ABSTRACT
James Strachey not only conducted Donald Woods Winnicott's first analysis, but he also urged the young paediatrician to seek the acquaintance of Melanie Reizes Klein, a formidably talented psychoanalytic practitioner who would influence Winnicott profoundly. Klein's observations on the earliest psychic life of the child excited Winnicott a great deal, and her ideas offered him both confirmation of his own forward-thinking observational research, and inspiration for his subsequent studies. Winnicott admired Klein so much that he actually wished to undergo a further analysis, with her, in spite of his many long years with Strachey. In Phyllis Grosskurth's comprehensive biography of Melanie Klein, one finds a photograph of Melanie Klein's seventieth birthday dinner, held in 1952 at Kettner's restaurant in the Soho section of London. The remarks made by Klein and Joan Riviere—his clinical supervisor and his analyst, respectively—must have devastated Winnicott.
