Commentary on “The Negative Transitional Object: Theoretical Elaboration and Clinical Illustration”

Abstract

This commentary engages with Pauley’s (this issue) clinical case through a brief discussion of the transitional object and a questioning of the author’s new concept the negative transitional object.

Notes

¹ This follows one common trajectory identified in recent research. Wood (2011, 2013, 2014), for instance, proposed several themes that emerge in sustained Internet porn use: the fuelling of manic defenses, a flight from the anxieties of real relationships, an invitation to part-object relating, a vehicle for the expression of sadism or “sadism by proxy,” the search for the compelling scenario, and the evasion or corruption of the super-ego. She also discussed what she described as “the collapse of repression and the breaching of the incest taboo’ involved in the transition from legal to illegal pornography (Wood, 2011, p. 135). This patient displays many of these symptoms, and his subsequent self-disgust contributes to a sense of grandiose badness turned against a self that then deserves and demands punishment.

² Pauley describes the NTO in a language deriving from attachment-based infant research work and linked to the TO as similarly concerned with self regulation, soothing, and attempts at control. Although the TO’s function in warding off anxiety (but is this the same as self soothing and regulation?) in the absence of the mother was one consistent emphasis over the years (Busch, Nagera, McKnight, & Pezzarossi, 1973; Busch & McKnight, 1973, 1977; Tolpin, 1971), the discussion of TP goes well beyond such an emphasis (Barkin, 1978; Clancier & Kalmanovich, 1987; Gaddini & Gaddini, 1970; Winnicott, 1971).

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Notes on contributors

Lesley Caldwell

Lesley Caldwell, Ph.D., is an analyst of British Psychoanalytic Association in private practice in London. She is Honorary Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London where she teaches and supervises on master’s and doctoral programs. With Helen Taylor Robinson, she is Joint General Editor of The Collected Works of D.W. Winnicott  (OUP, 2016) and with Angela Joyce is joint editor of Reading Winnicott (Routledge, 2011).