Selected Letters of D. W. Winnicott

D. W. Winnicott was a central figure in British psychoanalysis in the generation following Freud. Suspicious of dogma and deeply committed to the value of his own observations, he maintained a highly personal therapeutic and theoretical style. His common sense, humor, warmth, and individualism made him resemble an old-fashioned family doctor, while at the same time his soaring intellect addressed the most fundamental matters of the mind.

Winnicott was a skilled writer with a gift for making his ideas accessible to general readers as well as professionals. He was also a prolific correspondent. This selection of his letters – to colleagues, to the press, to people who wrote him about their problems – displays his lively style as well as his characteristic outspokenness and spontaneity.