New Books In Psychoanalysis

Vincenzo Bonaminio, the Italian psychoanalyst and ambassador to the Winnicottian tradition offers us a clinical feast in his new publication, Playing at Work: Clinical Essays in a Contemporary Winnicottian Perspective on Technique (Routledge, 2022). At a moment when, as he argues, much writing in the field is driven by theory and theorizing, this book offers a veritable cornucopia of clinical description. Bonaminio shares his errors and his “almost but not quite” moments with patients. As such, he depicts the psychoanalytic quotidian—the bread and butter, the unexceptional, and the boring that make up most of the clinician’s day—and does so with humor and intelligence. He also shares with us the impact Winnicott has on his thinking in the consulting room and that impact is nothing less than total, from hill to vale. It is interesting to witness what immersion in a way of clinical thinking looks like clinically, and it is hard to discern where DWW begins and Bonaminio ends. It seems he has integrated the entir