Читать книгу The Handbook of Solitude - Группа авторов - Страница 71

Winnicott’s insights into the origins of aloneness and solitude (as discussed above) are accompanied by insights into the capacity to use aloneness in a beneficial manner. He proposed a third, intermediate area of experiencing, located between the internal/psychic and the external/shared reality and enriched by both of them. This area is closely linked with the capacity to be alone (Winnicott, 1958, 1971). It is a potential space between the subject and the objects, which are beyond the subject’s omnipotent control. It is “a resting place for the individual engaged in the perpetual human task of keeping inner and outer reality separate yet interrelated” (Winnicott, 1971, p. 2).

In this area, transitional objects and transitional phenomena appear in the beginning of life, followed by the use of symbols and playing and finally by culture. The transitional object may be the thumb, a pacifier, a blanket, a teddy bear, a doll or, later, a hard object (e.g., a toy car), which is steadily available to the child. The transitional phenomena are rather intangible states, such as the infant’s (musical) vocalizations, rhythmic movements, and other habits and rituals, which usually appear at the time before sleep. Parents acknowledge the use of the transitional object (e.g., they encourage their children to take it with them), which means that they allow for the experience of illusion. Transitional objects and transitional phenomena are considered healthy and universal. They constitute a significant part of time alone during infancy and toddlerhood, as well as a way of coping with the pain of loneliness even in childhood, as Winnicott (1958) claimed: “Patterns set in infancy may persist into childhood, so that the original soft object continues to be absolutely necessary at bed‐time or at time of loneliness or when a depressed mood threatens” (p. 232).

Transitional objects and transitional phenomena are the first manifestations of playing, shared playing, and creativity. With advancing age, they lose their meaning and become diffused in the whole cultural experience. While playing, in the presence of the mother and in time alone, children do things in time and space and experience a sense of control over the external world (see Coplan, Ooi, & Hipson, Chapter 8). Playing means joining as well as separating. The child experiences a connection of the inner with the outer, but at the same time he/she achieves a near‐withdrawal state (Winnicott, 1971), characterized by preoccupation and the sense of being lost without losing the identification with the mother object. The child is able to forget himself/herself in a formless, unintegrated state, because the mother has been able to leave him/her alone and because she is available “when remembered after being forgotten” (Winnicott, 1971, p. 48).

The person and cultural experience form a unit. Creative playing, in the first years of life, is the precursor of the capacity to draw from cultural heritage and to contribute to it. Interests in the inanimate world may be regarded as a type of object relations having an important self‐regulating function (Eagle, 1981). Winnicott (1971) aptly describes the potential space as “an infinite area of separation” (p. 108), which can be filled by playing, so that pain, in other words separation itself, can be dealt with effectively. In this line of thought, separation anxiety reflects a denial of separation, the incapacity to be alone. Winnicott (1958) described the case of an eight‐year‐old boy who compulsively used a string to join things together in an attempt to deny his fear of separation from his mother, after having experienced her depression and some real separations from her. However, if the familial environment facilitates life in this area of potentially limitless opportunities for creativity, separation gradually becomes a form of union of the individual with the past, the present, and the future of his/her culture.