The International Journal of

Int J Psychoanal (2012) 93:1439–1448 doi: 10.1111/1745-8315.12020

‘‘On Winnicott’s clinical innovations in the analysis

of adults’’: Introduction to a controversy

Rachel B. Blass
Heythrop College, 23 Kensington Square, London W8 5HN, UK –
r.blass@ucl.ac.uk

Contemporary psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists who

align themselves with Winnicott’s thinking all adopt many of the new theo-
retical concepts that he introduced and his novel conceptualisations of the
ways in which the environment and the maternal object impact upon early
child development. The true and false self, the transitional object and space,
primary maternal preoccupation, the good-enough mother, the use of the
object, play, impingement and the illusion of omnipotence are the basic
building blocks of almost any Winnicottian framework. These concepts and
conceptualizations are commonly applied not only to the understanding of
the developmental process, but also to the understanding of the clinical one.
Despite this shared conceptual framework, there are some significant differ-
ences in the ways in which Winnicott is read and made use of. In particular,
those who rely on Winnicott’s work appear to differ in the degree to which
they believe his contributions constitute a revision of psychoanalytic thinking
and practice. It would seem that these differences become most pronounced
when it comes to Winnicott’s contributions to analytic practice with adults.
At one end of the spectrum, many regard Winnicott as a particularly sen-
sitive analyst working within conventional analytic frameworks and develop-
ing them; although he elaborates, modifies, corrects and innovates, his
theorizing and practice are thought to remain within the mainstream of the
analytic thinking of Freud and Klein. From this perspective, Winnicott’s
contribution to psychoanalysis is relatively limited, and classical analysts
can readily make use of his central clinical innovations without giving up
their fundamental analytic stance.
In contrast to this view of Winnicott as essentially traditional, we find at
the other end of the spectrum those who consider his approach to be radical
and revolutionary. In particular, his innovations are thought to lead us to a
wholly new approach to the therapeutic process. Winnicott himself has
maintained that analysts may, at times, have to put aside psychoanalytic
practice—defined by him as verbal interpretation of the transference—to
practice ‘‘something else that we deem to be appropriate to the occasion’’
(Winnicott, 1962, p. 170). ‘‘And’’, he added, ‘‘why not?’’ (ibid). From this
perspective, Winnicott’s contribution takes us beyond the very boundaries
of the psychoanalytic. There is, of course, a range of positions between sup-

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Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA on behalf of the Institute of Psychoanalysis
1440 R. B. Blass

porters of Winnicott who see him within a broad traditional mainstream

and those who see him as revolutionary.
It may be suggested that, in part, what underlies the differences between
these opposing views are different definitions of the boundaries of psycho-
analysis. That is, in discussing the nature of Winnicott’s contribution the
question at stake is not only what did Winnicott add, but where do his addi-
tions stand in relation to what one considers as essential to psychoanalysis.
This question—of the boundaries or definition of psychoanalytic theory and
practice—lies at the heart of many of the central controversies within our
field. What seem to be differences over facts regarding human nature and its
development, or over what is most clinically helpful, are often actually dif-
ferences over what kinds of facts and interventions are relevant to psycho-
analysis as we define it. Such underlying issues of definition surfaced in the
course of some of the controversial topics examined in this section of the
IJP in the past and will be addressed more directly in some of those
planned for the future (e.g. on the role of phantasy in defining clinical psy-
choanalysis and on whether the concept of the unconscious is essential to
psychoanalytic thinking).
In the present controversy, we have set out to explore the different ways in
which Winnicott’s clinical innovations are understood by those who, in dif-
ferent circles, are identified with his clinical approach, have taught and writ-
ten about it. We thought this would be more interesting and would allow for
a more refined understanding of his innovations than considering familiar
differences between Winnicott’s representatives and his critics. Thus, with
the hope of highlighting variance within this broad group, three authors of
very different backgrounds and affiliations were selected. They were invited
to present their views on Winnicott’s contribution to clinical practice with
adults and the extent to which they regard these as innovative relative to his
predecessors. They were also asked to assess and demonstrate their value to
psychoanalysis per se. With the hope of getting concise statements on the
issues at hand, the authors were given a 5000 word limit.
The invited authors are Jan Abram (London), Vincenzo Bonaminio
(Rome), and Michael Eigen (New York). Jan Abram, of the British Psycho-
analytical Society, is associated with the Contemporary Freudian group
there. In the past she served as director of the Squiggle Foundation and
until recently was Honorary Archivist of the Winnicott Trust. She is the
author of The Language of Winnicott (2007 [first published in 1996]) and
Donald Winnicott Today (2013), which appeared just three months ago.
Vincenzo Bonaminio is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Italian
Psychoanalytic Society. He is also a child analyst and director of both iW:
Winnicott Institute for the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Children, Adoles-
cents and the Parental Couple and Winnicott-Centro in Rome. He co-edits
Richard e Piggle: The Italian Journal for the Study of the Child and the Ado-
lescent and the Psicoanalisi Contemporanea books series. In 2010 he pub-
lished Nas Margens de Mundos Infinitos..., which offers a contemporary
perspective on transitional space in the analytic situation.
Michael Eigen is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the National Psy-
chological Association for Psychoanalysis (an association not affiliated with

