winnicott’s theories and their impact on psychoanalysis and the wider field of mental health.

Reading Winnicott brings together a selection of papers by the psychoanalyst and paediatrician Donald Winnicott, providing an insight into his work and charting its impact on the well-being of mothers, babies, children and families. With individual introductions summarising the key features of each of Winnicott’s papers this book not only offers an overview of Winnicott’s work, but also links it with Freud and later theorists. Areas of discussion include: the relational environment and the place of infantile sexuality aggression and destructiveness illusion and transitional phenomena theory and practice of psychoanalysis of adults and children. As such Reading Winnicott will be essential reading for all students wanting to learn more about Winnicott’s theories and their impact on psychoanalysis and the wider field of mental health.

The Family and Individual Development represents a decade of writing from a thinker who was at the peak of his powers as perhaps the leading post-war figure in developmental psychiatry. In these pages, Winnicott chronicles the complex inner lives of human beings, from the first encounter between mother and newborn, through the 'doldrums' of adolescence, to maturity. As Winnicott explains in his final chapter, the health of a properly functioning democratic society 'derives from the working of the ordinary good home.'

Describes Winnicott's theories of child development, the mother-child relationship, and human sexuality.

Study of nostalgic representations of the maternal, the home, and childhood in the literature and photographs of early-20th-century artists.

Donald Winnicott, the first pediatrician to become a child psychoanalyst, was the most influential and important child therapist in the field of child clinical psychiatry and psychology. Having consulted with over 30,000 mothers and children as part of his work in London city hospitals over 40 years, he had an almost magical capacity to engage with children and to soothe and guide parents through their most anxiety-ridden times. His optimistic notions of the “good enough” mother has calmed generations of parents; his depiction of security blankets (“transitional objects”) found full flower in the Charlie Brown character Linus; his stressing of the importance of the capacity to play as the gold standard of mental health had an enormous impact on preschool and kindergarten education and his focus on the insidious impact of a lack of authenticity or “false self” has led to countless papers on the malevolent impact of narcissism at both the individual and societal levels. Attachment, Play and Authenticity: Winnicott in a Clinical Context, 2nd edition, attempts to take these contributions and place them directly in the consulting room. Actual child-therapist vignettes are paired with each chapter's theoretical contributions. The reader is thus first transported to Winnicott's powerfully alive depictions of what happens in healthy and pathological mother-child interaction and then brought to see how these depictions manifest themselves in child therapy. No other work on Winnicott has applied this focus to the integration of theory and practice.

First published in 1990. The ideas of Donald Winnicott are scattered through numerous clinical papers and short, popular expositions. He made only one attempt to write and overview of his ideas, and this is it. It remained unfinished at his death in 1971. It is an ambitious work. The chapters offer his perspective on most of the main issues in psychoanalytic theory - for example, psychosomatics; the Oedipus complex; infantile sexuality; the unconscious; the depressive position; manic defence; transitional objects; aggression. Winnicott has here made a major synthetic effort, one which is regarded as the best of his posthumous works. D. W. Winnicott can be said to be the most influential native-born British psychoanalyst and - with Klein and Fairbairn - the founder of the object relations perspective. His writings are among the most moving and evocative int he whole literature of psychoanalysis.

Thinking About Children collects thirty-one papers, of which twenty-eight have never previously been published. As might be expected, they range widely in tone and content from concise clinical observations to more general meditations including the landmark paper "Towards an objective study of human nature". Of particular interest are sections on autism and psychosomatics, where the author's thinking can be seen to foreshadow more recent developments, such as Frances Tustin's work on autism. Together with a substantial introduction by the editors, this book indispensable for those acquainted with the author's work, and an ideal introduction for those who have not yet encountered the extraordinary clarity and depth of his thought.

What in Winnicott’s theoretical matrix was truly revolutionary for psychoanalysis? In this book, the editor and contributors provide a rare in-depth analysis of his original work, and highlight the specifics of his contribution to the concept of early psychic development which revolutionised the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Including re-publications of selected Winnicott papers to set the scene for the themes and explorations in subsequent chapters, the book examines how Winnicott expanded Freud’s work, and how his discourse with Melanie Klein sharpened his thought and clinical innovations. Divided into 3 sections, it covers: Introductory overviews on the evolution of Winnicott’s theoretical matrix Personal perspectives from eminent psychoanalysts on how Winnicott’s originality inspired their own work Further recent examinations and extensions including new findings from the archives Drawing on her own extensive knowledge of Winnicott and the expertise of the distinguished contributors, Jan Abram shows us how Winnicott’s contribution constitutes a major psychoanalytic advance to the concept of subjectivity. As such, it will be an inspiration to experienced psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and all those interested in human nature and emotional development.