Pastoral Psychol DOI 10.1007/s11089-016-0697-1

Readings of Winnicott III Chris R. Schlauch 1

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Abstract As part of a larger project examining the significance of Donald W. Winnicott’s contributions to research, teaching, and clinical care across psychology, religion, and theology, this article is written with this broad question in mind: What are Winnicott’s writings about? It draws from a study carried out by this author that concludes that Winnicott’s writings can be understood in terms of two Breadings^ (Ricoeur 1970)— expressing (a) a developmental-existential point of view and (b) a notion of being religious—of a network of six Btheoretical ideas^ (Stausberg 2009): early experience in infancy, transition, connecting and disconnecting, space, holding (and being held) and holding onto, and facilitating. The article outlines the contours of the second reading of the second and fourth sets of theoretical ideas—transition and space expressing being religious—and spells out some implications. Keywords Winnicott . Transitional objects . Transitional phenomena . Potential space . Being religious

* Chris R. Schlauch [email protected]

1

School of Theology, Boston University, 745 Commonwealth Avenue, Box 259, Boston, MA 02215, USA

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This is the third in a series of articles examining particular concepts in Winnicott’s writings1 and explaining how those concepts could express meanings having to do with being religious.2 The first article (Schlauch 2016a) examines holding (and being held) and holding onto; the second (Schlauch 2016b), going-on-being (living), not going-on-being (dying), true self, false self, and connecting-disconnecting-reconnecting; and the third, transition, and space. To make the case that these concepts express meanings having to do with being religious, each article follows a related but somewhat distinct argument. The first (Schlauch 2016a) draws upon a hermeneutic device—Breadings^—that was introduced by Paul Ricoeur (1970) and appropriated by Peter Homans (1970) and more recently by Thomas Ogden (2001b, 2002, 2004/2007) The notion of readings assumes that texts hold a surplus of meaning; meanings do not inhere in a text but emerge in engagements with texts that bear the imprint of each reader’s unique context, purposes, and questions. The second article (Schlauch 2016b) discusses how the fields of psychology and religion overlap; the boundaries between them are permeable. Studies of psychological writings demonstrate how they express Breligion^; scholarship in religious studies reveals how Breligion^ has been articulated in the language of many fields, including psychology. This third article examines how Winnicott’s analysis of maturation and development, articulated in psychoanalytic object relations language, takes into account how the developing self naturally and inevitably addresses questions, including the Bbig questions,^ and observes how his theorizing about the self involves phenomena and concepts that move in the territory of these big questions—a territory that had traditionally been the purview of philosophy and theology, the forerunners of modern psychology.3 As such, his approach may be read as an account of the formation of the self who is unavoidably religious. The argument, in brief, is as follows. In developing his psychoanalytic object relations theory, Winnicott examines some phenomena that had been more or less ignored by predecessors, poses new questions, coins new concepts, and constructs a new model. He observes how the developing infant and child encounter phenomena that require that a wide range of questions be addressed and answered. Those questions are, for the most part, immediate, narrow, local, and particular, and the answers promote survival and adaptation, the going-onbeing of the self, for example, BWhat is happening?^ In the midst of these activities, the infant 1

For other commentary on Winnicott’s corpus, the reader may turn to any of the following: Abram 1996, 2008; Caldwell 2007; Caldwell and Joyce 2011a, b; Clancier and Kalmanovitch 1987; Davis and Wallbridge 1981; Flanagan 2011; Fulgencio 2007; Gargiulo 1998; Girard 2010; Goldman 1993a, b; Greenberg and Mitchell 1983; Grolnick 1990; Grolnick and Barkin 1978; Hernandez 1998; Hughes 1989; Khan 1958/1975, 1972/1986; Ogden 1986, 1989, 1994, 1997, 2001a, b, 2002, 2004/2007; Phillips 1989a, b; Rodman 1987a, b; Rudnytsky 1991; Sutherland 1980. There may be some benefit to considering this and the other articles in the series in conjunction with commentary on Winnicott in the general area of psychology and religion, for example: Black 2006; Gay 1983; Jones 1991a, b, 1996, 1997, 2002; LaMothe 2014; McDargh 1983, 1986, 1997; Meissner 1984, 1987, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2000a, b; Parker 2012; Pruyser 1983; Rizzuto 1974, 1979, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2005; Schlauch 1990, 1994, 1999, 2006, 2007a, b; Ulanov 2000. 2 In previous articles I discussed in some detail the enormously wide range of definitions of religion and being religious, noting that religious ideas and sensibilities have been expressed in and through any and all kind of ideas and discourses and that religion, broadly speaking, has been characterized by way of remarkably diverse concepts, methods, perspectives and theories. In regard to the concept of religion, see, for example, (Adams 1989; Adriaanse 1999; Alston 1967; Arnal 2000; Braun 2000; Capps 1995; Fontana 2003; Hinnells 2005; Idinopulos 1998; Idinopulos and Wilson 1998; McCutcheon 1999; Paden 1992, 1994, 1998; Platvoet 1999; Platvoet and Molendijk 1999; Saler 1993; Sharpe 1983; Smith 1998, 1962/1991; Snoek 1999; Strenski 1998; Taylor 1998; Thrower 1999; Tweed 2006; Wiebe 2005; Wiggins 1998; Wilson 1998) In regard to being religious, see, for example, Cannon 1995; Foster 2000; Goosen 2007; Holmes 2014; Kwilecki 1999; Schreiter 2011; Streng et al. 1973; Suomala 2012. 3 Consider, for example, Winnicott’s (1967/1971e) observation in BThe Location of Cultural Experience^: BWe have yet to tackle the question of what life itself is about^ (p. 98).

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and child cannot evade phenomena that require that questions of a different order—the Bbig questions^—be addressed and answered (and these answers, also, promote survival and adaptation), including, BWhat is me?^ BWhat is not-me?^ and BHow are they related?^ Given the fact that the infant and child have limited cognitive abilities, neither the questions nor the answers can be verbal or propositional; rather, the questions and answers become embodied in habits of mind and action and, further, in the infant’s and child’s character or being. Whereas Freud (1900/1953) formulated the idea, remarkably apt in this context, that we are Bconstituted of memory-traces,^ it could be said, analogously, that Winnicott’s theorizing reveals that we are Bconstituted of our answers to questions, most especially of our (early) answers to big questions.^4 Given the formative role of early experience, it can also be said that the child, adolescent, and adult live according to answers to questions she or he could not formulate much less consciously ask, answers that are Bin one’s bones,^ assumed, treated as givens.5 The article proceeds through these steps: I enter into the subject matter by way of Winnicott’s musings on a big question, Where are we (when we are…)? Next, through a thought experiment the reader is reminded that this question is in fact a familiar one, whether or not she or he had consciously asked and addressed it. Third, two concepts having to do with this question—transition and space—are introduced, and general meanings are considered. Following this, Winnicott’s commentary on these concepts is reviewed. Next, reflections on what his commentary has to do with being religious are presented. The article concludes with a consideration of implications.

