ABSTRACT
Hostile critics of psychoanalysis sometimes assume that analytical practitioners blindly follow a set of rules of technique, arbitrarily dictated by Sigmund Freud nearly one hundred years ago. Although Freud based his recommendations upon his extensive experience with patients from his clinical practice, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that, in fact, psychoanalytical technique has not moved much beyond Freud’s essential use of the couch, the free associative method, and the analysis of transference and resistance. A small band of technical innovators, however, has attempted to move forward from Freud’s original approach, sometimes to the chagrin of more classically orientated practitioners. The English paediatrician and psychoanalyst, Dr Donald Woods Winnicott (1896–1971), certainly holds a prominent position among this group. Winnicott extended the boundaries of classical psychoanalysis in a number of ways, principally, through his pioneering work with infants and small children who did not require full analysis on the couch; and, secondarily, he expanded the purview of psychoanalytical technique to include the treatment of psychotic and borderline patients (cf. Kahr, 1996).
