Pangaea

The sufficiently good mother and the illusion

According to the psychoanalysts, the child is not - in the first months of its existence - aware of the limits of sound body and that of the others (mainly his/her mother), alive in a kind of indistinctness, prone to specific Angoisse S (partly related to its physiological needs).

According to Winnicott, it is in the “Illusion”: when all occurs well, its cries (started for example by the hunger) involve an answer to its needs, in the form of a Sein (incidentally a Biberon) that it phantasm as being part of him and who seems to appear magiquement. The Mother, normally in a state of “primary maternal concern”, makes it possible to the baby to have this “illusion of Omnipotence”.

Indeed, the mother is hypersensitive with the desire of the child, presenting the center to him to the moment when it is on the point of creating it to relieve his needs. It is paramount that the mother allows the child to remain, at the beginning, in this illusion because this one could not support early and repeated deficiencies. Later on, the sufficiently good Mère will be that which introduces frustration gradually.

Holding, handling and object-presenting

According to Winnicott, the mother intervenes with the baby in three different ways:

the holding : this term indicates all the means which give a support to its Me incipient. The child and the mother are first of all overlapping on the psychic level, since the child is based completely on his presence. The support provided by the mother includes/understands all the routine of the daily care adapted to the child, protecting it from the experiments distressing. It is at the base of the integration of Ego of a unified whole;

the handling : it indicates the way in which it is treated, handled, looked after. It will induce what Winnicott called the “psychosomatic interrelationship”, i.e. it allows the installation of the Psyché in the Soma as well as the development of mental operation;

the object-presenting : it is the fact of proposing the object of the need, before the newborn expressed himself (feeding-bottle, layer…)

Distal relations and relations proximales

Authors such as Stork showed the importance of the body care for the good development of the child. The author also compared the care taken to the Western child, where mother and child are in a “distal” relation, with the care taken in other cultures, which are more often made on a mode “proximal”.

Thus, many studied authors insist, with regard to the care given to the North-African baby , on the great proximity between the child and his mother. Zerdoumi (1982), in particular, evokes:

“the mother very seldom gives up her baby. In popular environments at least, it carries it with it, wrapped in a side of the Haïk or in a large terry towel (fout' a), when it moves, that it is for its work, to make races, or to achieve drudgeries. (…) The night, he sleeps close to her. (…). He is recroquevillé close to his chest (…). ”

These methods of care seem to allow a early Socialisation of the child who is very early entrusted to other parents (such as grandparents, brothers, sisters, uncles or aunts).

Disillusion

Little by little, the child is brought to perceive reality, in other words, to perceive the maternal object and his distressing dependence with respect to this one. It is what is called “disillusion”. During this evolution, of this passage of the Subjective to the objective , intervenes the transitional phenomena as well as the transitional object.

The transitional phenomena (appearing between 4 and 12 months) indicate an intermediate zone of experiment between sucking its inch (oral erotism) and the Teddy bear with which the child plays and that it invests (true object relation).

The transitional object as for him qualifies a material, selected object by the Nourrisson and the young child (and it is an essential condition) used for example at the time of drowsiness. This “normal” phenomenon makes it possible the child to forward first relation - oral - with the mother and the “true object-relationship”.

The transitional object

The transitional object is thus a privileged object, chosen by the child. It is the first possession non-ego. It is perceived neither like belonging to the mother, nor as being an interior object. It allows the advance of the child of subjective towards the objective - it will be disinvested later and transitional space will give access to the play and the cultural activities for the adult.

Generally soft object with the touch, it makes it possible to the baby to fight against the anguish (distresses of depressive type particularly) by keeping a minimum of feeling of control. Even if this control is also absolute only that which its omnipotence conferred to him, it is all the same about a control by handling.

The transitional object will have to survive the instinctual love and hatred. Thereafter when and the Langage develops appears, the transitional object can be named.

During the period of illusion, the mother presents her center to the moment when the child has the illusory feeling to create it. There are not real exchanges between the mother and the child since the center belongs to itself.

During disillusion, the transitional object makes to some extent interface between the child and his mother, allowing one lived not distressing separation.

The transitional object is thus a means for the child of reaching objectivity, to agree to some extent to lose its feelings of any power in a way not too brutal.

Transitional space is the psychic place of rest between the reality (which takes direction more and more) and its feelings of omnipotence.

Functions

The transitional object comes to fulfill an essential function: that of defense against the Anguish. The object comes to reassure the child, to comfort it, and any relative knows this role. Winnicott specifies especially that it is about a protection against the anguish of the depressive type , that is to say the anguish, precisely, to lose the object - i.e. the maternal object.

Just as Melanie Klein defined psychic positions which will be unceasingly abandoned, then updated, altered, positions in which the subject will oscillate its life during, of the same Winnicott specifies an object which reveals a transitionnality: its life during, the subject will use transitional objects. But these objects will have evolved/moved well.

Transitional phenomena

For Winnicott, the interest of the theory of a transitional object does not lie in the theoretical presentation of the doudou, but obviously in the subjacent phenomenon of transitionnality.

At the bottom, which the object is essential, which interests the glance of the psychoanalyst remains in the later evolution. The first point of importance relates to the transfer. The newborn does not make the mourning of the transitional object - within the meaning of disinvesting gradually - but extends his interest for transitional the to all the fields of the culture . Instead of a mourning, difficult process of investment withdrawal, one finds the extension of an investment which aimed at an object and which aims then art, knowledge, etc This point leads Winnicott to play of the transfer in a very particular way, as with small Piggle.

In addition, the extension of the transitionnality to the cultural phenomena presents the culture under the aspect of a safeguard against the anguish to lose the object. This idea of the culture thus supplements the theorization of a sublimation, of a Curiosité before sexual, concepts which brought knowledge indeed relatively little on the behavior.

Criticisms

The future infant, already in the belly of his/her mother, suçote her inch. At this point, several note: if the infant can testify well to oral erotism, it is not a question however for him of finding the lost center, it is one period of auto-erotism. One postulates then for the thesis of an innate reflex. That however does not remove of anything the idea Winnicott which is not limited to the only suction of the inch.

Transitional object and precursory object

It is necessary to distinguish the transitional object from the precursory object. It is Renata Gaddini (1970) which proposes, in agreement with Winnicott, the concept of precursory object. This last is used by the child (by introducing it into its mouth for example), to give him the feeling to be a whole, to be with the mother and to avoid the anguish of parcelling out to him. For example, while tétant, it finds in the mother (or rather through the center), a means of integrating the “ coil ”. Often accompany it by the car-erotic behaviors (initially by touching the body of the mother then by touching parts of its own body).

The precursory object is before a whole object with the pleasant contact for the child (who can be caused to have some several, interchangeable). It can become a transitional object but it is not systematic.

See too

Internal bonds

Impulse, for the difference between object of the need and object of the desire
Objet has, the concept which Jacques Lacan starting from the transitional object developed
Wilfred Ruprecht Bion, contemporary of Winnicott but belonging to the group kleinien
Melanie Klein and Anna Freud on the Great controversies

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