Orienting attention: Where are we (when we are…)? In the collection of essays (1971a) entitled Playing and Reality, Winnicott (1970/1971f) wrote a brief piece called BThe Place Where We Live.^ He opens his remarks with these words: BI wish to examine the place, using the word in an abstract sense, where we most of the time are when we are experiencing life^ (p. 104). He continues, BWhen considering the lives of human beings there are those who like to think superficially in terms of behaviour....By contrast, there are those who place emphasis on the ‘inner’ life.... Here are two places, then, the inside and the outside of the individual. But is this all?^ (p. 104). He elaborates: BI am attempting to get in between these two extremes. If we look at our lives we shall probably find that we spend most of our time neither in behaviour nor in contemplation, but somewhere else. I ask: where? And I try to suggest an answer^ (p. 105). He continues: I am not attempting to make a comprehensive statement so much as to point out that the written words of psychoanalytic literature do not seem to tell us all that we want to know [emphasis added]. What, for example, are we doing when we are listening to a Beethoven 4

The questions and answers are not conceptual but existential and characterological. The twentieth-century Protestant (Christian) theologian Paul Tillich (1951) spoke about persons not only Bhaving^ a question but also Bbeing^ a question: BMan is the question he asks about himself, before a question is formulated^ (p. 62). 5 It is helpful to contrast the adult Barmchair philosopher^ who spends hour upon hour pondering big questions, drawing upon others’ thoughts and formulating nuanced systematic accounts, with the infant and child who lack even the most basic vocabulary of Bquestion^ and Banswer^ and are living experiences that evoke anxiety and mourning as a self whose very being is precarious and subject to impingements that may precipitate Bprimitive agonies,^ even Bannihilation.^ The infant’s and child’s very life depends on good-enough answers in the form of habits of thought and action that guide her or his being in the world. In this sense, this infant and child are lay metaphysicians-theologians; she or he is unavoidably religious.

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symphony or making a pilgrimage to a picture gallery or reading Troilus and Cressida in bed, or playing tennis? What is a child doing when sitting on the floor playing with toys under the aegis of the mother? What is a group of teenagers doing participating in a pop session? It is not only: what are we doing? The question also needs to be posed: where are we (if anywhere at all)? (p. 105) The question Winnicott has posed—in words not yet written in psychoanalytic literature—is what may be called a Bbig question.^ In the history of ideas, scholars have traditionally regarded Breligion^ as that territory or subject matter having to do with the Bbig questions^ (for example, BWho am I?^ BWhy am I here?^ BWhat ought I to do?^ BWhat is real?^). The question Winnicott actually poses, BWhere do we live?,^ is perhaps related to BWhat is this place?^ and, behind that, BWhat is the world (or Nature)?^ and even BWhat is real?^ Like other big questions, it presupposes and implies a spectrum of related questions because answering involves addressing other questions, including (but not limited to): BWho am I?^ BWhat is (the) not-me (the world, other persons)?^ BHow do I relate to and know what is me and not-me?^ And behind all of that, BWhat are some of the problems that emerge as I, like everyone else, inevitably must recurrently ask and answer these questions?^ Consider these points as this article proceeds. Winnicott is asking questions that, as he put it, Bthe written words of psychoanalytic literature do not seem to tell us.^ His posing big questions expresses the overlap, the permeable boundaries between psychology and religion. Second, in much the same way that words have meaning only in a network of terms (that is, a language) and metaphors presuppose and imply Bentailments,^ the questions BWhere are we?^ and BWhere do we live?^ presuppose and imply a range of (big) questions (and answers). Third, and not of least significance, life events have required that each of us develop habits of thought and action and a way of being in the world that embody our answers to these big questions, questions we may not have consciously and formally asked. In this regard, from the very outset of and throughout life, human beings are required to respond to big questions and, as a consequence, live according to answers that had not—at least in infancy and childhood— been consciously asked. In this sense, we are, unavoidably, religious beings.6 A thought experiment: Each of us is familiar with the question, BWhere are we…?^ Imagine as you are reading these words that you pause—whether or not by conscious intention. Imagine, in the next moments, that you remember something or ponder something. You may have had the thought, BI find myself remembering or pondering,^ and in doing so you imply that you had the sense that you went somewhere and in a subsequent moment Bfind^ yourself (as if you had gone away, momentarily). Or, you may have had the thought, BMy mind wandered and I began remembering or pondering.^ In saying these words I note a sense of your Bmind^ having Bwandered,^ that is, moved somewhere. In both characterizations, the change of activity from reading to remembering or pondering involves a movement. Though you likely had not have moved, physically, when altering your activity, you may have signaled registering that you had in fact moved in some sense. To illustrate these latter words and through that elaborate some of the complex issues at stake, consider the following. Imagine sitting in the theater before a play begins. You may be talking to a companion, reading a program, or looking around to see if you recognize any of the other patrons. The play begins. At some later point you could be thinking or saying to yourself or someone else, BI got caught up in the play.^ Or, when the play ended, you could See the first of the articles in this series, BReadings of Winnicott^ (Schlauch 2016a), for a lengthy discussion of this claim.

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have remarked that in some sense you had to become (re-)oriented to where you now were, in the theater, as if you had not been there (in the manner you are now) during the play. Human beings have the capacity to experience the same space differently—as if experiencing different spaces. In the first illustration, we may conclude that we are moving within ourselves, as though our minds move more or less independently of the external world. In the second illustration, this movement of our minds is linked to some shift in the world outside of us—the physical theater, on the one hand, and the virtual reality of the play on the other. Perhaps, as Winnicott wondered, we should not reduce our thinking about place to two distinct, mutually exclusive options—inside or outside. The analogy with reading texts is worth noting: A reader may read the same text in different ways such that it seems to have been different texts; a person may experience a phenomenon, event, or space in different ways such that it seems to have been different phenomena, events, or spaces. Where are we? Our relationship with this question is worth pondering. I have suggested, on the one hand, that we are at some level familiar with it. We know that our experiencing can be altered in a fundamental way, that we can and do Bmove^ as if from place to place, even as we remain physically stationary. Though our experience of where we are is not entirely dissociated from or independent of a physical location, that experience does not entirely, in a simple manner, directly and immediately correspond to that physical location. Where we are can be constant, physically, but paradoxically changing, psychically. At the same time it is also true, on the other hand, that in the absence of asking and addressing this question and of offering novel concepts such as Btransition,^ Bspace,^ Blocation,^ Barea,^ and Bzone^—Bwritten words [that] psychoanalytic literature [does] not seem to tell us^—we are now able to know in a different and fuller way (what we had known and perhaps had not known we had known).7 7

