Introduction

Born in Plymouth, Devon, on 7 April 1896, Donald Winnicott attended school at the nearby Plymouth College, followed by four years of boarding-school at The Leys School, a Wesleyan Methodist institution in Cambridge. He received his undergraduate education at Jesus College of the University of Cambridge, and he then attended St Bartholomew's Hospital medical school in London, qualifying as a physician in 1920. Winnicott's contributions to the psychology of infancy cannot readily be summarized, as they constitute the bulk of his corpus of writings. But one can nevertheless extract the basic discoveries and conclusions. Of greatest importance, Winnicott taught us that infants can be interesting individuals who are worthy of study. Winnicott theorized extensively about the role of management and residential care in the treatment of the disturbed child, recognizing full well that many disorientated boys and girls required something more than 50-minute psychoanalytical sessions.