The transitional object plays a fundamental role in child development, but even in adulthood some objects maintain the same function. let’s think for example of the cell phone.
The meaning of a teddy bear
Let’s imagine the classic scene of a baby sleeping while hugging a teddy bear. That puppet is much more than just a stuffed object to him. It is his first attempt to understand the world.
In the first months of life the child is not able to distinguish himself from those who take care of him, he and his mother are the same thing and the rest of the world does not exist. With the passing of the months he begins to perceive that things are not really like that and around the first year he realizes that mom is no longer his unconditional domain. But this reality is not at all easy to accept. The idea that the mother no longer belongs to him, that she may detach herself from him and perhaps disappear, generates anguish.
It is at this point that he puts into action a strategy that will allow him to overcome his fears: a “transitional object” appears next to him.
What is a transitional object?
The transitional object is almost always one of the things that habitually surrounds the child, such as, in fact, the classic teddy bear resting on his bed, a doll, a blanket, and the child will use it to experience, for the first time, a loving relationship with another person different from himself.
A mother, in the first months of her baby’s life, will tend to adapt completely to his needs. With the passage of time, also assessing the growing ability of the child to cope with the separation, his adaptation will decrease until the experience of detachment is acquired and accepted.
The child’s means of coping with the mother’s absence include the experience that frustration is limited in time, the beginnings of mental activity, remembering, reliving and fantasizing integrating past, present and future. The transitional object becomes a “substitute” for the mother in moments when her absence can generate anguish. At this point, we can say that the transitional object obtains the effect that it started with denial: it allows the mother to move away while the child keeps her symbolically close.
The essential point of the ‘transitional object is not its symbolic value so much as the fact that it is real. It is an illusion but it is also something real.” Donald Winnicott
The transitional object accompanies the child to the discovery of the world that surrounds him, fulfilling a task: to create the objective reality of the object and to create the objective reality of the subject, the awareness of that “I am” that will be the basis of the construction of his identity.
Of course, it is not the object itself that is transitional, but the object represents the child’s transition from the state of fusion with the mother to a state of relationship with the mother as something external and separate. This will be followed by the discovery of other figures and an initial awareness of the existence of a world outside oneself.
The transitional object in adulthood
But the transitional object is not only the teddy bear and its usefulness is not confined to the period of childhood. The task of accepting reality is never completed, no human being is free from the tension of relating internal reality to external reality and relief from this tension is provided by an intermediate area of experience. The need for a specific object or pattern of behavior may reappear at a later age, for example when experiencing a threat of deprivation.
Even in adulthood, some objects are therefore released from their strict objective functionality and acquire an emotional value and can become new transitional objects. They are up-to-date ways of not feeling alone and being reassured. Some examples are the need to constantly consult social networks, to always have a cell phone with you, to perform recurrent actions such as touching your hair, holding a cigarette, owning a car that is felt as an extension of yourself, of your position and prestige.
The cell phone as a transitional object
To give a very current example, let’s think about the relationship with our cell phone. The almost obsessive need to never be separated from the cell phone is explained by the author as a sign of difficulty in relating to the outside world and of an intrinsic fear of being rejected by others and of feeling alone. Sending a text message, for example, gives the possibility to test the ground regarding the intentions and the availability of the other, without exposing oneself too much in case of a possible rejection.
The cell phone can also be used as a way of keeping separation anxiety under control by offering concrete support in ideally keeping the other person’s presence alive. Even if it is turned off, its mere presence has a reassuring effect; we don’t need to constantly call the person we miss, just knowing that we could do so calms us down. This is why it is given the role of transitional object, as it represents the person we are trying to replace. It is a real object but at the same time it is imaginary, or rather it is imaginary in that it is replacing the absent person.
An adult’s ability to endure loneliness depends on the internal affective world that he or she has built up through childhood experiences. An affective world is made up of significant presences and relationships on which the construction of individuality is based and which makes it possible to trust in the existence of the other even during his or her absence. The hope of finding the object of love temporarily lost gives the strength to tolerate the separation and endure its temporary absence and is the basis for devoting themselves, in real life, to the concentration for a task or a task that will be experienced as a temporary loss of emotional commitment to the other knowing, however, that the relationship can then be recovered.
And it is precisely the reassurance that the other exists even during his or her absence that makes the separation tolerable.
We end up calling someone without a precise desire, but to remove the fear of losing control over something that is other-than-us and of losing it forever.
