Winnicott's Transitional Object (Saint Aubert's import into MP)

Donald W. Winnicott's psychoanalytic concept (1953) — the child's teddy bear, blanket, or thumb that is neither fully internal (fantasy) nor fully external (reality) but structures the aire transitionnelle in which creativity is born. Merleau-Ponty did not know Winnicott's work; the import into MP is entirely Saint Aubert's, who deploys it in *Être et chair II* as the missing category in MP's account of mediating objects — objects that bear the relation between the ultra-choses and the perceiver. The transitional object is the paradigm for Saint Aubert's hyper-objet (Ch III § 3) and for the metaphor as transitional object reading (Ch VII § 1c).

Key Points

  • Winnicott's origin: D. W. Winnicott, "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 34 (1953), p. 89–97; expanded in Playing and Reality (Tavistock, 1971). The cardinal cases: the infant's teddy bear, blanket, or thumb that the child treats as neither me nor not-me.
  • The aire transitionnelle (transitional area): the third zone in which neither the interne nor the externe applies — the zone of play, illusion, creativity, and shared cultural experience. Winnicott's deepest claim: this zone is the origin of cultural life as such.
  • Saint Aubert's import into MP: "On peut regretter que Merleau-Ponty n'ait pas eu connaissance des travaux de Winnicott sur l'objet transitionnel." (Ch III § 3, p. 139) Saint Aubert notes the absence and remedies it — the transitional object is what MP's account of ultra-chose and primauté du désir lacks.
  • Two MP-relevant deployments:
    1. The hyper-objet (Ch III § 3): the transitional object is the paradigm for Saint Aubert's hyper-objet — the surdéterminée mediating thing (atelier, outil, cultural object) that bears the perceiver's relation to the ultra-chose.
    2. Metaphor as transitional object (Ch VII § 1c): metaphor itself is a transitional object — the place where the unknown/invisible is conquered by being held in a figure that is neither full presence nor pure absence. Risk: the metaphor can become fetishized and stop transitioning, freezing into an idole.

Details

Winnicott's concept (1953)

Winnicott observed that around 4–12 months infants typically adopt a not-me possession — a soft toy, a corner of blanket, an audible hum — that they treat with utmost importance. The object is:

  • Not the breast (not the original satisfying object).
  • Not the mother (not the caretaker).
  • Not internal fantasy (it has independent existence).
  • Not pure external reality (its meaning depends on the child).

Winnicott's key insight: the question "Did you find this object or did you create it?" must not be asked of the transitional object. The question's not-being-asked is constitutive of the transitional zone. The transitional object lives in the paradox of found-and-created.

The cultural extension (developed in Playing and Reality 1971): the transitional zone is the origin of all cultural experience. Art, religion, philosophy, scientific theory all live in the aire transitionnelle — the zone where the question "Did you find or create this?" is not asked because asking it would destroy the zone itself.

Why MP didn't know Winnicott

Winnicott's main work was published in English (International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 1953, Playing and Reality 1971); French translation came late (Jeu et réalité, Gallimard, 1975). MP died in 1961. The two thinkers were active contemporaries on distinct sides of the Channel and worked in non-overlapping networks.

But the structural convergence is real, as Saint Aubert argues: MP's account of flesh as neither me nor not-me and the ultra-chose as neither pure presence nor pure absence could have been helped by Winnicott's transitional object. Saint Aubert's import is therefore reconstructive, not anachronistic.

Saint Aubert's deployment 1: The hyper-objet (Ch III § 3)

Saint Aubert's principal use of Winnicott. The hyper-objet (see hyper-objet) is the surdéterminée mediating thing that bears the perceiver's relation to the ultra-chose:

  • The atelier (artist's workshop)
  • The outil (tool)
  • The fetish-object (functional, when it remains in transition)
  • The cultural object

Each of these has the structure of Winnicott's transitional object: neither fully external (a workshop is not a thing among things; it is charged with the artist's history) nor fully internal (it is out there, with its own resistance and obduracy).

The cardinal Saint Aubert formula: "Nous avons notamment besoin de déterminations, et même de surdéterminations, pour endurer l'indétermination qui caractérise les ultra-choses. Or, l'être humain a justement l'art de surdéterminer certaines choses ou dimensions du réel qui le protègent ainsi des aspects destructeurs de l'indétermination." (Ch III § 3) The transitional object is the paradigm for this art of surdétermination.

Saint Aubert's deployment 2: Metaphor as transitional object (Ch VII § 1c)

The second deployment is Saint Aubert's reading of MP's theory of metaphor (developed across MSME 1953, N-Corps 1960, EM3 1960). Metaphor is transitional object: it is the place where the unknown / the invisible / the brûlant is conquered by being held in a figure that is neither pure presence nor pure absence.