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 Winnicott’s clinical innovations: introduction to a controversy 1441

the IPA), and teaches and supervises on the NYU Postdoctoral Program in
Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Over the years, he has presented his per-
spective on Winnicott’s thinking in numerous papers and books, including
The Psychotic Core (1986), The Electrified Tightrope (1993), Psychic Dead-
ness (1996), The Psychoanalytic Mystic (1998), Toxic Nourishment (1999),
Damaged Bonds (2001), Flames from the Unconscious: Trauma, Madness and
Faith (2009) and Contacts with the Depths (2011).
The ideas put forth by each of the authors are complex, gradually evolve
in intricate ways, and are not easy to compare (in part, because they are
described in strikingly different writing styles). All three authors, however,
speak of Winnicott’s close ties to the clinical approaches of Freud and
Klein. At the same time, they all emphasize the radical innovation—indeed
the revolution—that Winnicott’s clinical work constitutes. The articles differ
to some extent on the nature of the revolution and thus can be seen to raise,
in different ways, fundamental questions regarding Winnicott’s contribution
to psychoanalysis: are his clinical innovations indeed compatible with the
traditional notions of analytic thinking and practice from which they
depart? In what ways may they be considered essentially psychoanalytic
ones? Do they entail, at times, taking steps beyond the limits of psychoanal-
ysis? To highlight some of the authors’ central themes and the different
ways in which such controversial issues emerge from them I will briefly out-
line their papers.
Michael Eigen discusses three insights that he regards as central to Winni-
cott’s clinical contribution. In skeletal form these are: destructiveness is
essentially creative; aloneness is an important part of development; and in
the course of analytic treatment, it is important to go back to states of
unbearable breakdown that originally occurred in early childhood. The sig-
nificance of these positions, Eigen says, can only be understood within the
relational context associated with the early dependence of the infant on his
mother. That is, it is the emotional presence of the object in the face of
destructiveness, aloneness and breakdown that makes these states creative
and valuable to personal being and development.
These three positions are central to Winnicott’s contribution to adult anal-
ysis, according to Eigen, because they affect much more than the analyst’s
understanding of the patient; they also affect the analyst’s understanding of
the analytic process and goals. The analytic relationship comes to be
regarded as one that aims to emulate a good mother-child relationship and
replace the faulty original one. This, in turn, affects the stance and role that
the analyst adopts within analysis.
Eigen stresses the tie of these innovations to the approaches of Freud and
Klein. For example, he considers Winnicott’s ideas on aggression to be remi-
niscent of those of Freud before his introduction of the death instinct. Thus,
he argues that Winnicott’s ideas are additions to those of Freud and Klein,
but they do not come to replace them. Aggression as creativity, for instance,
does not deny the notion that aggression can derive from frustration and
guilt.
At the same time, however, Eigen says that Winnicott’s ideas involve
something more that makes them radically different from those of Freud

