The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 66, No. 4, December 2006 (Ó 2006) DOI: 10.1007/s11231-006-9033-3

Book Review

Play and Reflection in Donald Winnicott’s Writings, by Andre´ Green. Karnac Books, London, 2005, 38 pp. This title includes a talk given by Andre´ Green in 2004 for the Donald Winnicott Memorial Lecture held annually by the Winnicott Clinic of Psychotherapy, along with an introduction by Brett Kahr and a brief closing comment by Cesare Sacerdoti. A short addendum to the lecture was added by Green. Andre´ Green, in my opinion, is a brilliant and thought-provoking author. This short piece is no exception. His talk, while condensed into the time frame of a brief lecture, is consistent with his broad-based perspective that seamlessly weaves together important threads of classical and contemporary psychoanalysis drawn from a wide variety of theoretical orientations. Focusing on Winnicott’s ideas about play, as explicated in his landmark book, Playing and Reality (1971), Green pulls on threads and expands specific notions into universal themes. Explicating both the positive and the negative elements in play and its relation to reality, he broadens and expands Winnicott’s views on the mother/infant dyad, which he cogently argues maintains a positive bias. Green disagrees that play belongs exclusively to health, as Winnicott asserts, and he notes that it ‘‘is in the presence of horror that we understand the necessity of play’’ (p. 8). Green is attentive to the violent, provocative, power-driven, and destructive aspects of play. For instance, he cites as an example the custom of certain South American tribes to play football with the heads of their captured enemies. Green prefaces his critique of Winnicott’s understanding of play by describing him as the ‘‘most creative mind in psychoanalysis after Freud’’ (p. 7). He places Winnicott’s ideas in perspective within the larger context of psychoanalytic theory and then further develops them. Winnicott’s ideas are rooted in his observations of the mother/ child relationship. Green challenges this foundational cornerstone of Winnicott’s work. Rather, Green sees play as innate and he points to its universality to support his position. Winnicott follows Freud’s lead, although there is no reference to the latter in Playing and Reality. Winnicott’s exclusive focus on the mother/child dyad, as Green sees it, is a reaction to the Kleinian neglect of the actual influence of the mother in the development of the mother imago for the child. Bion (1970), for instance, addresses this deficit in Kleinian theory through his formulation of reverie and the mother’s capacity for reverie through the containment, digestion, and feedingback of the infant’s projections. For Green, however, Winnicott’s emphasis ‘‘... poses questions for our ideas on identity and on the meaning of trying to reunite what has been separated’’ (p. 9). 399 0002-9548/06/1200-0399/1 Ó 2006 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

400 BOOK REVIEW

Typical of his writing, Green integrates many competing and seemingly conflicting psychoanalytic themes in creative and pragmatic ways. In this essay, one can trace the view elaborated in his landmark paper ‘‘The Dead Mother’’ (1980) by criticizing Winnicott’s exclusive emphasis on the mother/child dyad. It is from this perspective that Green emphasizes the triadic relationships that contribute to the infant’s object world. As he describes in this noteworthy paper, ‘‘the fate of the human psyche is to have always two objects and never one alone’’ (p. 146). From this vantage point Green positions himself outside of the mother/child dyad. Additionally, Green emphasizes intrapsychic processes that develop out of these early triadic relationships. It seems to me that it is precisely this difference in emphasis that enables Green to critically examine, expand, and synthesize Winnicott’s ideas into the larger body of psychoanalytic thought and, for this reviewer, what makes this essay a gem. It is exciting to read Green in this format, as the reader is presented with the opportunity to witness Green’s thinking process. His ideas are clearly and cogently expressed and strongly asserted. He challenges the reader to think critically about the ‘‘unsaid’’ in Winnicott’s writing. Green captures in this brief essay what he describes elsewhere as Winnicott’s emphasis on ‘‘a richly alive experiencing rather than an erudite schematizing’’ (Green, 1978, p. 293). He brings this sense to the reader in this wonderfully straightforward, thoughtful, rich, and playfully imaginative essay. In the addendum Green speculates on Winnicott’s countertransference in his analysis of Masud Kahn in relation to the latter’s failed analysis of Wynne Godly. Again, the reader is presented with a very brief but extremely interesting essay. REFERENCES Bion, W. (1970). Attention and interpretation, London: Karnac. Green, A. (1978). Potential space in psychoanalysis. In: On private madness (pp. 277–296). Madison, CT: International Universities Press. Green, A. (1980). The dead mother. In: On private madness (pp. 142–173). Madison, CT: International Universities Press. Winnicott, D. (1971). Playing and reality, New York: Routledge.

Paul C. Cooper, M.S., NCPsyA No. 5FE, 145 East 35th Street New York, NY 10016, USA [email protected]