ABSTRACT
This chapter explains pieces by Zizi Raymond and by other patients, as they relate to the understanding of D. W. Winnicott’s concepts of transitional phenomena. Zizi’s vitrine seemed to have the feeling of a transitional object, poised between this life and the one to come, or between holding on to her artistic control and yielding to her looming fear of loss and mourning. This sculpture was born into a transitional space between the creative, sheltering art therapy group and its therapist/mother and the insecure somatic world outside. The space and time of free association between art-psychotherapist and patient permits the unfolding of creative forms, memories, feeling and thoughts. The power of the transitional space can then be harnessed: the psychoanalytic art therapy session can turn into a place for a dialectic structure of transference and countertransference while expressive forms and colors spontaneously surface from looking at the art.
