This book focuses on two themes: the first theme is the true self and the resonance of Winnicott's thinking with the contributions of other major psychoanalysts of the past half century; the second theme emerges from the first: the pursuit of authenticity, whether by patient or analyst.

This collection proposes that using Winnicott's work to think about themes of importance to practitioners now is also a way of thinking about some of the present preoccupations of psychoanalysis. How certain themes assume an importance and develop at certain times often resonates with debates of the past and to encounter them in the present almost always offer something new. Theoretical and clinical ideas are produced in particular conditions and often also in response to, or as part of, a certain intellectual and socio-cultural context; how they have come to be understood and how they have their effect also involves that wider world and its interests.

This book includes articles that describe how Winnicott's thinking facilitates the building of bridges between the internal and external realities, and, outside the boundaries of psychoanalysis as well as within it, between different schools of thought.

`The importance of Michael Jacobs′ book lies in his attempt to convey... Winnicott′s profound influence.... Jacobs rightly delights in the creativity and imagination of his subject and illustrates these with numerous quotations and descriptions from Winnicott′s writings.... What is conveyed throughout the book is the essence of Winnicott.... [whose] gift was to make psychoanalytic language, methods and concepts more widely available, accepted and appreciated to a nonpsychoanalytic world′ - British Psychological Society Counselling Psychology Review One of the best-known British psychoanalysts, D W Winnicott attracts the interest of counsellors and psychotherapists far beyond the strict psychoanalytic tradition in which he was trained. He coined many phrases that have entered the discourse of therapy, such as `good enough mother′, `transitional object′ and `facilitating environment′. Winnicott has had a profound impact on research into the mother-baby relationship, and his unorthodox manner and sparkling writing style have attracted enthusiastic acclaim. In this book, Michael Jacobs summarizes Winnicott′s life and explains his major theoretical concepts. He also rigorously evaluates his practice as a clinician - for example, the holding and management of deeply regressed patients. While highlighting Winnicott′s brilliance and creativity, Jacobs is not afraid to scrutinize his contributions more critically. He also discusses criticisms others have made of Winnicott, notably within the psychoanalytic movement. The final chapter assesses the influence of Winnicott′s thinking in other countries as well as in Britain.

Object relations, which emphasizes the importance of the preoedipal period and the infant-mother relationship, is considered by many analysts to be the major development in psychoanalytic theory since Freud. In this reinterpretation of its history Peter L. Rudnytsky focuses on two pivotal figures: Otto Rank, one of Freud's original and most brilliant disciples, who later broke away from psychoanalysis, and D. W. Winnicott, the leading representative of the Independent tradition in British psychoanalysis. Rudnytsky begins with an overview arguing that object relations theory can synthesize the scientific and hermeneutic dimensions of psychoanalysis. He the uses the ideas of Rank and Winnicott to uncover the preoedipal aspects of Sophocles' Oedipus the King. After an appraisal of the relationship between Rank and Freud, he turns to Rank's neglected writings between 1924 and 1927 and shows how they anticipate contemporary object relations theory. Rudnytsky critically measures Winnicott's achievement against those of Heinz Kohut and Jacques Lacan, the founders of two competing schools of psychoanalysis, and compares Winnicott's life and work with Freud's. Next, using both published and unpublished accounts by the psychotherapist Harry Guntrip of his analyses with W. R. D. Fairbairn and Winnicott, he probes the personal and intellectual interactions among these three British clinicians. Rudnytsky concludes by advancing a psychoanalytic theory of the self as a rejoinder to the postmodernism that is the dominant ideology in literary studies today. In two appendices he makes available for the first time an English translation of Rank's "Genesis of the Object Relation" and a 1983 interview with Clare Winnicott.

Given the complexity of scientific developments inside and outside the psychoanalytic field, traditional definitions of basic psychoanalytic notions are no longer sufficiently comprehensive. We need conceptualizations that encompass new clinical phenomena observed in present-day patients and that take into account contributions inside, outside, and on the boundaries of our practice. This book discusses theoretical concepts which explain current clinical expressions that are as ineffable as they are commonplace. Our patients resort to these expressions when they feel distressed by their perception of themselves as unreal, empty, fragile, non-existent, non-desiring, doubtful about their identity, beset by feelings of futility and apathy, and emotionally numb. The book aims at contrasting the ideas of Winnicott and Kohut, which are connected with a clinical practice that sees each patient as unique and are moreover in direct contact with empirical facts, and applies them to the benefit of complex patients. These ideas facilitate the expansion of paths in both the theory and the practice of our profession. Uniquely contrasting the works of two seminal thinkers with a Latin American perspective, Winnicott and Kohut on Intersubjectivity and Complex Disorders will be invaluable to clinicians and psychoanalysts.

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