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Solace—the consolation in grief, pain, and fear that one human being provides another—has always been a fundamental, if silent, dimension of the psychoanalytic enterprise. Only recently has it also become a theoretically acceptable one. Anything that smacked of religion and the mystical realm was anathema to Freud and the scientific rigor and objectivity he pursued. In addition, as has often been noted, his emphasis on oedipal conflicts and their sexual manifestations caused him to slight earlier, prelinguistic developmental stages, where physical and emotional nurturance is the salient theme.
Transitional phenomena, the subject of this volume, were first formally identified in Winnicott's (1951) renowned paper “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena.” Little was done with the idea for the next two decades. The current focus on relational aspects of psychic life and of the psychoanalytic situation give it new relevance. Winnicott's original concept has now been expanded far beyond the security blankets and teddy bears of early childhood to encompass a vast range of experiences, relationships, and activities. Transitionality is presented here as an essential, lifelong process, a method of coping with losses of all kinds and at all developmental levels. The various papers in Solace identify love, music, and even psychotic symptoms as significant transitional objects.
Solace is the first comprehensive survey of this invigorating and humane perspective. This ambitious project consists of 18 articles on theoretical, empirical, and clinical aspects of comfort-seeking. Its purpose, in the words of Paul Horton, the senior editor, is to “elevate the concept of the transitional object into a more developmental general theory” (p. 27), with particular emphasis on normal development and