Letter to a Patient

Winnicott’s letter to a patient and the circumstances of the patient’s paintings being therapeutic.

Letter to Renata Gaddini

Winnicott’s letter to Renata Gaddini discussing the merits of his two prefaces for the book The Family and Individual Development in relation to her translation of it into Italian.

Letter to Donald Meltzer

Winnicott’s letter to the psychoanalyst Donald Meltzer on the Kleinian group’s attendance at British Psychoanalytic Society Scientific Meetings only for Kleinians’ papers. In Meltzer’s paper, Winnicott challenges and discusses at length Meltzer’s use of the terms ‘dependence on the internal mother’ and ‘envy’.

Review: Absent: School Refusal as an Expression of Disturbed Family Relationships

In Winnicott’s review of the book Absent: School Refusal as an Expression of Disturbed Family Relationships by Max Clyne, he comments on Clyne’s awareness that school refusal is to be distinguished from truancy in children. The difficulties of children leaving their parents (separation anxieties) is recognised by Winnicott.

On Cardiac Neurosis in Children

In this paper, Winnicott revisits his early work on cardiac neurosis in children based on his experience of running the London Rheumatic Clinic between the wars. He states that the key to good clinical sense in the diagnosis of rheumatism was to take a full history and give a physical examination. In positive diagnoses, the child’s activity would be restricted, but in around half of the cases the child could be diagnosed as non-choreic and therefore not liable to heart disease, thus allowing the doctor to manage child’s difficulties without restricting his or her activity. Winnicott states that this is where psychiatry gives a definite and positive diagnostic contribution, when the symptomatology can be accounted for in terms of the child’s normal variables due to his personality and emotional development.

Letter to a Confidant

Winnicott’s letter to a confidant on her ‘split-off’ male and female elements, their relation to homosexuality and bisexuality and her life as a new mother.

Review: Dibs: In Search of Self

Winnicott’s review of Virginia Axline’s book Dibs: In search of self, which he calls a convincing record of a successful treatment of a child who at 5 might have been labelled ‘autistic’.

Letter to Herbert Rosenfeld

Winnicott’s letter to Dr Rosenfeld on Hans Thorner’s paper and on a comment Rosenfeld made to Clare Winnicott in supervision about the analyst needing to accept the patient’s projections.

Letter to Hans Thorner

Winnicott’s letter to Hans Thorner on the use of the phrase ‘death instinct’ within the British Psychoanalytic Society.

Letter to The Times

Winnicott’s letter to The Times on King George III’s mental illness and Robert Graves’s views on poetry and psychoanalysis.