ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates how the master magician subsumes in himself both mother and father roles, while also splitting off into the rejected Caliban the vital formative and creative properties of language, inseparable from progress to three-person relating. It focuses on D. W. Winnicott 's original dyadic transitional space, modulates this into a place where there really is enough room for three. The mother and father are plainly at times enough taken up with one another, and at times enough involved with their child, for the latter to be held in a rhythm of inclusion and exclusion. Winnicott's holding of the bereaved family takes the form of a tight but remote control, which reflects the stance of Prospero. Prospero, however, lacking the psychological wizardry of Winnicott himself, proves impotent to make his "creatures" feel what he desires them to feel.
