Table Of Contenttea with
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WINNICOTT
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tea with
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WINNICOTT
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Brett Kahr
With illustrations by
Alison Bechdel
KARNAC
First published in 2016 by
Karnac Books
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2016 by Brett Kahr
The rights of Brett Kahr to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted in
accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978–1–78220–342–1
Edited, designed, and produced by Communication Crafts
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
To Lisa and Marcel,
Two of my most favourite pre-posthumous dramatis personae,
With deep love and affection
“. . . a highly satisfactory experience such as may be obtained
at a concert or at the theatre or in a friendship.”
Dr Donald W. Winnicott, “The Capacity to Be Alone”
(The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1958, p. 419)
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In this new series of “posthumous interviews” we have resurrected
the most famous psychoanalysts from the dead and have invited them
for a frank and detailed conversation about their lives and their work.
DonalD Winnicott returns to his consulting room in London’s
Chester Square to reminisce about his childhood, his training,
his work at Paddington Green Children’s Hospital, his technical
experiments with patients, and even the morning of his death
and, also, provides readers with a comprehensive survey of his
many contributions to developmental psychology and to clinical
practice.
SigmunD FreuD pays another visit to Vienna’s renowned Café Landt-
mann, where he had often enjoyed reading newspapers and sip-
ping coffee. Freud explains how he came to invent psychoanalysis,
speaks bluntly about his feelings of betrayal by Carl Gustav
Jung, recounts his flight from the Nazis, and so much more, all
the while explaining his theories of symptom formation and
psychosexuality.
John BoWlBy takes us on a grouse-shooting expedition – his favour-
ite weekend passion – through the English countryside, while
lambasting his colleagues for their failures to understand the true
origins of mental illness.
melanie Klein teaches us some of her favourite kitchen recipes while
discussing the art of talking with patients.
These posthumous interviews with icons – beautifully written, con-
cisely composed, steeped in historical rigour, and full of hitherto
unpublished archival gems – will provide students and qualified
professionals alike with a master-class in psychological theory and
practice, comfortably contained within one portable, affordable, and
lavishly illustrated volume.
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CONTENTS
aBout the author anD illuStrator ix
Introductory note 1
Dramatis personae 3
THE INTERVIEW
cup 1 The resurrection of Dr Winnicott 7
cup 2 The making of a maverick 21
cup 3 An undistinguished physician 43
cup 4 On Strachey’s couch 57
cup 5 Mrs Klein and the “sub-Kleinians” 69
cup 6 Lurching towards war 85
cup 7 Surviving hatred 113
cup 8 A crash course in Winnicottiana 135
cup 9 The white heat of the consulting room 163
cup 10 A psychoanalytic maestro 181
Epilogue: How I came to meet Winnicott 199
Biographical regiSter 205
recommenDeD reaDingS 247
acKnoWleDgementS 255
261
reFerenceS
275
inDex
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR
Brett Kahr (Author) has worked in the mental health profes-
sion for over thirty-five years. He is Senior Fellow at the Tavistock
Centre for Couple Relationships at the Tavistock Institute of Medical
Psychology in London, and Consultant in Psychology to the Bowlby
Centre. His first book on Winnicott won the Gradiva Award for
Biography in 1997. His upcoming book is entitled Winnicott’s Anni
Horribiles: The Creation of “Hate in the Counter-Transference”, an his-
torical study of Winnicott’s famous paper. Co-Editor of the Karnac
Books’ “History of Psychoanalysis Series”, he is also a Trustee of
the Freud Museum, London. He maintains an independent practice
for individuals and couples in Hampstead, North London.
Alison Bechdel (Illustrator) is an American cartoonist. Origi-
nally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out
For, she came to critical success in 2006 with her graphic memoir
Fun Home, which was subsequently adapted as a musical and won the
Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. She is a 2014 recipient of the
MacArthur “Genius” Award.
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Description:Donald Winnicott is currently the most popular author in contemporary psychoanalysis. His writings are cited in bibliographies even more frequently than those by Sigmund Freud. And yet how many mental health professionals have actually managed to read and digest the nearly twenty published volumes o
