ABSTRACT
Winnicott presents a number of concepts that help the infant’s/developing child’s transition into the world of others, while developing an indwelling sense of self. Winnicott is one of the analysts who begins to enlarge the discipline to create a consistent two-person field. There are two wonderful biographies of Winnicott that document how he traversed the paths between paediatrician and child and adult analyst. These two volumes show how each aspect of Winnicott’s training and life experience enhanced his search for the conditions that would allow the true self meaningfully to emerge. Both Klein and Freud attempted to theorize about the infant’s/child’s internal world, but Winnicott is attempting to write about the infant’s personal experience. In Winnicott’s version of the manic defence, the inner reality is changed by flight to, and control over, the external reality. Winnicott assumes there is a consensual reality, and, in this sense, he is part of the British Empirical tradition.