Consider the proposition that you do not have to know X as X in order to know X, but it makes a difference if you do. (The inspiration for this way of thinking is drawn from a discussion in James Gustafson’s (1978) Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics, where he writes, BPersons know grace who do not know grace as grace^ (p. 118).) For example, the phenomenological distinction between being aware and not being aware is something with which human beings become readily and regularly acquainted. Particular sensations, feelings, images, ideas, fantasies, and memories are at moments present to us and at other moments not. We did not need to know Bconscious^ as Bconscious^ in order to experience Bconscious^ or to know Bconsciousness^ as Bconsciousness^ in order to experience Bconsciousness.^ But it makes a difference if we do. Once we know the concepts, we use them to prime our attention and. through that, alter our action. Being alert to shifts in awareness is a shift in action that informs other actions. Consider a second example. Most human beings have the ability to sense or know, in general terms, the contours of another’s experience. Many of us naturally Bgrasp^ from facial expression, words, tone of voice, and bodily movement how another person may be feeling and thinking. We do not need to know Bempathy^ as Bempathy^ in order to experience Bempathy.^ But it does make a difference if we do. By attending to and seeking to understand another person’s unfolding experience, we are establishing a particular kind of relating as well as providing indispensable psychological nutriment (akin to Boxygen^). Consider how this happens, then, in conjunction with Winnicott’s contributions. We did not have to know transition as transition in order to know transition or to know space as space in order to know space, but it makes a difference if we do. Consider, briefly, the differences it makes. Each of us is, at every moment in time, moving through timespace. How each of us moves bears the imprint of past experience. Memories capture such information as instants or moments as well as unfolding episodes, however brief or enduring, each with its respective feeling tone(s) or affect quality (such as anxiety, pleasure, joy, comfort, soothing, excitement, wonder, etc.). These instances and episodes function as templates that pattern future experiencing, in related but distinguishable ways: I will be primed for, alert to, the re-experience of events I have already registered. I will also be primed for moving through time—that is, negotiating transition—in ways informed by previous experience. I will be primed for knowing and avoiding as well as pursuing different kinds of space of the kinds I have known. By paying attention to patterns of transition and to kinds of space that are embedded in ongoing experiencing and thereby likely tacit (that is, preconscious if not unconscious), we are in a position to reflect critically upon as well as alter those patterns of transition, to reflect critically upon as well as alter the spaces we hope to forestall as well as achieve and, finally, to develop more successful strategies for finding and having what we seek.

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Transition and space: Preliminary remarks on transition and space Definitions of transition and space, both having temporal and spatial meaning Though of course each theorist, including Winnicott, will develop her or his own working definitions of central concepts, it is helpful to retrieve some of the range of meanings of these concepts as they are defined not within a particular theory but by an authoritative dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). It is worth noting, at the outset, that both concepts have temporal and spatial meanings. Indeed, this very fact is suggestive; though the concepts are distinct, they may be more related than at first thought. Transition is defined by the OED in the following ways: BA passing or passage from one condition, action, or (rarely) place, to another; change.^ BThe passage from an earlier to a later stage of development or formation.^ Space, according to the OED, has multiple meanings. The first meanings are Bdenoting time or duration. Time which is free or available for doing something; quantity or extent of time; a period or interval of time.^ The second meanings of space are Bdenoting area or extension. Linear distance; interval between two or more points; physical extent or area; extent in two or three dimensions; extent or area sufficient for a purpose, action, etc.; room to contain or do something; the physical expanse which surrounds something; an area or extent delimited or determined in some way; a volume or dimensional extent that is, or may be, occupied by a particular thing; an empty place or part; a void; a gap; the physical or mental sphere within which a person lives or operates.^

The concepts and broader models Winnicott presented his concepts and ideas in articles and essays that were sometimes subsequently organized and published in edited collections. One of those collections, Playing and Reality, includes his reflections on transition and on space. Not insignificantly, the essays in which they are found represent an emerging viewpoint. Whereas in previous contributions Winnicott employed a subject/object model that traced its origins to Descartes, had been extended in the Western philosophical tradition, was presupposed in most psychological theorizing including Freud’s corpus, and was elaborated in psychoanalytic approaches, in Playing and Reality he articulates basic challenges to that model: psychological life cannot properly be reduced to the binary categories of subject/object, internal/external, inside/outside. There is, in his words, something that is neither one nor the other; neither me nor not-me: a third area; an intermediate area; what is Bin between.^8 We must recognize, then, that Btransition^ and 8

Winnicott often uses the concepts and ideas of his psychoanalytic predecessors. As he does so, he unwittingly presupposes and implies metaphysical commitments embedded in these concepts and ideas. Foremost among those commitments is the Cartesian-Newtonian-Kantian model of (the) BI^ or Bme^ fundamentally isolated from (the) Bnot-me,^ that is, the environment, objects, and other selves. Objects exist in time and occupy a place. The area between objects that occupy places is Bspace,^ what can properly be ignored because it is Bempty space.^ This rather commonsensical way of construing the world is so thoroughly embedded in our sensibilities that it is rarely raised to awareness and subjected to scrutiny and challenge. We may, then, readily but mistakenly assume that when Winnicott is writing about me, not-me, and potential space, he is writing about three more or less distinct placeholders—two objects and the empty space between them. He is, however, introducing a new model. Michael Eigen (1991) puts it succinctly: Winnicott’s problem was Bhow to develop an account of experience that was not boxed in by inner and outer^ (p. 70). By constructing concepts such as Bintermediate area^ and a Bthird area^ to refer to a place between, Winnicott was plainly speaking in oxymoronic terms; the binary subject/object model has no place between self and other, fantasy and reality, inside and outside.

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Bspace^ do not refer to something inside or outside; they do not have to do with what is singularly intrapsychic or interpersonal. Their reference points are neither and both. Winnicott himself never outlined a systematic overview of his theory, so readers are left to decide whether this latter Btrinary^ model supplements, complements, or ultimately supersedes and replaces the binary model embedded in his previous thinking. The concepts transition and space, at the heart of this new model, cannot but bring to the fore this larger question—though adjudicating it is not a prerequisite for interpreting and using the concepts and the model themselves. Perhaps we could say, the place where we are is sufficiently open that we need to create new concepts and models to account for some of its complexity.

The concepts in relation to other concepts Concepts have meaning only in a network of concepts, and in this regard Btransition^ and Bspace^ cannot be understood independently of the series of ideas with which they are intimately related.9 Briefly (and certainly not completely much less exhaustively), I would propose that Winnicott formulated a theory of person and of clinical care so that by virtue of understanding certain phenomena more fully one could intervene constructively—to ameliorate suffering (that is, promote healing), facilitate maturation and development, and create the conditions for persons to be increasingly real. In this regard, we should consider how a self (again, within a dyad) naturally seeks development and becoming more real; that these processes occur only within sound (good enough, average expectable) relationships that are characterized by care and safety; and finally, that healing, maturation and development, and becoming increasingly real are themselves kinds of transitions that unfold only in certain sound (for example, safe, constant, Bfitting^) kinds of space. In brief, then, facilitating healing, maturation and development, and becoming increasingly real require understanding and revising patterns of transition and the nature of space.

