Journal of Child & Adolescent Mental Health 2012, 24(1): 111 Printed in South Africa — All rights reserved
Copyright © NISC Pty Ltd
JOURNAL OF CHILD & ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH ISSN 1728-0583 EISSN 1728-0591 http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/17280583.2012.698106
Book Review Reading Winnicott Edited by Lesley Caldwell and Angela Joyce New Library of Psychoanalysis 2011, Routledge, Oxford, UK 297 pages Paperback, ISBN 978-0-415-41595-8, ZAR391.95 (soft cover)
This book does not provide an overview of Donald Winnicott’s work, but comprises “14 key selected readings”. An ambitious project considering Winnicott had a prolific writing career that spanned over 50 years. Overall I must agree that the editors have made an excellent choice. The volume begins with an invaluable synopsis of Winnicott’s personal and professional development and places his writing in this chronology. The selected papers are then organised with reference to four areas: The Relational Environment and the place of Infantile Sexuality; Aggression and Destructiveness; Illusion and Transitional Phenomena; and The Theory and Practice of Psychoanalysis with Adults and Children. Here are some of the titles to whet your appetite — Primitive Emotional Development, Hate in the Counter-transference, The Development of the Capacity for Concern, Fear of Breakdown, and Playing: a Theoretical Statement. Each key paper is prefaced by an excellent summary that attempts to situate that paper within the psychoanalytic ideas and disputes of his time as well as noting Winnicott’s growing personal interests and developmental preoccupations. As Winnicott’s work feels to me a biography of the sense of core aliveness and the intactness of the self as it unfolds throughout a lifetime, I was surprised at the omission of his 1960 paper on “Ego Distortions in terms of the True and False Self”. I have always felt his concern with the true self and its emergence as a lived potential to be one of his central and clinical contributions. Whether we work clinically with this in mind has profound implications. Some psychoanalytic theories disappointingly leave no room for the idea of an “originating potential”. We are experts in psychopathology and deeply committed to the analysis of our patients anti-life tendencies, but we are not as good at the psychoanalysis of the patient’s true self representations. More catastrophically, we are often in danger of psycho-pathologising manifestation of the latter. Surely one of Winnicott’s profoundest exhortations is that, in life and in treatment, there needs to be a receptive space to receive news from the self. The above aside, I can certainly recommend this book. It is an excellent introduction to the central themes in Donald Winnicott’s work, and his ideas are as valuable today, and to the African context, as they were when they were written. Although he tends to be thought about in terms of work with children and their families this book reveals his clinical relevance across the lifespan.
Rod Anderson Senior Clinical Psychologist [Jungian Analyst] and Head of Outpatient Unit, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Red Cross Children’s Hospital, Cape Town email: [email protected] Journal of Child & Adolescent Mental Health is co-published by NISC (Pty) Ltd and Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Copyright of Journal of Child & Adolescent Mental Health is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
Copyright © NISC Pty Ltd
JOURNAL OF CHILD & ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH ISSN 1728-0583 EISSN 1728-0591 http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/17280583.2012.698106
Book Review Reading Winnicott Edited by Lesley Caldwell and Angela Joyce New Library of Psychoanalysis 2011, Routledge, Oxford, UK 297 pages Paperback, ISBN 978-0-415-41595-8, ZAR391.95 (soft cover)
This book does not provide an overview of Donald Winnicott’s work, but comprises “14 key selected readings”. An ambitious project considering Winnicott had a prolific writing career that spanned over 50 years. Overall I must agree that the editors have made an excellent choice. The volume begins with an invaluable synopsis of Winnicott’s personal and professional development and places his writing in this chronology. The selected papers are then organised with reference to four areas: The Relational Environment and the place of Infantile Sexuality; Aggression and Destructiveness; Illusion and Transitional Phenomena; and The Theory and Practice of Psychoanalysis with Adults and Children. Here are some of the titles to whet your appetite — Primitive Emotional Development, Hate in the Counter-transference, The Development of the Capacity for Concern, Fear of Breakdown, and Playing: a Theoretical Statement. Each key paper is prefaced by an excellent summary that attempts to situate that paper within the psychoanalytic ideas and disputes of his time as well as noting Winnicott’s growing personal interests and developmental preoccupations. As Winnicott’s work feels to me a biography of the sense of core aliveness and the intactness of the self as it unfolds throughout a lifetime, I was surprised at the omission of his 1960 paper on “Ego Distortions in terms of the True and False Self”. I have always felt his concern with the true self and its emergence as a lived potential to be one of his central and clinical contributions. Whether we work clinically with this in mind has profound implications. Some psychoanalytic theories disappointingly leave no room for the idea of an “originating potential”. We are experts in psychopathology and deeply committed to the analysis of our patients anti-life tendencies, but we are not as good at the psychoanalysis of the patient’s true self representations. More catastrophically, we are often in danger of psycho-pathologising manifestation of the latter. Surely one of Winnicott’s profoundest exhortations is that, in life and in treatment, there needs to be a receptive space to receive news from the self. The above aside, I can certainly recommend this book. It is an excellent introduction to the central themes in Donald Winnicott’s work, and his ideas are as valuable today, and to the African context, as they were when they were written. Although he tends to be thought about in terms of work with children and their families this book reveals his clinical relevance across the lifespan.
Rod Anderson Senior Clinical Psychologist [Jungian Analyst] and Head of Outpatient Unit, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Red Cross Children’s Hospital, Cape Town email: [email protected] Journal of Child & Adolescent Mental Health is co-published by NISC (Pty) Ltd and Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Copyright of Journal of Child & Adolescent Mental Health is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
