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This book explores the way in which a search for an experiencing that feels real is evident in both Winnicott's life and work. He believed deeply that individuals possess a unique, innate authenticity. One feels most alive and free when in touch with this core sense of real self.
Winnicott's work with patients focused on the experience of what is real in living. He observed that many of his more disturbed patients suffered from a sense of futility. He aimed to facilitate the creation of an internal space in which the patient could learn to play so that life would begin to feel real. For him, this modest yet substantial goal raised questions about the singular role of interpretations as a curative factor. His psychotherapy was not about making clever or apt interpretations. It was essentially a complex derivative of mother's face, affording the opportunity to experience oneself as alive, real, able to relate to objects as oneself, and to have a self into which to retreat for relaxation.
Winnicott's theory mirrors the pattern of his own subjectivity and speaks to his own condition. This is not to say that the truth of Winnicott's ideas cannot be evaluated on its own merits. The argument here is that the objective face of theory is not its only face. The method employed is to demonstrate what that theory has to do with Winnicott.
Chapter 1 demonstrates how the originality of Winnicott's thought and his originality as a person are inseparable. Winnicott's narcissism, his desire to playfully transform classical concepts, the pride he took in his inventiveness, his reticence toward closure and dogma and need to maintain ambiguity and fluidity all impacted on the content of his theory.
Chapter 2 traces the association between Winnicott's theory and his biography. Nevertheless, this is not a search for motivations behind his ideas. Its purpose is to demonstrate the centrality of themes that are present in both his upbringing and his work.
Chapter 3 demonstrates how Winnicott sustained a counterpoint between pediatrics and psychoanalysis.
Chapter 4 focuses on Winnicott's dialogue with his non-psychoanalytic intellectual precursors. He was influenced by those whose writings resonated with his own aesthetic sensibilities.
Chapter 5 shows how Winnicott's radical developmental theory was constructed. It demonstrates what aspects of Freudian thought Winnicott internalized and how he made Freud's theory real for himself. Freud was the theoretical luminary around whom Winnicott orbited and the founding father against whom he struggled to authentically differentiate himself.
The epilogue deals with both Winnicott's final paper and the last year of his life. Once again, his subjectivity and theoretical ideas converged. The "Use of an Object" paper was Winnicott's attempt to make public his obscure sense of what enabled him to survive as both a scientist and a dreamer.