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1442 R. B. Blass

and Klein. In contrast to them, Eigen explains, Winnicott’s new perspective

allows us to see that ‘‘destructiveness does not have to be controlled or
atoned for, but can breathe, enter into feeling communion and further
creation ⁄ discovery of feeling’’. Later, Eigen argues that this perspective on
destructiveness is a ‘‘different alternative to the monster within, guilt, horror
at one’s makeup, and efforts at control, alternating with breakdown of con-
trol—important as all these are’’. In other words, Winnicott not only allows
for creativity to emerge from the turmoil of destruction, he also removes the
individual’s negative evaluation, and hence fear and guilt, in regard to the
individual’s own destructiveness. An alternative vision of the person is
offered in which horror and atonement, and what Eigen refers to as the
judgmental stance of traditional psychoanalysis in regard to dependency, are
put aside. Instead, a relational presence, breathing and communion assume
prominence. It is, as Eigen says, a ‘‘joy based model’’.
Dependence and the return to early trauma also take on new meaning in
the light of this alternative vision. Eigen emphasizes the value and curative
potential of just being in the dependent relationship, of together encounter-
ing early traumatic experience in a live way. He writes of the return to the
moment of early breakdown that it is ‘‘not only or mainly a matter of inter-
preting or ‘correcting’ delusions but of living through something or … going
through something together…What is lived through and gradually estab-
lished is a rhythm of breakdown-recovery’’, a rhythm that Eigen refers to as
‘‘faith’’. Although all analytic approaches emphasize lived experience and
relationship—one finds this view already in Freud’s earliest ideas on trans-
ference—here it is suggested that maintaining a certain quality of relational
experience, of ‘‘psychic support’’, is what allows for the person to be and
develop.
The consequences for treatment are profound. As Eigen states, ‘‘the thera-
pist functions as a kind of holding environment creating an emotional atmo-
sphere that facilitates coming through’’. From the examples that Eigen
brings, it may be seen that this includes actively giving the patient what the
patient feels he needs from the analyst, as well as offering the opportunity
for practice in recovering from potentially catastrophic moments when the
analyst fails to meet these needs. Verbal interventions can serve this atmo-
sphere in a very direct way. For example, Eigen says that he (Eigen), on
occasion, admits to patients that he has been ‘‘done in’’ and may even say,
‘‘You killed me, but not forever’’. Reliance on the new vision of the per-
son—the joy-based model—allows for this kind of directness: from this per-
spective, the analyst’s words can be accepted as such, if they are said with
emotional presence and attuned to the patient’s state of need. Underlying
phantasies or unconscious drives would have little impact on what is
expressed in the interaction.
Eigen does take care to note that Winnicott’s additions do not do away
with what preceded him: frustration and guilt, delusions and interpretation
still have a place within his model of joy, albeit a diminished one. As I
pointed out above, however, one may wonder whether traditional analytic
concepts and practices can in fact co-exist with those proposed within this
model. That is, can Winnicott’s vision of the person, according to Eigen’s

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 Winnicott’s clinical innovations: introduction to a controversy 1443

account, ever be truly compatible with the traditional psychoanalytic vision?

