ABSTRACT
At Ernest Jones' recommendation, Donald Woods Winnicott embarked upon a course of personal analysis with James Strachey, one of the most promising and colourful members of the fledgling English psychoanalytic movement. The idea of an auxiliary superego may be absolutely meaningless to practitioners not steeped in psychoanalytic vocabulary; but basically, stripped of its complexity, this refers to the analyst's unique opportunity to serve as an ideal role model for the patient. Winnicott's psychoanalytic treatment with James Strachey seems to have proved quite useful in a number of respects. In a shameful breach of confidentiality, Winnicott's first analyst, James Strachey, had certainly hinted to his own wife, Alix Strachey, that Winnicott suffered from erectile difficulties or even deeper terrors of the female genitalia. Winnicott seems to have derived great benefit, both personally and professionally, from Strachey's emphasis on mutative transference interpretations as the most curative components in psychotherapeutic work.
