TY  - GEN
AU  - Winnicott, D. W.
AU  - Winnicott, D. W.
LA  - eng
CN  - ENP-0de1ff71-7e18-4584-b3dd-a155abb928f7
TI  - Transitional objects and transitional phenomena: a study of the first not-me possession
PY  - 1953
AB  - The first possession of an infant is related backwards in time to autoerotic phenomena like thumb-sucking and forward to the first toy recognized as such. It is related to, and midway between, the external object (mother's breast) and internal objects (magically introjected breast). This intermediate area of transitional objects and transitional phenomena is made possible by the mother's adapting herself to the needs of the infant, thus allowing the infant the illusion that what it creates really exists. This area of experience constitutes the greater part of the infant's experience and is retained throughout life in the form of religious, creative, imaginative, and speculative living.

This paper describes the interstices between illusion and reality and their importance in emotional development. Some soft object or equivalent is often found and used by an infant, and becomes what Winnicott calls a transitional object. Transitional objects involve the nature of the object, the infant’s capacity to recognize the object as ‘not-me’, to create, think up, devise, originate, produce ‘an object’ and to initiate an affectionate type of object relationship with it, based on the earliest one with the mother or carer. When basic symbolism is employed the infant is already distinguishing between fantasy and fact, between inner objects and external objects, between primary creativity and perception. The transitional object is not an internal object (a mental concept) - it is a possession. The infant can employ a transitional object when the internal object is alive and real and good enough. But this internal object depends on the existence and aliveness and behaviour of the external object (breast, mother figure, general environmental care). The transitional object is never under magical control like the internal object, nor is it outside control as the real mother is. Transitional objects belong to the realm of illusion, which is at the basis of initiation of experience. An infant’s transitional object ordinarily becomes gradually decathected as cultural interests develop.
ER  -