How Winnicott expressed transition and space: Different versions Winnicott used the term transition in its adjectival form to refer to transitional objects and transitional phenomena. (Post-Winnicottian writers created a term he himself did not coin or use, Btransitional space.^) In elaborating on these concepts he (1953/1971d) introduced a spatial term: BI have introduced the terms ‘transitional objects’ and ‘transitional phenomena’ for designation of the intermediate area of experience^ (p. 2). It is in this regard that transition appears to have both temporal and spatial significance.10 In Playing and Reality, Winnicott (1971a, 1953/1971d, 1967/1971e, 1970/1971f) introduces a series of terms through which he conceptualizes space: an intermediate area of experience, potential space, the location of cultural experience, the place where we live, this third area, an intermediate zone. The various forms and expressions of transition and space signal that these concepts must be understood in 9

Toward the end of the article I will consider the interplay among three groups of concepts: holding (and being held) and holding onto (the primary focus of the first article in the series), going-on-being (living), not going-onbeing (dying), true self, false self, and connecting-disconnecting-reconnecting (the primary focus of the second article), and transition and space. 10 Winnicott (1967/1971e), in BThe Location of Cultural Experience,^ indicates that the transition of which he speaks has both spatial and temporal referents: BIt is at the place in space and time.^ He writes, BThe use of an object symbolizes the union of two now separate things, baby and mother, at the point in time and space of the initiation of their state of separateness^ (pp. 96–97).

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conjunction with and in terms of one another and that in their overlap they signal both temporal and spatial meanings.

Amplifying Winnicott’s analysis: Three ways of thinking about transition and space Though Winnicott neglects to interpret his thinking systematically in the following terms, his commentary on transition and space lends itself to the following observations. First, his initial and most significant focus is on the engagement of infant with mother—the immediate, local context—such that the primary transition unfolds within the primary space between them—between me and not-me. Second, Winnicott’s approach to the self— more accurately, to me with not-me—is developmental, longitudinal, and historical. Thus, the kind of transition that unfolds in the space created between infant and mother establishes a basic pattern for subsequently formed transitions and spaces that extend from the original dyad to others within and beyond the home, as well as from dyads to groups: infant with mother; infant with father; child with parents and siblings; child with other family members and with peers; child, adolescent, and adult with peers and others; play; culture; art; and religion. Third, Winnicott recognizes but does not elaborate upon the role of culture, and this prompts an additional notion of transition and space as nested and thus cross-sectional. Mother’s capacity to be a good enough mother—to be preoccupied, to disillusion—bears the imprint of her experience with her own mother (and others), her own personality, but also of the kind of presence and relating within her marriage and family and in her broader communities and culture. In this regard, the space of infant and mother within which transition unfolds is nested within and influenced by these broader spaces.11

Transition and space: Regarding culture, ethnicity, race class, and religion (as a community and tradition) Winnicott participated in and contributed to a major shift in Bparadigm^ when outlining a trinary model that could be seen alongside or even as superseding the binary subject/ object model that had shaped philosophical, theological, and psychological thinking for centuries. At times he explored differences related to gender, though his thinking did not advance very far. Only after his passing did researchers and scholars explore, increasingly as a matter of course, the impact of factors such as culture, ethnicity, race, class, religion, sexual identity, and orientation. Though some of these issues were not expressed explicitly in his thinking, we may consider some ideas that could be extrapolated from and appended to his work. A caveat is in order. Winnicott was a psychoanalytic theorist and clinician who was deeply serious about the need to understand each individual’s more or less unique experience and 11

In no case are the spaces designated by these three foci identical. Infant-with-mother may be good enough, safe and sound; a family circumstance may currently be good enough; and the larger culture’s assumptions and values may be consonant with those of the family, and mother, and all is well enough. But of course there are differences and tensions nonetheless. More often than not, there are contrasts and conflicts so that, for example, the mother may experience some hospitality within the home, but the infant as it becomes a child and enters into the broader world may experience in other Bspaces^ considerable inhospitality, and that inhospitality may be expressive of destructive prejudices that have profound effects on the lives of all the selves in the family, infant/child, mother, father, siblings, relatives, and thus the space in which they move.

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history. One cannot understand and relate Bin general^; one cannot facilitate, therapeutically, in general. Rather, development expresses the interplay of unique individuals, and clinical care, similarly, expresses the unique relationship that emerges between two particular selves. Indeed, one could not foster the being and becoming of a particular true self except as that self is engaged with another true self. With these thoughts in mind, we must be hesitant about generalizing from a particular self and particular dyads to larger groups. Nonetheless, it is, I believe, a reasonable assumption that transition and space not only differ from person to person but also from group to group.12 Moreover, I would suggest that transition and space for members of a dominant group (Bdominant^ in terms of power and privilege, say, by virtue of such factors as race, class, and gender) differ from 12

See, for example, Tuan (1977/2001), who examines differences among cultural groups: BNatural environments vary conspicuously over the earth’s surface and cultural groups differ in the way they perceive and order their environments....In a dense forest environment, what can distance mean? Aural cues give a sense of distance, but sounds present a smaller world than what eyes can potentially see. Moreover, whereas visual space tends to be focused and structured around an object or a succession of objects, aural space is less focused. Forest sounds are not precisely located; they yield an ambience rather than a coordinated spatial system. Space, to the rain forest dwellers, is a dense net of places with no overall structure. The same is apparently true of time. The negligible seasonal rhythm deprives the forest people of a measure and a concept of time overarching the quick successions of the diurnal period. The time span known to the Pygmies is restricted. Although they have a detailed knowledge of many plants and animals, they pay little heed to life as stages of growth. Time, like perceived distance, is shallow: neither the genealogical past nor the future holds much interest. The Hopi Indians of the American Southwest live on a semi-arid plateau. In the clear and dry air they can see into great distances. Their environment is one of panoramic views and sharply etched landmarks in antithesis to the womblike, sheltered milieu of the rain forest dwellers.^ (pp. 119–120)

