Working with mothers and their new babies.

 One of the foremost child and adult psychoanalysts, not only in Britain, but across the world was Dr Donald Winnicott (1896-1971). He worked for many years after qualifying as a paediatrician at the Paddington Green Children’s Hospital from 1923. He was a formidable clinician and teacher and also broadcast a series of talks for mothers with their babies. In WW2 he was asked by the BBC to do some talks for new mothers. They were entitled: The Ordinary Devoted Mother and Her baby. Although not being a father himself, he had a natural emotional connection to both mothers and their babies. As a consequence, he coined the term the ‘good enough mother’. This was emblematic of his natural intuition. He ran a group for mothers and their young babies with a Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN). Many years later my consultant psychiatrist in child and family psychotherapy - asked me to take over his group, that he took over from Dr Winnicott, some years previously. So I have an interesting connection with Dr Winnicott. I ran the weekly group with a CPN for about 5 years, before leaving the NHS in Easter 1995 to work in private practice.