Face to Face with Children: The Life and Work of Clare Winnicott edited by Joel Kanter; reviewed by Celia Downes

摘要

Clare Winnicott had a seemingly inexhaustible fund of stories; here is the story of how she and Donald first met. In 1941, during the Second World War, Clare Britton, aged 35, had recently completed the psychodynamically based Mental Health Course for social workers at the London School of Economics and was working in the Midlands for the Regional Health Authority. Donald Winnicott was making weekly visits as consultant psychiatrist to five hostels set up in Oxfordshire to house young evacuees who were too disturbed to be billeted out into private homes. Clare recalls her briefing from her boss: 'There's a difficult doctor working in that area. He comes down once a week. He doesn't believe in social work, because he likes to do it all himself. But it's really in quite a mess, and you must go and straighten the whole thing up' (pp. 128-9).