Mourning the Negative Transitional Object: Toward a Winnicottian Theory of Recovery.

Abstract

This paper applies the concept of the negative transitional object to a classic story of alcoholism and recovery, Caroline Knapp's acclaimed 1996 memoir, Drinking: A Love Story. Knapp's reflections on her history with drinking and its developmental precursors reinforce the notion of the negative transitional object as a problematic, if creative, adaptation to a flawed relational surround (part internalized structure, part ritual practice and belief system) beginning very early in life. Recovery is seen as mourning the lived practices and unconscious beliefs that shape the negative transitional object and its addictive rituals, restoring the connection between bodily need, relational connection and symbolic thought. This is in contrast to the good-enough transitional object which according to Winnicott is neither internalized nor mourned but "gradually decathected . . . diffused over the whole of the cultural field."