ABSTRACT
Transitional phenomena and objects function to alleviate the infant's depressive anxiety and sense of trauma and loss that results in separation from the mother—preparing, as Rainer Maria Rilke intuited, the way for our first contact with the world, life and others. In Playing and Reality, Donald Winnicott recounts the necessary stages leading to the infant's development of transitional phenomena and objects. The illusion that transitional objects and phenomena sustain is necessary for the infant's emotional and psychic development as they facilitate and help negotiate the relationship between the inner world and outer reality. Winnicott's transitional objects may perhaps embody a "paradise" or at least shield one from a hellish chaos. Winnicott recognizes the need for giving creative form to living as a way of resisting dominant and unyielding structures in reality. Winnicott was far less concerned with the products of creativity than with the experience itself.
