The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott

Volume 10, Therapeutic Consultations in Child Psychiatry, a posthumous publication of twenty-one case histories of children and adolescents taken over a ten-year period, is introduced by the Florentine analyst and child and adolescent psychiatrist, Marco Armellini. It concerns the application of psychoanalysis to child psychiatry. The technique in these reported cases usually takes the form of what Winnicott describes as the Squiggle Game. Winnicott states that what happens in the game and in the whole interview depends on the use made of the child’s experience, including the material that presents itself. In these consultations, unlike what happens in ongoing intensive analytic cases, interpretation of the unconscious is not the main feature. The backbone of all the work described here is the theory of the emotional development of the individual.