ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the adult's perspective to consider what it means to be used in this way, why this matters and the difficulties of surviving use. For myself, as an educator, Winnicott's paper on the use of an object provides a powerful metaphor for what it means to learn. He identifies the hard bit of the process as the movement from object-relating to object-use suggesting that this movement 'is the most difficult thing, perhaps in human development'. Winnicott spent a lot of time considering the implications of object use for psychoanalysts but suggested that it was something teachers should be able to take for granted. Teachers are explicitly charged with the intellectual development of young people, and, by extension, are implicitly charged with overseeing their emotional development. Teachers therefore need to be aware of their students' need to find and use them as people and as bearers of knowledge.
