ABSTRACT
The comparison between the two is more extensive: both Milner and Winnicott write fully on the importance of illusion in symbol formation: the transitional object is the child's "first use of symbol and first experience of play". Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s there is much mutual respect and this comes to a peak with Winnicott's honouring of Milner in Playing and Reality where he "pays tribute to work of Milner who has written so brilliantly on the subject of symbol formation". Winnicott, too, of course, honoured Milner in his foreword to Hands of the Living God but it is in her attitude towards her patient Susan's doodles and drawings that she is perhaps at her most Winnicottian, appreciating to the full the value and function of the drawing as transitional object. Milner finds a note amongst her papers of a talk with Winnicott when he had said he knew he should not have left match crucifix and he would not have done so with anyone else.
