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The attention to symbolisation so evident in contemporary psychoanalytic accounts derives from rather different theories of where symbols originate, their possible universality, and the psychological capacities on which they depend and the functions they carry. The British Independents’ approach to symbol formation and its relation to theories of early infantile life, creativity and psychoanalysis is exemplified through the work of Donald Winnicott and Marion Milner who outline the parameters for much of, if not all all subsequent work within the Object Relations’ theories perspectives. Another member of the original circle of British Independents was Charles Rycroft , whose original reformulation of Freud’s theory of symbolism was especially recognized and widely influential in North American psychoanalytic thought. His contribution is noted among the early inluential authors in North American section. III. Aba. Donald Winnicott and Contemporary Elaboration by Malcom Bowie Winnicott’s emphasis on an intermediate or transitional area ( transitional space ) occupying a mental and psychic space between internal and external reality was first outlined in a paper given to the British society in 1951 and published 1953. His account of human nature insists on the continuing place of illusion as a resource for living in and with the complex intertwining of external and internal realities that comprises ordinary life. He emphasises a potential space, an intermediate area that grows out of a hypothetical originary state of illusion, first enabled by the environment mother-baby setup and then by the baby’s gradual disillusion leading to a rudimentary awareness of differentiation. Using terms like symbolism, symbolic, symbolize, symbol throughout his writings, Winnicott provides fundamental contributions to understanding the symbolization process and its failures. His concept of transitional phenomena , which prominently includes the transitional space and transitional object, is essential for understanding the process of symbolization. It is also intimately related to the concepts of subjective object and objective object, also fundamental in this process. Winnicott (1953) states: “It is true that the piece of blanket (or whatever it is) is symbolical of some part-object, such as the breast. Nevertheless, the point of it is not its symbolic value so much as its actuality. It's not being the breast (or the mother) as important as the fact that it stands for the breast (or mother). When symbolism is employed, the infant is already clearly distinguishing between fantasy and fact, between inner objects and external objects, and between primary creativity and perception. But the term transitional object, according to my suggestion, gives room for the process of becoming able to accept difference and similarity. I think there is use for a term for the root of symbolism in time, a term that describes the infant's journey from the purely subjective to objectivity; and it seems to me that the transitional object (a piece of blanket, etc.) is what we see on this journey of
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