I'm reading Alison Bechdel's [b:Are You My Mother?|11566956|Are You My Mother?|Alison Bechdel|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1344671126s/11566956.jpg|16507555], which reminds me how much I enjoyed reading Winnicott and how much his work informs the language I use as a therapist. ( )

Winnicott's style is unique. Often turgid and difficult to follow blended with passages of pristine clarity and startling immediacy. Probably my favorite psychoanalytic writer and thinker. ( )

The collection of papers which forms The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment has, as its main theme, the carrying back of the application of Freud's theories to infancy. Freud showed that psycho-neurosis has its point of origin in the interpersonal relationships of the first maturity, belonging to the toddler age. Dr Winnicott explores the idea that mental hospital disorders relate to failures of development in infancy. Without denying the importance of inheritance, he has developed the theory that schizophrenic illness shows up as the negative of processes that can be traced in detail as the positive processes of maturation in infancy and early childhood.