ABSTRACT
Where the needs of the absolutely dependent infant have been met by the good-enough environment, there comes a transition to the state of relative dependence. Authors have referred to the concept of a "personal psychic reality" which in D. W. Winnicott's scheme of emotional development comes into being as a part of the self as soon as the infant has "reached the state of being a unit with a limiting membrane and an inside and an outside". The illusion of omnipotence is thus to some extent retained and the insult of factual reality can be met and dealt with by the infant. The preoccupied playing of young children was seen by Winnicott as a further step in a sequence of activities in the area of illusion or the potential space between the individual self and the environment that leads to a mature capacity for participation in and contribution to the world's cultural fertility.
