ABSTRACT

Winnicott was writing up his work all his life. His texts show proof of continual research, sustained by his intense clinical experience, the influence of the world around him and the events he was involved in. The study of children evacuated from London during the Second World War led him to conceptualize antisocial tendencies and deprivation, two revolutionary ideas that are absolutely essential in understanding certain pathologies. Those troubled times enabled him to formulate many of his principal ideas on the importance of the family and the “paternal” father, or he who is something other than a simple replacement of the mother. But Winnicott’s use of language, the intermixing of inventiveness and facilitation/compromise that are so typical of him, often obscure the originality of that which he is trying to show us. His development of “the use of the object” remains the culminating point of his research and, retrospectively, clarifies his whole thought process.