ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the idea of the transitional object can shed light on an old problem in Central Australian ethnography—the relationship between women, children and tjurunga. It looks at the relationship between women, children, and sacred objects in this way can clarify the potential use of D. W. Winnicott’s ideas in anthropology. The chapter provides some critical remarks on G. H. Herdt’s use of the idea of the transitional object in his analysis of initiation among the Sambia of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The Aboriginal child, then, “walks toward” language, substituting names for the more immediate presence of things attendant on the mirror stage and the dominance of the ideal ego. The relationship between spirit children and papa emerges as something more complex in the work of Carl Strehlow, because it was he who first maintained that the papa was a tjurunga.
