Learning from Experience

7 Transitional Space and the Use of an Object

"UNLESS THE OBSCURITY CAN be circumvented," says Bion (1991), "it will remain unobserved" (p. ix). As we try to find our way through the impasses in which we get caught with our patients, it is important to be able to shed some light on the things that become fixed and entrenched and cannot be thought about. We need some way to be able to play with an idea, to move it around and think about it from different angles. If nothing else, this reminds us that the entrenched aspect has more to do with the feeling of it than with some objective necessity.

This idea of perspective was brought into the literature quite pointedly through Winnicott's ideas about the transitional space and the use of an object. ...