This book brings together Dr Winnicott's work on psychoanalysis and child development during the period 1957–1963 and explores the idea that mental hospital disorders relate to failures of development in infancy. It focuses on the application of Freud's theories to infancy.

The collection of papers that forms The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment brings together Dr. Winnicott's published and unpublished papers on psychoanalysis and child development during the period 1957-1963. It has, as its main theme, the carrying back of the application of Freud's theories to infancy. Freud showed that psycho-neurosis has its point of origin in the interpersonal relationships of the first maturity, belonging to the toddler age. Dr Winnicott explores the idea that mental health disorders relate to failures of development in infancy. Without denying the importance of inheritance, he has developed the theory that schizophrenic illness shows up as the negative of processes that can be traced in detail as the positive processes of maturation in infancy and early childhood.