ABSTRACT
The function of playing as a bridge between internal and external can be assimilated to Marion Milner's conception of art, since both play and art can be seen to "link the world of subjective 'unreality' and 'object reality' harmoniously fusing the edges, but not confusing them". For Milner, the internal need to discover oneness in diversity, as an expression of a basic need for internal consistency, constitutes the fundamental role of illusion in symbol formation. Milner's reflections on creativity, the illusion of non-separation of object and subject, and the mind's capacity to symbolize evidently share much in common with D. W. Winnicott's ideas of transitional phenomena and potential space. Their encounter is generally held to have been formative and productive for both, something confirmed by Milner herself in a paper given to the British Psycho-Analytical Society in 1972, at a memorial meeting for Winnicott.
