The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. An Annual 9, 1954: Olive Stevenson (Exeter), with a Preface by D. W. Winnicott, F.R.C.P. (London). 'The First Treasured Possession, a Study of the Part Played by Specially Loved Objects and Toys in the Lives of Certain Children.' Pp. 199–217.

Dr. Winnicott's paper 'Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena' (Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 34, 1953) drew attention to the first 'other-than-me' object—blanket, woolly or soft toy, and suggested that further study might confirm its importance for clinical work and for the theory of early object relations. His preface to the present study notes that the phenomenon is related to the affectionate, secondary activities attendant on thumb sucking and fixes its normal genetic position between the infant's thumb and his first toy. 'The transitional object comes from the environment as we know, but it is essential to understand that from the infant's point of view it was created by the infant.'

Miss Stevenson quotes from some fifty examples which illustrate the empathy with which mothers regard this aspect of the child's growth. Some objects played an actual part in the earliest mother-child contacts, e.g. feeding bottles. Smell, texture, and visual appearance were varyingly esteemed from child to child. To some the 'treasure' represented a true transitional object, with others it was cathected in response to a traceable need or a disturbance of established object relationship, at a later level. Some examples suggest the child's own awareness of this distinction; the transitional object is given up because the child decides he is now too old for it, but retains similar toy objects, differently invested. In some cases the need for the object takes priority over the need for the mother in time of stress. Failure to cathect a transitional object may indicate that 'the basic relationships from which the child can move into transitional satisfaction are not being established'.

The special toy may persist or be readopted as a regressive defence. In ambivalent adults, the continued cathexis of a childhood toy is shown to have the quality of a defensive bridge where direct personal contact is feared.