ABSTRACT
This chapter tries to illustrate the creative use of activity to deal with developmental challenges, but also how dependent that creativity can be on a primary relationship in the person’s life. It presents two examples of this process of the investment of energy in an activity corollary to working toward the restoration of psychic health; and the second example became the central subject of the paper. It described a young man who spontaneously discovered the activity of photography at the time of his mother’s death. This young man’s story suggested strongly the developmental connection between the activity of photography and his first transitional object, a blanket cathected powerfully in early childhood in a context of maternal illness. This clinical example persuaded that what Erikson calls “the silent doings of ego synthesis” might be extended to include the silent work of transitional activity.
