ABSTRACT
This chapter answers the question: Is there more to be said about the meaning of such activity beyond the functions of compromise and of mastery? It illustrates this thesis through one activity, photography, which is examined in a clinical case and an autobiographical account from the general field of the humanities. The chapter suggests that the spontaneously discovered activity of photography served a transitional function for Clarence John. Photographs seem to offer what John hoped for from his therapist, a spark that may catch on to, light up, and energise to movement an experience. The psychoanalytic literature having to do with photography is remarkably meagre. D. Colson's contribution takes the question of the psychological use of photography beyond the terms of instinctual conflict. The clinical material presented earlier suggests several interpretations of the place of photography in this young person's life, among them an interpretation of its transitional function.
