ABSTRACT
The combination of ingenious conceptualisations, occasional formulaic theory, and a superficial lack of coherence in Donald Winnicott's writing makes reading Winnicott exhilarating, confusing, and finally, liberating. In every interaction between two people there are matches and mismatches of meaning in multiple domains of experience and communication. There are strong match experiences perceived as a moment of enhanced connection or a subjective sense of closeness. The observation of infant-mother interactions by infant researchers has provided people with important information about the synchrony, or matches, and dysynchronies, or mismatches, in playful exchanges. In the late 1980s, a paradigm shifting study using time sequence analysis of face-to-face mother-infant interactions demonstrated that more of the time in low-risk mother-infant pairs was spent in unmatched, rather than in harmonious, states. When new interactions emerge and repeat, they can create new patterns of coordination.
