ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that answers to some questions have to be looked for not simply in a study of the development of D. W. Winnicott’s ideas as he went along, but essentially in the kind of personality that was functioning behind them. While other people's ideas enriched D. W. W as a clinician and as a person, it was the working out of his own ideas that really absorbed him and that he grappled with to the end of his life. In his clinical work D.W.W. made it his aim to enter into every situation undefended by his knowledge, so that he could be as exposed as possible to the impact of the situation itself. As the author have suggested, the essential clue to D.W.W.'s work on transitional objects and phenomena is to be found in his own personality, in his way of relating and being related to, and in his whole life style.