See, also, Elinor Ochs and Bambi Schieffelin (1984), who write, BThere is more than one way of becoming social and using language in early childhood. All normal children will become members of their own social group, but the process of becoming social, including becoming a language user, is culturally constructed. In relation to this process of construction, every society has its own developmental stories that are rooted in social organization, beliefs, and values. These stories may be explicitly codified and/or tacitly assumed by members^ (p.285). Norman Holland (1985) offers a helpful account, deserving to be quoted at length: In a remarkable anthropological film called Four Families, which features the commentary of Margaret Mead, we can see culture flowing before our very eyes through the mother and the family into the baby. The film compares families in four different societies: Indian, French, Japanese, and Western Canadian. Each of the four families is rural and farms, and each has a 1 year old boy baby, but the differences in their physical and cultural worlds are immense. The Canadian family is surrounded by noisy machines like the vacuum cleaner and the washer-dryer with their cold, hard surfaces of metal and porcelain. The other families are machineless, while the Indian family has scarcely a wall to its house. The Canadian family, by contrast, has to have a special transitional space between indoors and outdoors for taking off overcoats and snowsuits. The Indian family in its tropical hut has no boundary at all between indoors and outdoors. The Indian mother gives her baby’s body religious markings, but it is the French father who makes the sign of the cross over the bread before the evening meal. The Japanese mother prays before the ancestors’ shrine, but in the Canadian family the youngest child says grace. The Canadian baby goes to sleep in a room by himself, while the other three share the common living space of the family. The Indian father spends his evening in the village, the other three at home. The French and Canadian mothers bathe their babies vigorously, handling them dispassionately, almost like packages. The Indian mother bathes her baby caressingly, sensuously. The Japanese baby gets his bath when his grandmother takes him into the bathtub with her. All of these variations provide the baby with a sense of the way his world is and shall be. (p. 167)

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transition and space for members of non-dominant, marginalized, and oppressed groups.13 In addition, I would suggest that transition and space for members of an oppressed, victimized group differ from transition and space for members of groups that perpetrate violence and destruction.14

Transition Winnicott (1953/1971d) introduces the notion of transition in an essay entitled BTransitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena.^ He does not speak directly of Btransition^ or even Ba^ or Bthe^ transition per se but rather focuses on particular kinds of objects and an analogous group of phenomena. Using the adjective transitional, he indicates that what makes these objects this kind of object and these phenomena this kind of phenomenon is the fact that they have to do, primarily and essentially, with transition. As Winnicott notes, he is focusing on objects and phenomena not as ends in themselves but as disclosing an Barea of experiencing.^ Though he provides numerous examples, a brief illustration would benefit readers unfamiliar with his essay. Winnicott observes objects that have acquired special status, meaning, and use for the infant/child—they are Bprized^—for example, a stuffed animal or blanket. To say that the infant or child prizes the object is to say that she or he not only wants and needs it; at times she or he appears to have to have it. Having and holding a prized object engenders soothing, comfort, and safety. Separation from or loss of the object is an impingement that puts the infant or child’s self in jeopardy, evoking various kinds of distress—anxiety, melancholia, panic, even despair. In a peculiar way the infant or child declares by her or his attachment—and even more, by the responses evoked in the disruption of the object’s presence and availability—BMy life depends on this.^ These objects are not Bobjectively^ or Bself-evidently^ beautiful or costly or rare; in other words, nothing intrinsic to the object qua object seems to commend or ensure the prizing. That same object would not of itself evoke an identical response from another person. Winnicott and we are left to try to account for the discrepancy, the disjunction, between the point of view of the one who prizes the object and everyone else. Since the prizing expresses as much if not more about who prizes as about what is prized, Winnicott is disposed—in a manner typical of psychoanalytic approaches—to Bturn to the subject^ and reflect on the infant or child. So he asks, in so many words, BWhat’s going on in the lives, in the minds, in the worlds, of these infants and children such that they are inclined or disposed to seek, find, create, need, and use these special objects?^ To understand the objects we must understand who the subject is and where this subject is when this is happening. It is a place and time of need, and of use. Winnicott opens his essay with a statement of his Boriginal hypothesis,^ comparing the infant’s sucking her or his fingers and cherishing a special object: BIt is well known that infants 13

Space does not permit elaboration, but research demonstrates some of the myriad ways in which space differs depending on social location (see, for example, Anderson 2013; Carter and Sant-Barket 2015; Haslam et al. 2007; Perrin 2013). See, for example, Shannon Sullivan’s (2006) remarks in Chapter 6 of BRace, Space, and Place,^ where she writes, BFar from being a neutral, empty arena in which people of various race are located, space both constitutes and is constituted by white privilege. Many spaces that might seem free of the impact of race and racism often subtly and invisibly privilege white over non-white people^ (p. 143). 14 Lest this analysis devolve into grand generalizations that are overly simplified and interpretively useless, additional cautions are in order. No group is truly monolithic; each is constituted of members whose respective identities are themselves constituted of multiple factors, and each member differs from the next. Further, the relations between groups are complex and only provisionally cast in binary terms as dominant and oppressed. For example, a member of a group, dominant by virtue of race (for example, White) may herself be a member of a subordinate group (in this instance, female).

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as soon as they are born tend to use fist, fingers, thumbs in stimulation of the oral erotogenic zone....It is also well known that after a few months infants of either sex become fond of playing with dolls and that most mothers allow their infants some special object and expect them to become, as it were, addicted to such objects. There is a relationship between these two sets of phenomena^ (pp. 1–2). He turns to a discussion of Btheir use of the first ‘not-me’ possession^ (p. 2). These objects are Bnot part of the infant’s body yet are not fully recognized as belonging to external reality^ (p. 3). These objects that have an unusual, paradoxical status—neither part of Bme^ but also not clearly Bnot me^—are used. In the process of remarkable, profound, extensive changes, the infant’s body, mind, motor skills, cognitive abilities, etc., are becoming increasingly complex and refined. In fact, the infant since the moment of conception is in constant process; who she is, how she registers and interprets information about herself and her world, and thus what the world and others in the world are, are subject to constant change. When Winnicott turns to explore the question, BWhat changes are occurring such that this remarkable prizing of objects shows itself?,^ he responds that the infants are undergoing a profound transition. Winnicott proceeds to offer a theoretical explanation. Remarkably, his initial remarks do not illumine but only confound, making what had been unclear even more obscure. He appears to be signaling to the reader, BThere’s a lot going on here, and to understand we must synthesize a range of seemingly unrelated phenomena and invent new concepts to account for what is found.^ (He is creating as he is finding.) Winnicott writes: BI have introduced the terms Btransitional objects^ and Btransitional phenomena^ for designation of the intermediate area of experience, between the thumb and the teddy bear, between the oral erotism and the true object-relationship, between primary creative activity and projection of what has already been introjected, between primary unawareness of indebtedness and the acknowledgment of indebtedness^ (p. 2). To parse this, briefly, a group of objects and phenomena somehow have to do with an area—an area of experience (whatever that could mean)—and that area is between the hand and a stuffed animal (a physical expanse), between two kinds of relating, between two kinds of psychic activities, between being unaware and becoming aware of Bindebtedness.^ So many different kinds and categories are linked as having to do with a kind of Barea^ (physical, relational, psychic), an area between (thus, Bintermediate^). Notably, while the first area is physical—the hand and a prized object—the three other illustrations are relational, psychic, and developmental. That is, this area is one of a shift, a movement. Transition. To explain the unusual, paradoxical status of these prized possessions—for which the subject/object model of traditional theorizing cannot account—Winnicott supplements what is Boutside^ and Binside^: Bthe third part of life of a human being, a part we cannot ignore, is an intermediate area of experiencing, to which inner reality and external life both contribute^ (p. 3, emphasis added).15 He then goes on to say, BIt is an area that is not challenged, because no claim is made on its behalf except that it shall exist as a resting-place for the individual engaged in the perpetual human task of keeping inner and outer reality separate yet interrelated^ (p. 3). Winnicott theorizes that as the infant matures and becomes aware of a boundary 15

Winnicott made two distinct shifts in categorizing phenomena. He moved from examining a particular kind of object—the prized possession (the teddy bear or security blanket). First, by inferring that the object derives its specialness in part by virtue of its emergence during a profound and multidimensional developmental process, that is, in the context of this major transition, he surmised that there were a range of phenomena whose shared identity revolved around their relation to this transition. Then, he further inferred that the special quality of both object and phenomena might be Bexplained^ by proposing that they emerged in, and retained, a unique style of experiencing and engaging reality, a distinguishable area of experiencing.

