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Title: Playing and Reality by D. W. Winnicott ISBN: 0-415-03689-5 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: September, 1982 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $31.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Profound Opening into the Origins of Love and Culture
Comment: I am sorry to be so blunt about this, but previous reviewers Sierra and whomi do not appear to have really grasped Winnicott's work in this book (Sierra really has no clue at all). I have to respond at some length. But better to just read the book.
Winnicott (henceforward DWW) creates--in an enormous leap away from Freud--a vision of the complex and beautiful relationship of the infant and primary caregiver. In fact he speaks of the "mother infant dyad," rather than two separate persons during the first few months of life. From this union, if all goes well, the child gradual emerges and develops a sense of self through a process of disillusionment by the mother, in doses the infant can withstand.
As this occurs, the child symbolizes the lost union with the mother in what DWW calls "transitional objects" and begins, with the comfort of these objects, to begin to play in what DWW calls the "potential space." We might call it the realm of culture, of love, and of religion. Only with successful caregiving does the child have a chance to fully develop as a person, and DWW shows, in loving detail and case histories, how this happens throug the devotion of the mother.
This is why DWW's work is vital not merely to psychoanalysts, but to every person on this planet. His work has influenced two generations of therapists, theorists, and educators and, indirectly, every one of us. Further, his work has increasingly been supported by developmental insights gained from attachment theory and other experimental and verifiable studies.
I don't normally write reviews on amazon.com, but I could not let foolish misreadings by other reviewers stand unchallenged. Sierra's attitude is not only condescending, it is lazy. Enough said. As for whomi, I appreciate the thought there, but DWW *does* allow for gradual disillusionment through experience of the external world. If whomi missed it that does not mean it is not there. As for using Derrida to read DWW, I imagine that is useful. Go to it, if you like. But let's not forget that the work of Lacan is inconceivable without DWW, and the work of Derrida inconceivable without Lacan.
DWW indisputably and deservedly stands as one of the most influential psychological thinkers of the 20th century. Further, his use of language is simple and yet always provocative, finding new depth and meaning in the simplest of words.
Please consider reading DWW and judge for yourself.
Franz Metcalf
Rating: 2
Summary: Intellectual babble
Comment: Winnicott's book was difficult for me to get through. With the exception of his case studies, which were somewhat entertaining, it's nothing but monotonous intellectual babble. The title sounds interesting, but the content was not useful to me in the least. There is nothing in this book that would help a typical person to raise an emotionally healthy child. Winnicott is writing for a very select group of people: other psychoanalysts.
Nowadays, the majority of people in our society consider Freud to be a joke. While Winnicott does not agree with Freud about everything, he's Freudian enough for me to have trouble taking him seriously. His work seems old and outdated.
Winnicott writes his theory in a way which makes it sound complex and important. In actuality, it is extremely simple and could be summed up in a few sentences. I'm not going to say anything else about this book because it is not even worth thinking about or remembering.
Rating: 4
Summary: Clinically wonderful yet intellectually naive
Comment: Winnicott offers a subtle and lovingly careful interpretation of the "transitional space," the intermediary and paradoxical realm between subjective and objective, between childhood and maturity. He also provides some very interesting accounts of how various forms of madness may crystallize out of interpersonal disturbances distorting the transitional area.
However, as Winnicott himself notes, he is not an intellectual. His clinical sophistication and insight into life are
unfortunately counterbalanced by a certain degree of intellectual naivete. For instance, Winnicott's interpretation of childhood experience as essentially solipsistic, and of the blossoming of the self that is supposed to result from a support of this solipsism by the mother (and later the analyst) seem philosphically naive and theoretically untenable. For if the infant really starts of as a solipsist -ensconsced within a wish-fulfilling fantasy world- how can the mother ever affect her at all? Positing a gradual disillusionment, as W does, doesn't help much when his theory is set up in such a way that it does not allow for the perception of objective reality, and thus for the possibility of disillusionment, in the first place. As another reviewer notes, yes, W does say that gradual dissillusionment by the real world happens, but the problem is that much of W's understanding of how the infant's mind works doesn't fit with this claim, and therefore despite W's apparent relational leanings he is still conceptually stuck in a primary-narcissism type model.
I would suggest that readers read Winnicott lovingly but critically, and would specifically recommend that this book be juxtaposed with Derrida's critiques of Rousseau from _Of Grammatology_, which can be applied to Winnicott almost in toto.
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Title: Home Is Where We Start from: Essays by a Psychoanalyst by Donald Woods Winnicott ISBN: 0393306674 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 1990 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Holding and Interpretation: Fragment of an Analysis by Donald Woods Winnicott, M. Masud R. Khan ISBN: 0802131670 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: August, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Child, the Family, and the Outside World (Classics in Child Development) by Donald Woods Winnicott, Marshall H. Klaus ISBN: 0201632683 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: October, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Winnicott On the Child by D. W. Winnicott, Donald Woods Winnicott, T. Berry Brazelton, Benjamin Spock ISBN: 0738207640 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality by W. Ronald D. Fairbairn ISBN: 0415107377 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: October, 1994 List Price(USD): $31.95 |
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