Tranistional Objects

On Evocative Objects:
These reading reinforce the importance of projection - of playing as a child and developing a safe place to explore and develop skills for life in a place separate from the consequences of life. The imaginary is as important as the real for a child, play is their work.

From D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, New York: Routledge, 1989, p. 51.

"To get to the idea of playing it is helpful to think of the preoccupation that characterizes the playing of a young child. The content does not matter. What matters is the near-withdrawal state, akin to the concentration of older children and adults. The playing child inhabits an area that cannot be easily left, not can it easily admit intrusions. This area of playing is not inner psychic reality. It is outside the individual but it is not the external world. Into this play area that child gathers objects or phenomena from external reality and uses these in the service of some sample derived from inner or personal reality. While hallucinating the child pits out a sample of dream potential and lives with this sample in a chosen setting of fragments from external reality. [Thus] in playing, the child manipulates external phenomena in the service of the dream and invests chosen external phenomena with dream meaning and feeling. [And] there is a direct development from transitional phenomena to playing, and from playing to shared playing, and from this to cultural experiences."

The bunny represents a safe place for development... and also for the adults in her life to project their own desires and expectations.

On the world book 1950's quiet military child:

"I have had many teachers, but the World Book was my first, the one that taught me how to learn. Today I help others through their own, similar transitions, from alienation to belonging in the world, from chaos to conversance."

The silver pin is about the process of airing frustrations and grievances with one's parents through reflection - in this case the silver pin tells a stories, evoking memories:

"In conclusion, a good relation to ourselves is a condition of love, tolerance, and wisdom towards others. This good relation to ourselves has, as I have endeavoured to show, developed in part from a friendly, loving and understanding attitude towards other people, namely those who meant much to us in the past, and our relationship to whom has become part of our minds and personalities. If we have become able, deep in our unconscious minds, to clear our feelings to some extent towards our parents of grievances, and have forgiven them for the frustrations we had to bear, then we can be at peace with ourselves and are able to love others in the true sense of the word."

We are able to love others when we have cleared things with our parents - because in turn that means we are clearing things with ourselves, and once we have done that it opens us to loving those who are now close to us. The notion of identity is linked to the developmental relationships of our youth - and coming to terms with those later helps us grow to love and eventually foster the development of others.

On Rites of Passage & Liminality:
Victor Witter Turner (May 28, 1920 – December 18, 1983) was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals and rites of passage. His work, along with that of Clifford Geertz and others, is often referred to as symbolic and interpretive anthropology.

In Forest of Symbols, Aspects of Ndembu Ritual - he noted that in liminality, the transitional state between two phases, individuals were "betwixt and between": they did not belong to the society that they previously were a part of and they were not yet reincorporated into that society. Liminality is a limbo, an ambiguous period characterized by humility, seclusion, tests, sexual ambiguity, and communitas. Communitas is defined as an unstructured community where all members are equal.

Turner gained notoriety by exploring Arnold van Gennep's threefold structure of rites of passage and expanding theories on the liminal phase. Van Gennep's structure consisted of a pre-liminal phase (separation), a liminal phase (transition), and a post-liminal phase (reincorporation).

It seems that a child does the same thing when playing - they are in a liminal stage of development where they are not quite in real life but also not part of previous life - it's a safe place to withdraw and learn from what you have been to what you will become, to learn about identity.

A liminal state is one between the folds, like the character in "Catch me if you Can" - who is a trickster - one who pretends to be in a role he is not - in truth not in one part of the social state or the other. It is only through opposition that his state is liminal. (because it is not part of the norm)

I am curious how Turkle relates Transitional objects - and transitional states like liminality - I think more broadly, she is pointing out that liminal states are evocative, because you can't define someone as one thing or another. And technology sometimes fits in this space, we don't yet know how it fits into our social identities...

Playing and Reality

Playing is in the liminal space between the inner world and the outer reality - it is outside the individual but not in the external world. It is the state of withdraw that occurs when a child plays that is important because it allows for them to reflect. Play is the time when a child learns to relate or have relationship - because the play in inviting another person into your internal world. A child takes their imagined phenomena and demonstrates it with various play objects. The child invests meaning in the objects of play....

Transitional objects lead to playing -- playing leads to collaboration (shared playing) or shared experiences -- and this leads to cultural experiences. (identification with a society) What makes play exiting is the precariousness between what is real and subjective - the blurred distinction between the two is exciting.

So a transitional object for a child is one that allows her to transition away from her mother to herself - to feel safe enough to transition through play from the mother to social engagement with others and the world - and identifying her body in relation to the world.

It is interesting that transitional objects exist in between the subjective and objective space - a liminal (or subliminal) space which is evocative because it is in between - and the precariousness of that is exciting.

If technology like a computer is exciting because it is a safe place to "play" to simulate the real - rather than be in the real, than that may explain the concern over the increased realm of the simulated being chosen over the real - computers are evocative objects because they have a certain amount of autonomy, they are extensions of our minds that portray the subjective mind in objective external ways.