Attachment, Play, and Authenticity: Winnicott in a Clinical Context

by Steven Tuber

D.W. Winnicott is likely the most influential and evocative child therapist/theoretician who ever lived. His work provides the underpinning for much of the empirical and clinical enterprises regarding the psychodynamic/developmental process over the past half-century. Using over 25 of his most thought provoking, indeed provocative conceptual and clinical writings as its base, the first edition of Attachment, Play and Authenticity provided a systematic construction of his theorizing and integrated it with his clinical work. In this new edition, each of the chapters that heretofore began with a description of Winnicott's unique ability to link Freudian drive theory with what we now call object relations theory by describing the newborn as a being with "predatory ideas" and the new mother as adaptively "preoccupied" with her baby, now provides extensive clinical vignettes to highlight each of his theoretical contributions. It then discusses the infant's innate need to "create" its mother; the dangers of a false compliance to an unreliable mother in order to survive; the dynamic dialectic between the baby's essential isolation and its need for others; and the capacity for hate as intrinsic to the humanization process. The role of play as the medium and hallmark of human potential, the creation of transitional phenomena to weather the aloneness of existence and the antisocial qualities inherent in the human condition are then all brought into play as pillars of his conceptual constructions. These themes are now constantly interwoven throughout the book with an analysis of both his clinical work and the transcripts of clinical sessions by beginning clinicians, so that Winnicott as preeminent clinician and theorist is brought to bear on the moment by moment give and take between child and therapist.

Genres: Psychology

258 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 8, 2008

Reviews

[Joanna]

As I may soon be seeing/doing child groups, this looks promising!

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winnicott's theories of the good-enough mother serving as the foundation for the True Self is still relevant to today's work in psychotherapy. The False (compliant) Self rules most of us and leads us away from our destinies.