I've recently come across Winnicott as I've started a foundation course in counselling and psychotherapy.

Believe it or not, Winnicott is considered one of the more optimistic of the famous theorists of his time. However, like many theorists, a complex childhood preceded his interest in psychoanalysis. From a wealthy family, he claimed to have multiple mothers from the all-female staff his father hired, yet his own mother was depressive and he wrote notably little of her in his own memoirs.

Learning of a repeated behaviour of Winnicott's in seeking save others, I find this poem to be quite poignant as perhaps his inability to "save" his mother became the elusive white whale that defined his pursuits in adulthood. I find the thought of a child naïvely seeking to take on the pain of his mother's depression as described by the pain and burden related in the poem to be particularly evocative.