Donald
Winnicott is, undoubtedly, one of the most influential psychoanalysts of our
post-Freudian epoch.  The originality of
his thinking, his openmindness, his fresh and practically valid conceptions,
makes him still very important among great number of modern analysts of various
orientations.  

Robert
Rodman himself, the author of this biography of Donald Winnincott, is a well
known author. For example, thanks to him today we can read a very good and
instructive selection (or we could say edition) of Winnicott’s letters. Rodman
is well informed in psychoanalytic matters in general — he knows its theory,
he knows its history, he can think and feel its practice, but of course, he is at
his best when Winnicott’s work is in the question.  His style is well balanced, coherent, and easy to follow.  The book is logically composed, eloquent,
and well documented.

Rodman’s
book on Winnicott is important.  It is
not an easy task to write the autobiography of one of the greatest
psychoanalysts of our time. There are various challenges, many potential
impasses, many problems.  The matter is
rather delicate. One must avoid being voyeuristic, sensationalistic,
nihilistic, destructive or too much idealizing. Any biography (as narrative
form) is dealing with the facts. We need the facts if we wand to write a
biography. But facts are newer enough. There is always a need for a living
personality. And offcoures, we must always have it in mind, Winnicott’s
personal history is an important part of the (official and unofficial) history
of the British Psychoanalytic Society. Having all this in mind, we must
conclude that Rodman’s book could be important in two parallel ways. As a
contribution to our understanding of one of the greatest psychoanalysts of
modern time, and also as decent (and rather original) attempt to understand one
of the most turbulent periods in history of the British Psychoanalytic Society.

Donald
Woods Winnicott was born in 1896 in Plymouth, Devon, a stronghold of the
noncomformist Weslyan tradition. His father, a successful  and much-admired merchant and mayor of his
town, was knighted for civic work. Winnicott himself was the youngest of three
children. He studied medicine, and in 1923 he become physician in the
Paddington Green Hospital, where he worked as pediatrician.

Winnicott
started his own analysis in 1923, when he was twenty-seven years old. He had
become aware of Freud’s theories while in medical school, but did not seek out
analysis for himself until the year of his marriage.  He sought help for personal problems from Ernst Jones, the
founder of Biritish psychoanalysis, and was given a list of analysts from which
to chose, but he could not make a choice. He was then referred to James
Strachey, himself recently back from Vienna. 
A few years latter, Winnicott become one of the first candidates in the
Bristish Society.  In 1935, Winnicott
began six years of supervision with Melanie Klein. He wanted to be analyzed by
her, but this would have made it impossible for him to do what she wished: to
analyze her son under her supervision. Winnicott refused this proposal, but did
become her son’s analyst a few years later. He was not yet knowledgeable enough
to have developed a point of view about the issues of the day, but eventually
his own temperament and grown stock of observations drove him into a deep,
lifelong absorption with basic questions of human psychology. He become one of
psychological and philosophical thinkers, and was a clinician of extraordinary
skill.

Winnicott’s
independence of mind can best be appreciated against the background of
controversy that had been a part of the history of psychoanalysis from its
beginnings and then took a particular turn in the British  Society in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
The well­known schisms between the young Freud and his associates Carl Jung and
Alfred Adler had marked the field. Other breaks with Wihlem Stekel, Wilhelm
Reich, Otto Rank, and Sándor Ferenczi followed. An older Freud, now aficted
with cancer of jaw, oversaw but kept a degree of distance from the conflict
that arose between his daughter Anna and Melanie Klein. Their disagreements are
central to an understanding of the history of child analysis, and to the
individual development of Donald Winnicott.

There
in no doubt that Rodman feels strong human affections for Winnicott. His book
is not just a biography. It is a book of someone who cares.  His treatment of Winnicott is at the same
time personally warm and (as much as it is possible) objective. Rodman is
rather well informed in the various psychoanalytic matters. The book is rich in
various details. Different schools and different concepts, as well as great
many of the leading figures of the psychoanalytic tradition (just to mention
Freud, Jones, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Lacan…), had found their place in
Rodman’s discourse.  His Winnicott is
not (like Freud himself in the book of Ernst Jones) almost an absolute saint.
Also, he is not (like Lacan in the work of Elizabeth Rudinesco) the worst
sinner among the mortals. Winnicott’s personal drama and his doctrinally
contributions to the modern psychoanalysis are two poles of Rodman’
discourse.  And there is a good balance
between them…

One
very interesting quality of Rodman’s book lays in his attempt to situate
Winnicott in much more wither context that it is usually done. In this book
Winnicott is pictured not only as pediatrician, psychoanalyst and child
psychologist. Rodman’s Winnicott is sometimes poet, sometimes philosopher, or
even theologian. His cultural ancestors were, according to Rodman, the English
Romantic poets, who embraced the role of imagination in the construction of
reality. This could be one of the reasons he was so unacceptable for
predominantly empiricist spirit of the British Psychoanalysis. His well known
concepts like transitional object, transitional phenomena, transitional space,
true and false self, holding, could be located somewhere in between
(developmental) psychology and highly speculative philosophy. He is thinking
about human development, about theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Also he
is writing about life and death, about love and destruction, about religion. At
the same time, his thought is purely descriptive, almost phenomenological, and
very much theoretically-constructive.

This
book will be of interest for psychoanalysts, psychologists and for all others
that are seriously concerned with psychoanalysis. It could be read as a
testimony of somebody’s (Winnicott’s) personal individuation. It could be also
read as a good introduction to some of the key concepts of the developmental
psychoanalysis.

© 2003 Petar Jevremovic

Petar Jevremovic:
Clinical psychologist and practicing psychotherapist, author of two books (Psychoanalysis
and Ontology, Lacan and Psychoanalysis), translator of Aristotle and
Maximus the Confessor, editor of the Serbian editions of selected works of
Heintz Kohut, Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein, author of various texts that are
concerned with psychoanalysis, philosophy, literature and theology. He lives in
Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Categories: Memoirs, Psychoanalysis