ABSTRACT
Born in 1930 and educated in Sheffield, W. Ralph Layland was accepted as an undergraduate in the medical school of Sheffield University in 1950 and qualified Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MB ChB) in 1956. After completing the compulsory house jobs, he worked as a junior doctor on the general medical wards in two of the Sheffield teaching hospitals. Layland agrees that his 1981 paper "In Search of a Loving Father" is an extension of Winnicott's idea of the "good enough" mother. In it, like Winnicott, Layland is concerned with paradox and meaning. Over time a term takes on more and wider meaning. The "loving father" is neither seduced nor frightened by the infant's needs and wishes, and responds in a way that is appropriate to the infant-father relationship. Layland extends Winnicott's concept, bringing to attention a capacity in a father equivalent to the "good enough" capacity of a mother.