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between me and not-me—and in doing so, becomes aware of me and of not-me—the boundary is less a line than an area. It is an area, a Bresting-place,^ of experiencing. From this time forward, the self is negotiating the boundary, a perpetual human task. Winnicott proceeds to examine the concept of Buse.^ He describes the prized possession as Bsome thing or some phenomenon…that becomes vitally important to the infant for use at the time of going to sleep, and is a defense against anxiety^ (p. 5). And he notes a general timeline: BI suggest that the pattern of transitional phenomena begins to show at about 4 to 6 to 8 to 12 months. Purposely I leave room for wide variations^ (p. 6). He continues: BPatterns set in infancy may persist into childhood^ (p. 6). These objects become important Bwhen deprivation threatens^ (p. 6). In that regard, the infant or child has created something she or he will use, when needed, as an antidote to what we could call, in most general terms, anxiety and depression. Winnicott elaborates on the point he introduces early on, that negotiating inner and outer is Ba perpetual human task^: It is assumed here that the task of reality-acceptance [accepting the disjunction between Bwhat is subjectively conceived of^ (p. 15)—that is, the illusion that the infant or child creates—and Bwhat is objectively perceived^ (p. 15)—that is, what is there in the external world to be encountered] is never completed, that no human being is free from the strain of relating inner and outer reality, and that relief from this strain is provided by an intermediate area of experience…which is not challenged (arts, religion, etc.). This intermediate area is in direct continuity with the play area of the small child who is ‘lost’ in play. (p. 18) Transitional objects and phenomena, then, emerge when the infant or child is encountering for the first time, and with quite limited cognitive abilities, a profound lifelong project: BHow do I make sense of what is happening when I (now) know that what is happening is constituted of two related but distinct dimensions—me (what is happening within me)—and not-me (what is happening that expresses what is other than me)?^ The project involves figuring out how to relate, soundly and authentically, what is happening inside (subjectively conceived) with what is happening outside (objectively perceived) in the awareness of Bthe strain of objective perception^ (p. 18). That is, encountering what is out there (as distinct from one’s idea of what is out there) causes constant strain, and the abiding need for a Bresting place.^ The infant or child does not engage these epistemological questions—what and how do I know—with mature conceptual abilities, in relaxed conversation with others, in mind of a long tradition of inquiry, in hypothetical reflection, in order to arrive at abstract systematic answers (ostensibly) relevant to everyone. Rather, the infant or child moves precariously, moment-tomoment, in the middle of living experiences, embodying the provisional answers in the form of mental and physical movements that may become habits of thought and action. The strain of this perpetual human task not only requires good enough Banswers^ in the moment but also the sense that BI^ has developed a good enough ability to answer over time. This precarious project unfolds in the midst of present and future demands and potential impingements. As the infant or child moves through this unprecedented transition, she or he must create objects and phenomena of the stuff of the world and use them to address psychic needs. BThe intermediate area of experience, unchallenged in respect of its belonging to inner or external (shared) reality, constitutes the greater part of the infant’s experience, and throughout life is retained in the intense experiencing that belongs to the arts and to religion and to imaginative living, and to creative scientific work^ (p. 19). This area between subject and object, me and not-me, inner and outer, is where the infant Blives,^ and the infant or child’s emerging ways of experiencing in this area are precursors for later, more mature forms of experiencing.

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In sum Transition is a fact, an unceasing existential project and task, of human life: each of us is always (potentially) in transition. Human beings are not blank slates whose participation in transition is determined primarily if not solely by the external world. Rather, we are agents who create as we find, construct as we discover; what and how we participate in transition bears our individual and more or less unique influence and imprint. Our constructive participation in transition involves a tension or balance between Bassimilating^ what is registered into existing patterns and categories and amending those patterns and categories (formulating new ones) in Baccommodating^ to what is novel. Much as there is a tendency toward entropy in systems, human beings are conservative, more often than not fitting the unfamiliar into the familiar. Transition, having both spatial and temporal referents, pointing to an Barea^ as well as to the interplay among past, present, and future, unfolds in a Bthird^ area or a place Bin-between.^ It is a strained negotiation between me and not-me, is unique to each self, may involve a range of affect, and generates the need for soothing, comfort, and safety and for antidotes in the Bresting-place.^ Transition emerges in infancy, and the patterns by which a self negotiates the task(s) become habits of thought and action as well as embedded in the very character of each self. Linking the notion that what is earliest and most long-lived is most basic and the notion that the self of each person is the composite of the registration of encounters, more precisely, of the patterning of encounters, we could infer from Winnicott’s theorizing that the way one registers, interprets, and negotiates the primary transition itself becomes a template for how one subsequently engages transition.

Space As noted earlier, Winnicott (1971a, 1953/1971d, 1967/1971e, 1970/1971f) introduces a series of terms through which he conceptualizes space: an intermediate area of experience; potential space16; the location of cultural experience; the place where we live; this third area; and an intermediate zone.17 I have examined his notion of Ban intermediate area^ in his discussion of Thomas Ogden (1986), offers the following significant observation: BPerhaps the most important and at the same time the most elusive of the ideas introduced by Donald Winnicott is the concept of potential space^ (p. 203). It seems from this list that Winnicott did not find it necessary to differentiate among the potentially different meanings and uses of the words space, area, location, place, and zone, treating them as more or less synonymous. For a very insightful full-scale analysis of two of these words, see Yi-Fu Tuan’s (1977/2001) Space and Place. Tuan writes,

16

17

In experience, the meaning of space often merges with that of place. ‘Space’ is more abstract than ‘place.’ What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value....The ideas ‘space’ and ‘place’ require each other for definition. From the security and stability of place we are aware of the openness, freedom, and threat of space, and vice versa. Furthermore, if we think of space as that which allows movement, then place is pause; each pause in movement makes it possible to be transformed into place. (p. 6) Later in his book-length study he remarks, BAn infant’s space expands and becomes better articulated as he recognizes and reaches out to more permanent objects and places. Space is transformed into place as it acquires definition and meaning^ (p. 136). We can infer, then, that the movement from space to place—and the use of transitional objects—is a movement that is a shift from general and impersonal to something specific and personal. It is, concurrently, an alteration from unfamiliar to familiar, from not mine to mine, and thus a movement toward or to safety.

