Spontaneous Gesture: Selected Letters of D. W. Winnicott PDF
Preview Spontaneous Gesture: Selected Letters of D. W. Winnicott
The Spontaneous Gesture ~ SELECTED LETTERS OF D. W WINNICOTT EDITED BY F. Robert Rodman HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS AND LONDON, ENGLAND 1987 Winnicotttext Copyright© 1987by theWinnicottTrust. Editorial matterCopyright© 1987by F.RobertRodman. Allrights reserved Printedinthe UnitedStatesofAmerica 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 This book isprintedon acid-free paper, anditsbindingmaterials havebeen chosen forstrengthand durability. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Winnicott, D. W.(DonaldWoods), 1896-1971. Thespontaneousgesture. Includes index. I. Winnicott, D. W.(DonaldWoods), 1896-1971 Correspondence. 2. Psychoanalysts-GreatBritain Correspondence. 3. Psychoanalysis. 4. Child psychiatry. I. Rodman, F.Robert(FrancisRobert). II.Title. [DNLM: I. PersonalityDevelopment correspondence. 2. PsychoanalyticTheory correspondence.wz IOOW776s) RC509.WS6 1987 616.89'17'0924 86-18483 ISBN 0-674-83336-8 (alk.paper) For Sarah, mydaughter and inmemory ofmymother, Sarah Frieda Rodman Contents Preface IX Acknowledgments Xl Introduction XIII Letters I- 126 I Winnicott's Correspondents 199 Index 205 Illustrations Followingpage88 All illustrations courtesy oftheWinnicott Trust Winnicott around 1935 At a conference in 1963 With Anna Freud at the banquet to mark the completion ofthe Standard Edition ofthe Works ofFreud, 1966 A sketch by Winnicott ofamother and child In the studio ofOscar Nemon Winnicott in 1970 A portrait by Lotte Meitner-Graf, published in the BritishJournal ofMedical Psychology in 1971 with Winnicott's obituary Preface I HAD NO WAY of knowing that publication of the letters of D. W Winnicott was being planned when, in 1979, I wrote to Dr. Winnicott's widow, Mrs. Clare Winnicott, and asked whether I might edit them. I had just reread his response to a paper I had sent him in 1969. In its length and openness, his letter was more than a reply; it was a gift. It seemed likely that many other corre spondents had been so favored. Winnicott's work, and, Isuppose, Winnicott himself: had always seemed highly accessible to me, from my first reading ofhim as a medical student. And so the act of mailing him a paper without asking in advance whether he would mind was as typical ofhow Ifelt abouthim aswas the letter Isent ten years later to Mrs. Winnicott, something outofthe blue that might be acceptable anyway. It was. I went to her home in Lower Belgrave Street in May of 1980 to meet with her and with Ray Shepherd, a psychoanalyst and a member of the Winnicott Publications Committee, and Peter Tizard, Winnicott's old friend and distinguished fellow pediatri cian. After dinner, Mrs. Winnicott showed me to the comfortable basement room where the letters were kept. They had been or ganizedin aseries ofring binders from 1958 onward, one per year, with all the correspondence alphabetized. There were also several boxes full of unsorted letters and miscellaneous documents. I scanned this material and became convinced that a great deal ofit would be ofinterest to a wide readership of psychoanalysts and others ofdiverse background. The following year I arranged to have the material copied. But it was not until 1984 thatI could continuethe necessary work, and by then Mrs. Winnicott had succumbed to the illness that she had x Preface struggled against for many years. She had considered at length what to do with the Winnicott documents, and had decided to send the originals to the library ofthe New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center for safekeeping and future scholarship, with du plicates to be available in England at the Wellcome Institute for the History ofMedicine. Long before, she had made careful arrange ments for the editing and publishing of her husband's work through a board ofeditors consisting ofherself, Madeleine Davis, and Ray Shepherd. After her death, Christopher Bollas became the third member. Later another trove ofletters was discovered, and from it a large number were added to the earlier collection. In all, about 825 letters written by Winnicott survive. For this book I have chosen only those with a direct bearing on his work and theories. Letters before 1949 are sparse. He probably lacked secretarial help before then. In those times as well he passed through a personal upheaval, which included his father's death, divorce from his first wife, and, in 1951, remarriage. Records may have been lost or discarded. A move to new living and working quarters in Chester Square marked the beginning of that final score ofyears in which his genius was widely recognized. Perhaps at that point he began to realize that a more complete record of his correspondence would one day be of interest, to himself at least and possibly to others. The letters in this book are, with two exceptions, taken from typed, unsigned copies that Winnicott kept. Letter I, to his sister, is from a photocopy ofthe handwritten letter, and for letter 118, to me, Ihave the typed original. Completeletters appear wherever possible. Deletions have been made primarily to protect confi dences, and for the same reason capital letters have been substi tuted for a few names. Deletions are