Clinical Extensions of the Transitional Object: Imagination and the Outside World

The clinical implications of Winnicott’s transitional object theory are expanded to encompass all cases, rather than just cases in which patients suffer basic developmental deficits. This article explores the interplay of personal imagination with actual objects and people, in relation to clinical practice and problems in living. Good-enough integration in the transitional phase moves toward flexible and reciprocal relations between the inner and outer worlds that are at the core of wholesome psychosomatic vitality in development and everyday life. Problems in that integration are apparent in most difficulties in living. Since the transitional, potential space is crucial to this interplay of the inner imagination and the outer world, attention to its fluxes and flows will enrich the analytic process, whether as a primary focus or in enhancing other approaches.