ABSTRACT
Donald Winnicott played his famous "Squiggle Game" with the child, a game in which the child and psychiatrist take part. Each, in turn, makes a squiggle that the other alters into something that it suggests to him. The boy altered Winnicott's squiggle into a duck with webbed feet. Winnicott observed how the mother was always following the baby's initiative. This is similar to Melanie Klein's discoveries when she watched children play and saw them enact phantasies alongside every instinctual impulse; thus, when mother responds to baby's needs, she is giving him what he is already consciously or unconsciously imagining, perhaps even hallucinating. Winnicott was fascinated by the intermediate stages where illusion and reality mingle. He cited as an example of this the phenomenon of the particularly loved toy or cuddle-blanket, which is treated as if it can exchange affection and comfort like a breast or mother.
