Abstract
Current literature dealing with narcissistic character disorder attempts to differentiate between mature relating with consensually validated whole objects and immature, more primitive relating with mirroring and validating selfobjects. In the latter case the object is especially valued for its role in buttressing a damaged or fragile self. The persistence into adult life of this more primitive relating to selfobjects can be viewed as a restitutive attempt, a healing by second intent. Through such a mechanism, attempts are made to make good deficits left by perceived failures of the primary object. These attempts include the setting up of relationships with figures whose empathic capacity is in some way sensed to be corrective, and the setting up of relationships with selfobjects which are in part created by the subject to provide himself with the kind of validating selfobject which has been longed for, yet never experienced.
Winnicott conceives of transitional experience as an intermediate area allowed to the infant between primary creativity and objective perception based on reality testing. Transitional relating usefully clarifies the concept of selfobjects in emphasizing its common features with the transitional object. Transitional objects and selfobjects both contain the idea that the psychic apparatus is equipped with self-healing capacities. They tell us something about the nature of those self-healing capacities. The mental apparatus, as the physical apparatus, can attempt to heal itself in the face of injury or disease. The mechanism of that psychic healing may have to do with the importance of transitional phenomena and illusory experience in permitting the relinquishing of omnipotence and grandiosity which goes hand in hand with the formation and consolidation of the structurally mature self. An understanding of the transitional area can facilitate the therapist's work in helping certain patients overcome immature and fixed character traits often associated with narcissistic psychopathology.
The psychopathology of transitional experience is reviewed and the importance of play in the therapeutic situation is stressed. Evidence is presented for the existence of a common neurophysiological substrate for play and transitional experience. This discovery is deemed evidence supporting our thesis of the importance of the transitional area in fostering psychic growth and in promoting healing in the analytic situation.
Case material is described to illustrate these points. The relationship of psychosomatic symptomatology to transitional experience is discussed and illustrated with clinical case material.