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transitional objects and phenomena. In this section I review, briefly, Winnicott’s ideas about space presented in writings other than his well-known classic, BTransitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena.^ According to Winnicott, the place where we live is neither in fantasy nor reality, neither within our internal worlds nor located in the external world: it is, rather, Bin between.^ Better said, we live in the conjunction or intermingling. This may appear, at first glance, self-evident, as if Winnicott were a master of the obvious. All experiencing is, of course, a function of contributions from the subject and from the outside world, a union, so to speak, of subject and object. Winnicott was, however, seeking to find as well as create a way of articulating a spectrum of phenomena and qualities of experiencing that would otherwise be ignored. If space is neither outside nor inside but in between, our awareness or experience of space, in the manner of Winnicott’s understanding of transitional objects, expresses the interplay of what is created as well as found. It is, on the one hand, in part found in the external world (that is, it is not primarily or singularly an idea, fantasy, hallucination, or within one’s mind); it is, on the other hand, in part created in the internal world (that is, it is not solely located in public space, as if it were available to be registered in identical ways by everyone). We see, again, a kind of paradox in the effort to identify and speak of this kind of phenomenon; in the act of trying to refer to something that is neither X nor Y we must resort to using the categories X and Y. That is, we must begin our effort with what is familiar—inside and outside, subject and object—and then declare, when talking about something conceptually less familiar, BThat’s not it; it’s neither.^ We have no precise, eloquent way of speaking about, of conceptualizing, this Bthird^ or Bintermediate^ area except by the via negativa, that is, by saying what it is not. If we keep this in mind, we are then cautioned about approaching Bspace^ as if it were a term designating simply the physical space Bout there^ for all to see and to move within. BSpace,^ in Winnicott’s thinking, does not point to Bthis is where we are moving, standing, or sitting at this moment.^ It does not refer to the air, temperature, moisture, light, ground, or, if inside, to the floor, furniture, walls, or pictures. It also does not refer to Bwhat’s going on in my mind while I’m here at this moment.^ Space points to the Bintermingling^—drawing upon and expressing the mixture, so to speak, of outside and inside but not reducible to one or the other. The words, Bambiance,^ Bethos,^ or Bsurround^ may be helpful, but we must use them cautiously because we may be mistakenly inclined to regard the phenomena to which they refer as Boutside^ in Bthe external world.^ BSurround^ could be what is outside Bme,^ and Bme^ (or BI^) is Binside my body.^ If there is no actual boundary—like that of the body— between inside and outside, then we can no longer properly and comfortably say, BI had this ‘feeling’ or ‘awareness’ or ‘sense’ inside (me) of what was outside.^ We are, in these moments, trying to find a way to put into words something that we cannot point at as an object (an entity) but rather something that we can register as distinctly present. We may, though, be more conscious of the kind of space we are in after we have been there for a moment or after the fact. Consider the following illustrations. Imagine being involved in a conversation with a close friend. Each participates in the unfolding dialogue in ways that may be progressively more intimate, spontaneous, and selfdisclosive. At a certain point a transition may take place without either person being consciously aware of it. In fact, the transition coincides with a loss of self-awareness. The conversation now has its own life. It has become a Bthird,^ as if it were more true to say the conversation now has the participants than the participants have a conversation. At a point one or another may notice that time has passed quickly—BWhere has the time gone?^ At that

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moment, they signal awareness of having been in Banother^ space. In doing so, they also, paradoxically, signal the exit from that space. Throughout the conversation all of what unfolded bore the contributions of each participant and can be said to have taken place Bbetween^ them. At the same time, however, identifiable transitions have unfolded that signal shifts in the nature of the experiencing. Rather than speaking about those shifts in a way that might mistakenly imply that they were happening essentially and entirely within each of them, one may say that the Bspace^ has changed. This metaphor indicates that the place in which the participants met—the area between them yet including them—has changed. A somewhat similar illustration may also be considered, one that I retrieve fondly from my memory of being with my son about 20 years ago. Imagine playing a game with a child where you and the child assume the identities of favorite characters in a story. It may take some time before each player gets fully in character so that each becomes less self-conscious about playing the game. At a point, however, one or both loses a measure of self-consciousness and the game plays the players. The story has its own life, and the actors are directed by this Bthird.^ Throughout the game all of what took place was a function of two people and could be said to have happened between them. Yet, there were shifts when what happened had a different quality, as if it had a life of its own. With the comparative loss of self-consciousness, a third actor, so to speak, assumes agency. The experiencing, the space, has changed—it is still a function of both, still subjective and objective, but in a different sense. Similar shifts in experiencing and in the space in which one experiences may be noted in observing art, listening to music, or participating in religious worship. One may lose a measure of self-consciousness, of awareness of the boundary between oneself and a painting, a musical composition, a physical setting, and Bmove^ in a manner in which the space is the same yet now different. Though the experience happens Bin^ the mind or personality of the observer, listener, or worshipper; though it bears the contributions of the painting, the music, the house of worship and self; and though in some sense everything is the same, something has changed. Winnicott utilizes the phrase Barea of experiencing^ to point to the sense of an area that is inclusive of the participants and to a quality of experiencing-with. In BPlaying: A Theoretical Statement^ (1971b), Winnicott remarks, BPlaying has a place and a time. In is not inside by any use of the word,…Nor is it outside, that is to say,…it is not part of…that which the individual has decided to recognize…as truly external^ (p. 41). He continues, BIn order to give a place to playing I postulated a potential space between the baby and the mother^ (p. 41). In BPlaying: Creative Activity and the Search for the Self^ (1971c), Winnicott makes additional connections: BWhereas inner psychic activity has a kind of location in the mind or in the belly or in the head or somewhere within the bounds of the individual’s personality, and whereas what is called external reality is located outside those bounds, playing and cultural experience can be given a location if one uses the concept of the potential space between the mother and the baby. In the development of various individuals, it has to be recognized that the third area of potential space between mother and baby is extremely valuable.^ (p. 53) In BThe Location of Cultural Experience,^ Winnicott (1967/1971e; see also 1965/1989) speaks about this Blocation^ using language expressing a binary model, thereby displaying the limitations of the language (and the model): BThis is the place that I have set out to