If not, there is room to reflect on what makes it essentially psychoanalytical
in nature.
Jan Abram’s essay, from the very start, emphasizes how firmly Winnicott
is rooted within traditional analytic thinking and practice. She points to the
essential reliance of his ideas on those of both Freud and Klein. In her
introductory sections, she mentions Winnicott’s analytic training lineage
from Freud via Strachey. She also takes care to note that Winnicott’s unu-
sual writing style should not lead us wrongly to regard him as either an art-
ist or a paediatrician. Rather, in line with analytic tradition, his work is that
of scientific discovery from within the analytic situation. These discoveries
are developments of Freud’s observations, according to Abram, but are nev-
ertheless far-reaching. Discoveries on which Abram places special emphasis
are those of ‘‘maternal care’’ and ‘‘dependency’’, which Freud only alludes
to in passing, but which Winnicott makes ‘‘pivotal to his clinical
approach’’.
Abram goes on to describe Winnicott’s innovations within analytic prac-
tice and then to explain the model of the mind and its earliest development
that grounds this practice. She begins by presenting Winnicott’s views of
‘‘standard’’ and ‘‘modified’’ analysis, the latter which is required with cer-
tain patients. Relying on Winnicott’s ‘‘The aims of psycho-analytical treat-
ment’’ (1962) and the terminology he uses there, three phases of ‘‘standard
analysis’’ are described. In the first, the analyst’s ego support helps the
development of the patient’s ego support. In the second, the analytic process
brings about ‘‘all kinds of experimenting…in terms of ego independence’’.
In the third, the patient ‘‘gather[s] all things into the area of personal
omnipotence’’ and takes back projections.
Following Winnicott, the phases described are presented in terms of how
the analysis affects the patient’s ego. When discussing the first phase, how-
ever, Abram also refers to the analyst’s role. She writes, ‘‘The analyst in a
‘standard analysis’ functions like the good enough mother with her new
born baby whose ego needs are supported by the m ⁄ other’s ego’’. Abram
considers this role to be in line with early Freudian analysis, which aimed at
the reinforcement of ego functions, but also to go beyond it through the rec-
ognition of the earliest parent–infant relationship. The implication of this
relationship is that the ‘‘analyst has to be prepared to be the mother of the
early phases of life as well as the mother and father of the later stages of
development’’. At the same time, Abram stresses that ‘‘standard analysis’’
involves ‘‘psychic work in the transference-interpretation matrix of the ana-
lytic setting’’. In other words, as she quotes from Winnicott, it involves
‘‘verbaliz[ing] the nascent conscious in terms of the transference’’.
‘‘Modified analysis’’, in contrast, requires doing things outside of that
matrix. The analyst must meet or adapt to needs and in so doing ‘‘play a
part’’, rather than verbalize what is going on in the transference. Such modi-
fications are thought necessary for patients who do not function in a sym-
bolic mode and who can only revisit early states of failure (which are
responsible for their functional limitations) through a phase of ‘‘acting out’’.
Abram considers this practice to be radical. Citing Winnicott, she maintains

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that modified analysis in fact involves practicing something other than anal-
ysis—something that is needed under the circumstances and that analysts
should be doing.
Although she claims that this central Winnicottian contribution is ‘‘con-
troversial’’, Abram also stresses its mainstream nature. She argues that act-
ing out is equivalent to ‘‘actualization’’ (Green) and ‘‘role responsiveness’’
(Sandler), and may be regarded as ‘‘the stuff of analysis’’ that takes place
‘‘in every analytic treatment’’. Indeed, she acknowledges that not all analysts
would agree with some of the modifications that Winnicott himself prac-
ticed, such as changing the time frame, providing food, or holding the
patient’s head; but these, she explains, were carried out as a necessary preli-
minary step towards working within the transference and for a small num-
ber of patients.
Thus, the question of the way in which ‘‘modified analysis’’ may be con-
sidered essentially analytical in nature comes again to the fore. One may
also wonder whether its practice should be regarded as exceptional or com-
monplace. While allegedly non-standard, the circumstances that Winnicott
lists as indicating modification seem to cover quite a wide range: e.g. a suc-
cessful false self, a dominant ill parent, or dominant fear of madness. In this
context, it may be suggested that the more frequently applied, the greater
the impact of Winnicott’s innovation. But perhaps even Winnicott’s ‘‘stan-
dard analysis’’ should be regarded as involving a major shift in terms of
analytic practice. In its first phase, as described by Abram, it too seems to
require a kind of active stance—playing a part, becoming a good supportive
parent, responsive to need—that may be thought to stand in opposition to
Winnicott’s own definition of psychoanalytic practice proper.
In the next part of Abram’s paper, she elaborates Winnicott’s view of the
early state of the infant. This state, she says, is prior to the state in which
the infant has internal objects and object relationships. Abram discusses the
important role that the environment—the emotional and material presence
of the mother—plays at that time. In this context Abram, like Eigen, refers
to Winnicott’s new ideas on aggression, survival and creativity. However,
her main focus is on the infant’s capacity to imagine and to think, which is
regarded as much more primitive than how Klein describes it. ‘‘Holding’’
provided through ‘‘maternal preoccupation’’ is noted as especially important
to the development of the earliest forms of thinking and a prerequisite to
the later development of the more advanced mental processes described by
Freud and Klein. These ideas on early development explain how the patient
who lacked proper environmental support could come to have deficient sym-
bolic capacities, which require the analyst to return to the moment of early
failure or breakdown and provide the missed support.
While noting that these ideas are quite distinct from those of Freud and
Klein, Abram turns to emphasize how Winnicott’s thinking is well-grounded
in that of Freud. Freud’s thinking, she says of Winnicott, was ‘‘in his
bones’’. Here Abram adduces the work of several contemporary French psy-
choanalysts to make the links and shows how Winnicott’s ideas on the state
of the mind of the infant and the role of the mother in its development take
Freud’s concepts and give them new clinical relevance.

