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At the core of this book is a quietly radical extension of Winnicott's concept of transitional/potential space:
Winnicott gestures toward a radical implication, one he never fully acknowledges or develops: Imaginative elaboration … is a primary adaptive force throughout life. It does not distort reality—which is how “illusion” is often construed—but authentically animates what is apprehended. The imaginative arises from a vitalizing psychic sphere that exists prior to any distinction between fact and phantasy. Rather than gradually be superseded by a reality principle, it makes responsive use of the actual to engender an ongoing experiential sense of aliveness. What makes imaginative elaboration “primary” is that it is not an expression or derivative of, nor is it motivated by, anything else. It is what the psyche does to render experience emotionally meaningful. (17—italics added)
I italicized imaginative elaboration to highlight that this is the term Goldman uses, following Winnicott, to name the process of creating and maintaining an ongoing sense of aliveness. Goldman's understanding of imaginative elaboration is radical because he considers it to be its own form of thought, not derived from the pleasure or reality principles, and not the same as phantasy; imaginative elaboration precedes and influences the development of phantasy. Goldman deepens Winnicott's idea that one cannot meaningfully ask of transitional phenomena if they are real or imaginary; it is not that transitional phenomena are some intricate mixture of internal and external; rather, they are formed in a psychic process that is developmentally prior to and contributes to the recognition (or even the creation?) of internal and external worlds as separate.
Goldman discusses at least three roles that the imaginative plays in the psyche. The first is implicit in his title A Shimmering Landscape—imaginative elaboration makes the world come alive: “illusion is not a mixing, overlapping, or some combinati