ABSTRACT
The scope and methods of the project are outlined against a richness of studies on Winnicott that have privileged the clinical at the expense of the philosophical. Rather than a balancing act between the two orientations, their juxtaposition explores the philosophy as neither cause nor effect, neither produced by nor producing of the clinic, but as produced alongside—which is to say according to procedures akin to those of—the clinic. As a result, Winnicott's approach comes through as a work always in progress, drawing on what has already begun (‘this and that’), somewhere (‘here and there’), curtailed by neither an overarching paradigm nor a disciplinary boundary, of a work that thrives in the abundance of its ideas and origins. Winnicott's is a porous work whose components (abstractions, techniques and vignettes) are often heterogeneous and idiosyncratic. Eventually, such components make themselves available, to be found, as the ‘this and that’ and the ‘here and there’ of future episodes of play and work—psychoanalytic or otherwise—that may have little if anything to do with labels and pedigrees.
