ABSTRACT
The author starts with the assumption that every school of psychoanalysis begins as an elaboration of a particular reading of Freud. She suggests that Donald Winnicott read and expanded on Freud the healer and humanist, and that Jacques Lacan read and elaborated on Freud the skeptic and post-humanist. Some basic concepts of Lacan's (e.g. the three registers, the mirror stage, the familyaté) and of Winnicott's ( e.g.the True Self, the good enough mother, the holding environment) are outlined, and illustrations of their practical use, offered. While some writers interested in Winnicott and Lacan emphasize their radical incompatibility, others see them as complementary and mutually limiting. One analyst whom the author considers to be part of an emerging independent tradition or "New Middle Group" describes her theory of clinical practice as "a Squiggle game between the thinking of Winnicott and Lacan." The importance of reading original, and not only secondary sources, is emphasized.
