You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
WINNICOTT'S (1953) ORIGINAL ARTICLE ON TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS makes it clear that he did not consider his to be the final word on the subject. Yet many analytic authors have written about the transitional object as if there was nothing more to learn about or discover from it. An exception is Tolpin (1971) who linked the transitional object to Kohut's (1971) concept of "transmuting internalization." She argues that the transitional object becomes a "soother" via innumerable minute internalizations of maternal functions with which the transitional object has been endowed, and evolves into a structure which allows the child to soothe himself—a process which greatly enhances separation-individuation. Tolpin's discussion thus places the transitional object into a developmental framework that is the most concise and heuristic to date.
Our own study of the transitional object (Busch et al., 1973) took a different road. On the basis of data derived from extensive interviews with mothers and observations of normal nursery school children and toddlers, we explored how the attachment to transitional objects develops and some of the discrete functions they serve. We have found it necessary to define carefully some of the