"On ne pense pas sans le corps transfiguré, porteur des significations, qui est le schéma corporel. (...) l'ordre du Λόγος ne se comprend que comme sublimation de la corporéité." (MSME p. 162/128)

The body itself is the primary transitional object — bearer of significations that are both its own gestures and what those gestures bear toward. Metaphor is the linguistic register of this carnal transition.

The risk Saint Aubert flags: the metaphor can cease to transition. When a metaphor becomes fetishized — when "love is a journey" stops transitioning between love and journey and freezes into a substantive claim about love — it becomes idole. The distinction between living metaphor and dead metaphor is the distinction between transitional object and idol.

Distance from Lacan

Saint Aubert is careful to keep the Winnicott import distinct from Lacanian psychoanalysis. The Lacanian objet petit a mediates desire and is partly fetishized — but for Lacan, the fetishization is constitutive of desire's structure. For Winnicott (and Saint Aubert via Winnicott), the fetishization is functional but the transition is primary: the transitional object that stops transitioning has failed, not succeeded.

This matters for MP: the Lacanian reading of MP (e.g., parts of Lacan's own commentary on MP) tends to emphasize the captation of desire by the object. Saint Aubert's Winnicottian reading emphasizes the transition through the object.

The Bachelard mediation

Saint Aubert connects Winnicott to Bachelard (Ch III § 3, p. 139): Bachelard's psychanalyses of the elements (L'eau et les rêves 1942, La psychanalyse du feu 1938) treat the material elements as transitional objects in Winnicott's sense — neither pure objects nor pure imaginaire, but the aire transitionnelle of the human relation to nature.

"[Bachelard's psychanalyses] mettent justement en valeur notre rapport ambivalent aux éléments, et abordent la médiation de l'outil, la dimension tout à la fois réparatrice et créatrice du travail de l'atelier." (Ch III § 3, p. 139)

MP adopted Bachelard's éléments vocabulary (NT p. 320, nov. 1960: "L'être et l'imaginaire sont pour Sartre des 'objets', des 'étants' — Pour moi ils sont des 'éléments' (au sens de Bachelard)") but not Bachelard's attention to the mediating object. The Winnicott import fills this gap.

Positions

  • saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii is the wiki's primary source for the import. The argument that MP would have benefitted from Winnicott (Ch III § 3, p. 139), and the deployment in the metaphor-chapter (Ch VII § 1c), are Saint Aubert's own.
  • Winnicott scholarship (Adam Phillips, Gabbard, etc.) treats the transitional object on its psychoanalytic terms; the philosophical extension via MP is unusual and specific to Saint Aubert.
  • Lacanian psychoanalysis has its own structural account of mediating objects (objet petit a) that overlaps with Winnicott's but emphasizes captation rather than transition.
  • Marion's icon/idol (Dieu sans l'être, 1982) has a structural parallel: the icon transitions the gaze toward what exceeds it, the idol captures the gaze. Saint Aubert does not draw the Marion parallel but the structural convergence is suggestive.

Connections

  • paradigm for hyper-objet — Saint Aubert's central concept, built on the transitional object structure.
  • underwrites metaphoricity — metaphor as transitional object (Ch VII § 1c).
  • contrasts with idole — the idol is the failed transitional object (figure that has stopped transitioning).
  • contrasts with the Lacanian objet petit a — both mediate desire, but the structural emphasis differs (transition vs. captation).
  • parallels Bachelard's éléments — the material elements as transitional objects in Winnicott's sense.
  • rehabilitates the *objet* register against MP's diabolisation — but in a non-survol register.
  • is the structural ancestor of the playing register MP's late ontology lacks — play in Winnicott's sense is the transitional zone's mode of life.

Open Questions

  • Could Winnicott's aire transitionnelle be read as a structural parallel to MP's intermonde (the political-symbolic middle order in *Adventures of the Dialectic*)? Both name a third zone irreducible to the polar opposition that brackets it (subject/object for Winnicott; men/things for MP).
  • How does the transitional object differ from the fetish in the Marxist tradition (Marx's commodity fetish, Lukács's Verdinglichung)? The fetish is the failed transition (the object that has stopped pointing beyond itself); but the structures are formally similar.
  • Could a "digital transitional object" (the smartphone, the avatar, the chatbot) be analyzed in Saint Aubert's framework? The question is open and important for any contemporary extension.

Sources

  • saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii — Ch III § 3 (p. 137–140, the hyper-objet deployment, with the cardinal Winnicott regret); Ch VII § 1c (the metaphor-as-transitional-object deployment).
  • Primary references (via Saint Aubert):
    • Donald W. Winnicott, "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 34 (1953), p. 89–97.
    • Donald W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock, 1971); French trans. Jeu et réalité, Gallimard, 1975.
  • Bachelard background: L'eau et les rêves (1942), La psychanalyse du feu (1938).