indicated by ellipsis dots and emendations by square brackets. A few simple errors in spelling and punctuation have been corrected without note. Acknowledgments I AM DEEPLY GRATEFUL to the late Mrs. Clare Winnicott, who entrusted me with the task of editing these letters. Her warm, witty, and intelligent presence is sorely missed. Madeleine Davis took up this project where Mrs. Winnicott left offand has been a helpful and stimulating guide throughout. Her wide knowledge and, more than that, her grasp ofthe true value of Winnicott's work and life are enormous. She has given me much information and good advice. Ray Shepherd has been a sourceofquiet encouragement from the very beginning. Through his inquiries at the archives ofthe British Psychoanalytic Society, I have been able to identify the dates and titles of most of the papers to which Winnicott responds in these letters. Arthur Rosenthal, director of Harvard University Press, re sponded with enthusiasm to the proposal to publish the letters. He had been well acquainted with Winnicott and his writings as publisher ofhis Collected Papers at Basic Books, My good friend Lance Lee gave me the benefit ofhis incisive understanding ofWinnicott's work, and, as usual, sage comments on writing, this time on the organization ofthe Introduction. My wife and children tolerated alengthy absorption with Win nicott, the hours in front ofthe word processor, and the moods that accompany the preparation of a book. I love them for that and for everything else. Introduction D. W. WINNICOTT was one ofthe major figures in British psy choanalysis in the generation following Freud. His writings were primarily concerned with the nature of relationships, beginning with that of mother and infant, which he described with great subtlety. As a member of the British Middle Group, he stood apart from the clusters around Melanie Klein and Anna Freud, lending heart to those ofa similarly independent bent and, at the same time, forming a tenuous bridge between the two rival fac tions. The many psychoanalytic books and papers that make ref erence to his work attest both to the enduring value ofhis ideas and to their capacity to enrich and facilitate the thinking ofothers. Because his writings retain freshness and the capacity to stimulate unexpected inference, his influence has continued to grow with the years. Donald Woods Winnicott was born in 1896 in Plymouth, Devon, a stronghold of the nonconformist Wesleyan tradition. His father, asuccessful and much-admired merchant and mayorof the town, was knighted for civic work. Donald was the youngest ofthree, with two elder sisters, and apparently had ahappy child hood. At fourteen, he left home for the Leys School in Cam bridge, where the following year, while being treated for abroken collarbone, he decided to become adoctor. Much taken with Dar win's ideas, he studied biology atJesus College, Cambridge, and then medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. In med ical school, he converted to the Anglican Church." Also while a I. Personal communication, ClareWinnicott. Introduction XIV medical student, he found himselfunable to recall his dreams and, whilelooking for abook that might help him, came across a work on Freud by aSwiss parson named Oskar Pfister. This introduced Winnicott to psychoanalytic writings." Winnicott served as Surgeon-Probationer on a destroyer for a time during the First World War. He resumed the study ofmedi cine and qualified in 1920. In 1923 he married. Also in 1923, he became physician to the Paddington Green Children's Hospital, a posthe helduntil 1963. His Wednesday clin ics, which gradually evolved from 'traditional pediatrics to child psychiatry, were part ofthe continuity ofhis medical experience, which amounted eventually to about 60,000 cases. In 1923 as well he startedaten-year analysis withJames Strachey. This decadewas aperiodofgreat change for the British Psycho-Analytical Society. In 1926, Melanie Klein moved from Berlin to London, brought by Ern-estJones for the immediate purpose ofanalyzing his wife and two children. A conflict between Klein and Anna Freud in matters oftheory and the technique ofchild analysis had begun in earnest and was to be one ofthe principal topics ofconversation for many years to come. In 1933, the discussions ofscientific mat ters in the British Society were much affected by the vituperative attacks on Melanie Klein by Edward Glover and his analysand Melitta Schmideberg, Klein's daughter, who accused her mother of"trying to force feelings into me." In 1935, Winnicott began six years of supervision with Mrs. 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. He refused this arrangement, but did be come her son's analyst from 1935 to 1939.3 In the late 1930S, Win nicott undertook a second analysis withJoan Riviere. Freud arrived in London on June 6, 1938, at a time when the membership ofthe British Society was fully one-third ofCentral European origin. After Freud's death in September of 1939, and with the war raging, the British Society fell into divisive quarrel- 2. "APersonal View: 10, Donald Winnicott." St. Mary'sHospital Gazette 67, no. 5 (July-August 1961). 3. Phyllis Grosskurth, MelanieKlein: Her World andHer Work (New York: Knopf 1986).
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