Presenter:  Lesley Caldwell, MA, PhD, FIPA

This paper aims to extend the understanding of Donald Winnicott’s theoretical and clinical assumptions through his concern with play and playing, and its links with the development of psychic flexibility.  It approaches his work  through his extensive clinical experience with babies and children, and with neurotic and more  disturbed adults. It highlights the need for the analyst to meet the patient on their own terms and be prepared to wait for them  to arrive at  a quality of psychic life through the continuing presence of the analyst. Dr. Caldwell beliees that playing originates in and depends on the patient’s capacity to be, and to live from that being, most especially with oneself and only then with others, though Winnicott himself argues that these different ways of being initially emerge together. Dr. Caldwell illustrates this through his brief work with a child and his analysis with  an adult woman.