Transitional Object (transitional + object)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


The transitional object in dementia: clinical implications

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 2 2007
Sheila LoboPrabhu
Abstract The concept of the transitional object in human development was first proposed by Winnicott, and it has been extensively discussed in the child psychoanalytic literature. However, there are very few empirical studies on the transitional object in adult development. The transitional object has been discussed in relation to medical illness, medication, aggression, dreams, spirituality and religion, borderline personality disorder, anxiety disorder, fetishes, medication, and body image. There is very little literature on the transitional object in dementia. Dementia is a process of transition from a healthy, active state to a dependent state with progressive loss of memory, functional skills, and independence. Patients and families experience grief, loss, fear, anxiety, guilt, and anger. In this article, we address the role of the transitional object in dementia. We discuss the concepts of the transitional object and precursor object, and their possible role in interventions with patients and caregivers. We discuss various aspects of the therapeutic process and treatment setting, which may serve as transitional objects in various stages of dementia. The therapeutic relationship serves as the "holding environment" in which various transitions may be safely accomplished. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Between private and public: Towards a conception of the transitional subject

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 5 2008
Jill Gentile
Elaborating upon Winnicott's seminal contributions on the transitional object, the author proposes a conception of a transitional subject in which the patient comes into being simultaneously between private and public, subjective creation and material life, me and not-me. By anchoring subjective creation in the real world (including the body), the patient creates a basis for authentic psychesoma as well as for both personal and symbolic contributions to the world beyond omnipotence, including the world of other subjects. In this sense, intersubjective life is seen as predicated upon transitionality, with the patient seen as simultaneously coming into being as a distinctly personal subject and, in part, as a symbol. Clinical phenomenology is described and is interpreted with respect to the need within psychoanalysis itself for a third, and for a realm of meaning-creation that lies beyond privacy, omnipotence, and the dyad. [source]


Infinite Recess: perspective and play in Magritte's La Condition Humaine

ART HISTORY, Issue 1 2002
Eric Wargo
The paintings of Rene Magritte, with their unsettling of common-sense relationships among objects, images and words, have been compared by many critics to the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The 1933 painting La Condition Humaine, for instance, depicts a painting that exactly covers a ,real' landscape outside a window , thus raising questions about the ,location' of perception and thought. But Magritte's uncanny use of perspective, and his depictions of spaces that have ambiguous depth, suggest that an equally helpful interpretive framework to that of Wittgenstein may be that of psychoanalysis, particularly the object-relations theory of D.W. Winnicot and the latter's concept of ,transitional phenomena'. La Condition Humaine, for example, exemplifies how, by both negating and affirming the opacity of the picture plane, perspective transforms the painting into a transitional object that is both ,there' and ,not there' simultaneously. Many of the painter's works, his ,window' series in particular, suggest approaching Albertian perspective itself as a question of object-relating, the simultaneous search for autonomy and ontological security through play. An understanding of how Magritte's ambiguous spaces suggest both security as well as open-ended possibility can help to link his work not only with the traditions of Renaissance perspective and its modernist critics, but also with the aesthetic of the sublime and its iconography of colossal, indifferent nature. Sublimity may be interpreted psychoanalytically as nostalgia for the scale of childhood experience , for the world viewed as an enormous room in which small objects assume monumental physical and symbolic proportions. [source]


THE SHAPING OF EXPERIENCE

BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY, Issue 4 2005
Kenneth Wright
ABSTRACT This paper explores how we sometimes manage, and often fail, to communicate the ,feel' of live experience. Since poetry makes a craft and vocation of this pursuit, the writings of poets are brought to bear on the process. I introduce the idea of containing forms, using the term containment in its everyday sense. My argument, however, owes much to Winnicott, Stern and Bion, Winnicott's transitional object exemplifying an early containing structure, and Stern's ,attunement' suggesting ways that later containing structures might arise out of mother-infant dialogue. Bion's more specific notions of containment and transformation are not explored. Following Langer, I suggest that feeling is better communicated through presentational rather than discursive symbols, such forms being concrete, sensory, and isomorphic in some way to that which is being shared. With such presentational symbols, resonance and dialogue between forms are more important than explanatory meaning and some implications of this for therapeutic discourse are discussed. [source]


The transitional object in dementia: clinical implications

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 2 2007
Sheila LoboPrabhu
Abstract The concept of the transitional object in human development was first proposed by Winnicott, and it has been extensively discussed in the child psychoanalytic literature. However, there are very few empirical studies on the transitional object in adult development. The transitional object has been discussed in relation to medical illness, medication, aggression, dreams, spirituality and religion, borderline personality disorder, anxiety disorder, fetishes, medication, and body image. There is very little literature on the transitional object in dementia. Dementia is a process of transition from a healthy, active state to a dependent state with progressive loss of memory, functional skills, and independence. Patients and families experience grief, loss, fear, anxiety, guilt, and anger. In this article, we address the role of the transitional object in dementia. We discuss the concepts of the transitional object and precursor object, and their possible role in interventions with patients and caregivers. We discuss various aspects of the therapeutic process and treatment setting, which may serve as transitional objects in various stages of dementia. The therapeutic relationship serves as the "holding environment" in which various transitions may be safely accomplished. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Rebirth at 40: photographs as transitional objects

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 2 2004
Barbara Young MD
Abstract This article discusses how a restricted man who had lived a False Self all his life was able to educate the analyst in providing a holding environment so that he could learn to speak in his own voice, take over the control of his automatic bladder and bowel function, and gradually "own" himself for the first time. The analyst , who is also a photographer , explores the manner in which her photographs served as transitional objects to this patient and played a part in supplying the transitional space necessary for him to complete his emotional growth. The analyst expands on the interrelationship of her two careers and the important role her creativity has played in her own life. Copyright © 2004 Whurr Publishers Ltd. [source]


The lively process of interdisciplinarity

AREA, Issue 4 2009
Henry Buller
Food chain research offers particular opportunities for the development of interdisciplinary problematics and approaches. For example, the issue of ,quality' cannot be interpreted solely from natural or from social science perspectives but rather requires a consilient and interdisciplinary vision. Suggesting a ,ground upwards' approach, building upon transitional objects and networks of practice and drawing upon a recently completed research project involving natural and social science research teams, this paper considers the practice and performance of interdisciplinarity as a lively process of knowledge creation that operates within what Luhmann calls ,forums of articulation' through which epistemologically mobile socio-natural entities are defined and explored. [source]