Introduction to Volume 2

In this essay Reeves looks at Winnicott’s development as a paediatrician and an analyst before and during World War Two. He discusses two of Winnicott’s groundbreaking theoretical papers on psychoanalysis written at this time (Primitive Emotional Development and The Observation of Infants in a Set Situation), his fame as a BBC broadcaster speaking to parents about the effects of evacuation on them and their children, his experience of the scientific controversies within the British Psychoanalytical Society at this time, his work in the Oxfordshire Q Camps for evacuated young people, and the beginnings of his distinctive contribution to metapyschological theories in psychoanalysis.

Home Again

In this broadcast and essay, Winnicott deals with the return of children after the end of the evacuation scheme set up during World War II. The essay deals with the official end of evacuation, with mothers returning to the care of their own homes from their stint working in factories, and with the concept of ‘home’ as understood by children.

Ocular Psychoneuroses of Childhood

In this paper, Winnicott states that whereas the majority of children coming to the eye doctor are able to accept the reassurance that their eyes are either well or that they simply need glasses, a proportion of children are unable to accept reassurance and will feel that something is being hidden from them. In these cases, specialised management is required.

Support for Normal Parents

This essay deals with the problems of communicating medical knowledge to parents who have a different kind of knowledge of their children. Winnicott describes and applauds the fact that the State in England allows parents freedom to choose to accept or refuse what the State offers in the way of helping programmes. He also stresses the importance of a doctor respecting the specialized knowledge of the parent when it comes to treating the ill child.

Their Standards and Yours

This broadcast and essay deals with the standards of parents and children and how they sometimes conflict. Winnicott holds that it must harm a child if a parent is so concerned with the establishment of her own rights in her own house that she fails to allow for the innate tendency of the infant and child to create a little world around himself that is his own affair and that has its own moral code.

Letter to the British Medical Journal

In this letter to The British Medical Journal on shock therapy Winnicott discusses the psychological implications of shock therapy and derides its wholesale use in treating mental disorders.

Psychological Aspects of Birching

This is a report of a lecture in which Winnicott summarizes his beliefs on the pros and cons of corporal punishment for children as part of the penal code of Britain.

Letter to The Lancet

In this letter to The Lancet on prefrontal leucotomy, Winnicott holds that the theory that underlying depression, psychosis, and schizophrenia are factors of emotional disturbance has not been disproved, and that surgery is a drastic step to take in the face of this uncertainty about the causes of some mental disorders.

A Doctor Looks at the Psychiatric Social Worker

In this speech delivered to a class of psychiatric social workers, Winnicott gives a personal and specialized account of the value and importance of the psychiatric social worker to the kind of work he does as a doctor, analyst and consultant to provide for children with special social needs.

Review: The Nursing Couple

In his review of M. P. Middlemore’s The Nursing Couple, Winnicott praises her detailed description of the mother-child relationship.