Introduction

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. No doubt many of you here tonight, if not all of you, will be familiar with the wonderful bronze statue of Sigmund Freud, created by the sculptor Oscar Nemon, that sat for many years beside the library in Swiss Cottage in North London. In more recent years, the statue has been relocated, and it now resides in a little garden nook in front of the Tavistock Clinic, not far from the Freud Museum. Although colleagues will know this statue quite well, it may not be appreciated that Donald Winnicott, the man to whom we pay tribute this evening, played a leading role in having Nemon’s statue of Freud set in bronze and unveiled at a special ceremony on 2 October 1970, only a few months before Winnicott’s own death from cardiac disease on 25 January 1971. Winnicott expended a great deal of energy during his final months of illness to ensure that sufficient funds would be raised so that his great hero, Sigmund Freud, could be properly memorialized.