ABSTRACT
DW. Winnicott's concept of the transitional object is probably the most useful one for thinking about certain aspects of art to have come out of the English Object Relations school of psychoanalysis. Having observed the psychological range of the mother-child dyad, Winnicott recognized a piece of early, pre-oedipal behavior with implications for creativity. Despite the relatively ahistorical character of Object Relations, Winnicott's transitional object has a basis in childhood history. In a general way, all art has a transitional quality; it literally occupies the space between illusion and reality. Religious architecture, which mediates between people and gods, is largely determined by the transitional nature of a particular religion. In Christian art, the image of martyrdom can be seen as a kind of iconographic "transitional object," also with the content of death. Martyrdom has a transitional quality resulting from the conscious decision to accept death in order to keep alive a belief system.
