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The symbolic processes underlying the uses of materials in play operates across situations—from free play to chimeric object play. The assessment of the child's use of chimeric objects taps the same processes as use of materials in free play, the very source of creativity. As an approach to seeing how the child works through the ambiguity and searches out meanings, the study of the use of chimeric objects may reveal how free the child or the adult is in using his fantasy life and his or her security in creating new symbols. An adult who was asked what she thought
the third chimeric object was answered very impatiently that it had to be a mobile, completely ignoring the ambiguity of the object. Although there was not a visible place to attach it to the ceiling, it had moving parts and string, and therefore, out of necessity, had to be a mobile. This fundamental quality of the individual's internal world is related to her earliest experiences, the primary and transitional objects of the first years of life. Rigidity of thinking is less typical of the thinking of children than of many adults. Not all adults recognize, as did a 5-year-old child, that a chimeric object "could be many things."