ABSTRACT
D. W. Winnicott's 1953 paper, "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena" begins with a striking ideogram: a picture of the infant's self-absorption in the wonder of his own fingers. His language is lapidary, directing the reader's attentions surely and swiftly over the heavily contested developmental terrain of psychoanalysis, guided by the same observational brilliance that marked Sigmund Freud's earlier discernment of a child's "fort da" play with a spool and string. Provocatively, Winnicott's smudging of binary clarity relates back to Freud's rejection of the Jungian stretching of "libido" to encompass the wider field of pleasurable human experience. Winnicott introduces the recognition of a "ruthless love" that is both developmentally without malice and without caring in regard to the other's separateness and difference. In observing the vicissitudes of the transitional object, Winnicott observes the omnipotent control of the individual in a fusion with affection, excited love, and ruthless mutilation, all under the infant's control.
