Winnicott´´'s Intellectual Journey

Abstract

This article deals with the professional and theoretical journey of D. W. Winnicott that exert a marked influence on his thought. Various aspects of the debate that he implicitly and explicitly entered into with different areas of scientific knowledge of his era are underlined - pediatrics, psychiatry, especially infantile, academic psychology and his principal interlocutor, traditional psychoanalysis, represented by Freud and Melanie Klein - regarding central themes in his work, such as the nature of the psique, heredity, human development and psychic health and illness. Keywords: Maturation, Facilitating environment, Organistic medicine, Pediatrics, Infantile psychiatry, Academic psychology, Interpsychic processes, Paradigm.