Winnicott, Donald Woods (1896—1971) English psychoanalyst, key member of the object relations school, and probably the most influential theorist of child psychoanalysis. Winnicott was born in Plymouth (UK) to a comfortably middle-class family. He went to boarding school in Cambridge, and entered university there with the intention of studying medicine. His plans were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. He worked as a medical trainee for a number of years in Cambridge; then he joined the navy as a medical officer in 1917, recommencing his medical training shortly thereafter. In 1923 he obtained a paediatrics post at the Paddington Green Children’s Hospital in London, where he worked for the next forty years. It is for his work as a child psychoanalyst that Winnicott is best known, particularly for his theory of the ‘transitional object’ (better known in popular discourse as the ‘security blanket’). This object enables the child to move between what Winnicott calls the subjective world of the ‘me’ and the objective world of the ‘not-me’, by trailing a little piece of the former into the alienating arena of the latter. Winnicott’s child development theories are built on the idea that the parent---he emphasizes the mother---should only be ‘good enough’, by which he means they should provide a safe environment for the child and satisfy their needs, but not smother the child by never allowing them to take a risk or compelling them to do something for themselves. The ‘perfect’ mother, he argues, stifles the child. Winnicott is a major influence on the popular Welsh psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. Further Reading: R. Rodman Winnicott: Life and Work (2003).