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 Winnicott’s clinical innovations: introduction to a controversy 1445

Abram’s discussion of these ideas and her illustration of their clinical

impact through one of Winnicott’s vignettes once again lead us to reflect on
the nature of Winnicott’s contribution to psychoanalysis per se. One issue is
whether Winnicott’s view of the infant’s mind as dependent on the mother’s
support is compatible with the essential framework of Freudian analysis.
More importantly, is his position that the analyst should focus on the actu-
ality of early development and take on the role of the early mother in
‘‘modified’’ (but perhaps also in ‘‘standard’’) analysis compatible with the
essential framework of Freudian analysis? That is, do Winnicott’s new devel-
opmental and clinical frameworks produce a form of clinical practice that
continues Freud’s legacy, as Abram suggests; or is this new practice opposed
to traditional Freudian psychoanalysis? If it is opposed, on what other
grounds may it be considered essentially psychoanalytical in nature? And is
it important to set forth such grounds? To recall, Winnicott asks us: ‘‘why
not’’ step outside of analytic practice if this is what is needed?
Vincenzo Bonaminio’s paper offers yet another view of how Winnicott’s
contribution is both revolutionary and yet grounded within psychoanalysis.
What is revolutionary, according to Bonaminio, has to do with the recogni-
tion of the analytic situation as consisting in a deeply intimate two-person
relationship. When thinking of what is essential to psychoanalysis Winnicott
stressed the importance of ‘‘unconscious cooperation…growth and use of
intimacy’’, rather than the roles of drives and fantasies, Bonaminio argues.
He adds: ‘‘Had we ever heard this language before Winnicott?’’
Bonaminio also relates to the more personal tone in which Winnicott
speaks and to Winnicott’s call for the analyst to be more personally
involved. He writes, ‘‘The analyst’s response—his striving to be real and
alive for the patient—gives a unique imprint to the analysis of depression.’’
By ‘‘alive’’ I take Bonaminio to mean something more like authenticity than
mere survival. For this aliveness to be felt, Bonaminio suggests, the analyst
being himself is of utmost importance. But what does it mean for the analyst
to be himself—and what is revolutionary about this notion?
Bonaminio offers an answer to this question through his discussion of
Winnicott’s thinking on interpretation, which continues throughout the rest
of the paper. The discussion begins with and returns to an interpretation
that Winnicott gave to one of his patients. Winnicott reports that he told
this patient that nothingness lay at her centre. In writing about this interpre-
tation, he remarks that its essence was that her true self was a ‘‘dissociated
self which is nothing.’’ In response to the interpretation, the patient fell
‘‘dead asleep’’ for twenty minutes. When she awoke, Winnicott continued
with his line of interpretation and the patient fell asleep again and stayed
asleep until the end of hour. In this way, Winnicott asserts, the patient
expressed her resistance to the interpretation, but also recognition of the
truth of Winnicott’s interpretation.
According to Bonaminio, this episode captures Winnicott’s ability to go
with the flow of the session. Winnicott does not force the patient to commu-
nicate, but rather tolerates the sleeping and her resistance. He is himself in
this encounter and is allowing his patient to be herself. This mode of being
present, Bonaminio says, is not so much a mental state of thinking as a

