Meetings of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

DISCUSSION: Dr. Charles Sarnoff pointed out that Dr. Grolnick referred to symbols in the generic sense without differentiating subdivisions such as the psychoanalytic symbols used in art. While one level of symbol can be associated with transitional objects, this does not mean that more mature levels of symbol formation stem from the same root. Dr. Sarnoff presented evidence in support of the

view that the development of the symbolizing function goes through many stages from the first months of life till the age of fourteen. The transitional object is not even an organizer when seen within the context of this broader view. Dr. Sarnoff called attention to data that made some of Dr. Grolnick's conclusions about the meanings of the symbols in Etruscan art rather doubtful. Seneca's comments on the Etruscans emphasized a primitiveness and concreteness in their thinking; this points toward a level of cultural evolution at which symbol formation is limited by a cognition in which abstract thinking is not central. Thus, some of Dr. Grolnick's conclusions might be challenged by taking into account the observations of a writer who had actual contact with the Etruscans. Dr. Gilbert J. Rose suggested that Dr. Grolnick's developmental metaphor requires the corrective of a consideration of the ego to avoid being reductionistic. We are accustomed to think of regression and progression as a cyclic dissolution and reconstitution which takes place during the course of development, but both experimental and analytic data suggest that this is also a moment by moment phenomenon. A recurrent expansion and constriction of ego boundaries in relation to key ego functions or an interaction of primary and secondary processes may be seen as a "transitional process," thus putting it in relation to early development and the transitional object. As visual art forms magnify the interaction between primary and secondary perception, so literary forms magnify the fluid interaction betwee