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1446 R. B. Blass

somatic state of ‘‘breathing’’. He argues that thinking, the use of mind, in

part serves as a defence against the integrity of the psyche-soma. For Bo-
naminio, concern with this totality of the self and its oscillation between
integration and non-integration distinguishes Winnicott from what Bonami-
nio regards as Bion’s more mind-oriented concern and Klein’s concern with
parts of the self and internal objects.
At this point, Bonaminio elaborates further on the relational nature of
Winnicott’s interpretation. He discusses how the patient’s resistance also
expresses the analyst’s failure to maintain the primary holding environment.
He then suggests a more complex and enigmatic relational dimension that
involves the transformation of intrapsychic experiences into intersubjective
ones through the analyst’s participation. This takes place, for example,
through Winnicott’s ‘‘dreaming’’ and ‘‘musing’’ about the patient’s sleep, or
through giving expression in his interpretations to the limitations of his
understanding of her sleep.
Bonaminio emphasizes that, in general, according to Winnicott the ana-
lyst’s interpretation expresses his limits, which then become the ‘‘somatic
limits for the patient’’. At the same time, the interpretation is regarded as a
fulfilment of the maternal role of mirroring. The mother’s role ‘‘of giving
back to the baby the baby’s own self’’ (Winnicott, 1967, p. 138) is described
as the best metaphor for the analytic relationship and the function of inter-
pretation. The analyst reflects back to the patient what he has communi-
cated and in so doing the patient’s self is discovered.
Bonaminio contrasts this view of interpretation as a sensitive and timely
communication of ‘‘giving the patient back what the patient brings’’ (ibid)
with that of interpretation as an act of disclosure of unconscious phantasy,
which comes from the analyst’s need to show his knowledge. Regarding
Winnicott’s kind of interpretation, he writes:
Here interpretation abandons the realm of the analyst’s pretence of omnipotently
knowing everything about the patient’s unconscious feelings, drives, and desires.
Instead, the analyst recognizes the limits of his understanding and presents himself
to the patient as a real object that can be used for the patient’s benefit… For Win-
nicott, the object here is not only the ‘‘internal object’’ created as the result of
infant ⁄ patient projections.
Bonaminio goes on to explain that he is not speaking of a real object in the
sense of an external one, but rather of a kind of realness that is ‘‘determined
by its [the object’s] capacity to survive attacks’’.
How then does the relational presence of the analyst called for by Winni-
cott constitute a significant contribution? Bonaminio’s answer is complex.
On the one hand, he speaks of Winnicott’s contribution in terms of his
emphasis on sensitive, personal and timely interpretation and on greater
awareness of the involvement and impact of the analyst’s individuality. If
expressing these personal qualities is not construed as opposed to the inter-
pretation of drives and phantasies and as coming to replace such interpreta-
tion, then Winnicott’s views would definitely be acceptable within
traditional psychoanalysis. On this reading, however, the revolutionary
dimensions of his work become less apparent.

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 Winnicott’s clinical innovations: introduction to a controversy 1447

On the other hand, Bonaminio’s account of Winnicott points to a new

notion of ‘‘realness’’ at the heart of the analytic relationship and process.
This is realness both of the patient (e.g. in the discovery of his true self, his
centre) and of the analyst (who is to be alive, a real object, not internal or
external). This view may require us to regard the person in a more holistic
fashion than we do when we think of the person as made up of opposing
wishes, drives, internal objects, and unconscious phantasies. In addition,
accessing what is real seems to be posited as a goal of the therapeutic pro-
cess and one that is attained through a kind of immediate encounter. This
encounter requires that the analyst take on a maternal role of seeing and
being with the patient, rather than interpreting the unconscious as it
emerges in the relationship. These ideas may indeed be revolutionary, but
they raise the question of their compatibility with traditional views of the
person and of analytic practice. They also invite us to wonder about what
then defines their relevance to psychoanalysis per se.
To summarize, the emphases of the three papers are plainly different:
Eigen is concerned with an evaluative shift, Abram with insights into early
states of mind, and Bonaminio with the need for real relationships. And yet,
the papers are substantially similar: all three authors point to notable inno-
vations that Winnicott has introduced into adult analysis. All emphasize
Winnicott’s very special personal approach, refer to the clinical source of
his ideas, and describe many common features. These features include the
following views: that aggression is creative, that there is a state of relation-
ship not influenced by internal objects, and that the analyst should adopt
the maternal role in order to meet certain needs of the patient (needs, which
according to Eigen and Abram, were deficiently met by the mother in the
past). For all three authors, ‘‘being together’’ becomes a crucial part of the
process, one that at times comes instead of interpretation.
Moreover, these innovations are regarded by each of the authors as taking
place mainly outside of a realm of drives and unconscious phantasies
(although there may be some variation in the way the authors regard the
actuality ⁄ reality of the relevant non-phantasy domain). As we have seen,
Abram directly addresses the issue, which Winnicott himself raises, of ana-
lysts having at times to work in ways that go beyond the boundaries of psy-
choanalytic practice. At the same time, however, the central theme of all
three papers is that Winnicott’s revisions, although in certain ways radical,
are psychoanalytical in essence, significantly founded on traditional psycho-
analysis, and derived from analytical work.
In these introductory comments I have tried to bring to the fore a few of
the questions that may be posed in regard to this general claim. These ques-
tions centre on a tension that may emerge between significantly changing
psychoanalysis and remaining within it. In particular, Winnicott’s claim that
his innovations involve overstepping the boundaries of analytic practice may
deserve further consideration. Some recurring questions that may help read-
ers reflect on these issues while reading the papers are: can Winnicott’s pro-
posed innovations coexist with the analytical ones from which they depart
and if so are they in fact radical? If not, what are the grounds on which
these innovations may be considered essentially analytical? Are his innova-

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1448 R. B. Blass

tions indeed based on clinical ⁄ empirical facts in such a way that their incor-
poration into psychoanalytic practice is clearly necessary or are they based
on adopting a new viewpoint regarding what is important to the analytic or
therapeutic process and its goals? When the analyst actively takes on early
maternal roles and meets perceived needs in what sense does he maintain an
analytical one, serving analytical aims? Such questions lead us to deepen
our reflections on Winnicott, but also on how we conceive of what is specifi-
cally analytic about analytic practice.
Much more can be said about these papers, the differences between them,
and the controversial questions they touch upon. As always in the contro-
versy section, we invite the readership of the IJP to participate in the dia-
logue. We look forward to hearing reflections both from those who differ
with Winnicott’s approach and from those who are identified with it. To
facilitate participation, comments may be posted on the IJP’s website http://
www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/ijpa/discussion.htm. This time we also hope to
publish a selection of the readers’ comments in a forthcoming issue of the
journal, alongside the authors’ responses to one another. We feel that in this
way we will be able to further enrich the discussion of Winnicott’s contribu-
tion to psychoanalytic practice initiated by the papers of this controversy.
References
Abram J (2007). The Language of Winnicott: A Dictionary of Winnicott’s Use of Words. 2nd edn.
London: Karnac Books.
Abram J (ed.) (2013) Donald Winnicott Today. London: Routledge.
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