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examine, the separation that is not a separation but a form of union^ (pp. 97–98). He continues, BThese phenomena of the play area have infinite variability, contrasting with the relative stereotypy of phenomena that relate either to personal body functioning or to environmental actuality^ (p. 98). His statement of what he calls the Main Thesis deserves to be quoted in full. 1. The place where cultural experience is located is in the potential space between the individual and the environment (originally the object). The same can be said of playing. Cultural experience begins with creative living first manifested in play. 2. For every individual the use of this space is determined by life experiences that take place at the early stages of the individual’s existence. 3. From the beginning, the baby has maximally intense experiences in the potential space between the subjective object and the object objectively perceived, between me-extensions and the not-me. This potential space is at the interplay between there being nothing but me and there being objects and phenomena outside omnipotent control. (p. 100) Winnicott elaborates, BI suggest that the time has come for psychoanalytic theory to pay tribute to this third area, that of cultural experience which is derivative of play^ (p. 102). In BThe Place Where We Live,^ under the rubric of BAn Intermediate Zone^ (p. 105), Winnicott (1970/1971f) introduces a way of thinking that unwittingly and unfortunately could be read to regard this third area as something within: BNow, if my argument has cogency, we have three instead of two human states [emphasis added] to compare with each other^ (p. 106). BThe area available for measure in terms of the third way of living (where there is cultural experience or creative playing) is extremely variable between individuals^ (p. 107). Regarding his own playing, he writes of a paradox: BI refer to the hypothetical area that exists (but cannot exist)^ (p. 107). BThe special feature of this place where play and cultural experience have a position is that it depends for its existence on living experiences^ (p. 108).

Transition and space and Winnicott’s overall project: Some summary observations Transition and space have to do with everything. Both concepts have to do with time and space, or time-space. Both also have to do with the interconnections and overlap of the immediate and the enduring (temporally) and the local and the global (spatially), nowforever-here-everywhere. In this regard, to speak about transition and/or space is to express assumptions and judgments about what is real, and about what is true. Winnicott, I suggest, offers three different approaches to exploring the nature of transition and space and to the forming and reforming of assumptions and judgments about what is real and true. The first is to focus on origins, on early experience. Much of his work examines infant-with-mother, what could be called the primary transition, the primary space—within which the foundation of being and knowing and the basic patterns of experience are formed. It is during this time-space that the infant learns what is elemental and foundational—compared to which later experience is secondary. The second approach is longitudinal, what we might call historical or, more properly, developmental. Here Winnicott surveys the growth and change over time. Alongside these two approaches

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he lends a third, cross-sectional view, one that equips us to examine concurrently the different transitions that are occurring and the different spaces in which self lives. The infant and child forms its own core assumptions and judgments about itself, other, the world—about everything. The habits of mind and action and the most elemental dimensions of Bself^ are established. As the infant and child matures and develops, acquiring increasingly complex ways of registering and processing information as well as of relating to others and to the world, her or his assumptions and judgments are subject to revision—though, in some sense, what is developmentally primary remains foundational. New events and situations and new selves with whom to form relationships precipitate different kinds of Btransitions^ in new Bspace(s).^ The self must now register and synthesize qualitatively different information from diverse settings and in the process potentially amend, however slightly or grandly, her or his sense of Bthis is what transition is like,^ Bthis is what space is like^—again, not consciously and critically but preconsciously. Entirely novel events and phenomena may appear. In some cases, what emerges may seem random, or more or less expected, or familiar. Correspondingly, one or another space may seem chaotic and inhospitable, tolerable, or Blike home.^ Some persons to whom one is relating may be more or less warm, kind, and attentive, others not fully present, and still others at times insensitive if not hostile. The notion of nesting spaces enables considering ways in which the values and sensibilities of the original dyad and, slightly more broadly, of the family’s home itself may or may not be consonant with those of the broader culture. (Of course, there are numerous variables that must, in each case, be taken into account, each of which qualifies the bigger picture.) For example, a White middle-class Protestant mother in a Protestant Christian home in a middle class suburb of Massachusetts may, more often than not, presume a basic consonance of Bspaces^ for herself and for her child. A single immigrant mother, lacking the support of an extended family or government resources, cannot but struggle to provide a context of safety with her infant and child when the nested spaces are precarious at best, inhospitable and hostile at worst. Questions and answers have a shape, texture, and feel peculiar to the kinds of transitions that must be negotiated within the kinds of spaces in which child and mother move. If and how transition and space are registered (at the horizon of awareness) at any moment in time is contingent on a number of factors. These include what BI^ needs and wants (for example, a change in affect, the presence of another, the retrieval of a memory, the solution to a problem, the opportunity to play); memories that resemble the present moment that precipitate the retrieval of patterns of expectation (that is, transferences) and of events and objects (that is, mental representations) that prime how the present is registered and interpreted; the affect state emerging in the immediate connection to other(s) with whom BI^ is living an experience together (for example, safety or danger, calm or anxiety, curiosity or vigilance, hopefulness or resignation); the range of contributions of the other in this space (her or his particular needs, memories, and patterns); the abilities of the respective Bplay-ers^ to be and become, together, constructively (for example, whether they are trusting, open, free, flexible, and able to tolerate and negotiate difference, ambiguity, and conflict); and the memories and patterns of playing that the current moment and living experience together inevitably evoke. BI’s^ capacity to create depends, then, on BI’s^ history of creating. One could approach this history in terms of patterns that have been learned and practiced, such that creating is thought of in terms of re-experiencing and re-enacting. Doing so accentuates the role of enduring habits of mind and action. However, bearing in mind notions of maturation and development, one could also approach history in terms of BI’s^ developing increasingly more complex forms of

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creativity. In this vein, one could consider how creativity matures or, if you will, undergoes development.18

Transition and space as having to do with being religious In this section I outline a reading of the concepts of transition and space as having to do with being religious. I begin by rehearsing a way of characterizing being religious. This serves to alert readers, to prime their attention so that they are able to hear overtones in the reading of the concepts. I turn, next, to a section on the concepts themselves, reading them—or Bredescribing^ them, if you will—to hear, more crisply, what had been present if only in muted form. I am not making the argument, subtly or crudely, that the real, essential, and most basic meaning of these concepts is their characterization of being religious. That effort would be misguided and erroneous, reading into texts and finding what one has been looking for. Rather, I am outlining a quite different procedure in which I invite readers to consider if and how these concepts can plausibly be read (that is, interpreted) in this way such that the reading on the one hand illumines something about the concepts (and Winnicott’s writings, more generally) and on the other hand opens up and enhances ways of understanding that would otherwise remain obscure and underdeveloped.

Characterizing being religious Being religious may be seen as involving experiencing the world and one’s path or way within the world (and thus one’s identity and affiliation within that path or way) as defined, directly and explicitly, in relation to what one holds dear, such that what one holds dear (and one’s identity and affiliation) arise from an unseen order. BFor the purpose of^ this study,19 being religious has to do with forging a sense of oneself-inthe-world and what one believes in—what determines one’s being and not being—in conjunction with or response to an unseen order, a something more. This working definition of being religious links ideas from three scholars: Paul Tillich, Raymond Paloutzian, and William James. Protestant philosophical theologian Paul Tillich proposed that BReligion, in the largest and most basic sense of the word, is ultimate concern^ (1959, p. 7-8). He had, in a

18 Paul Horton (1981) spells out a way of elaborating Winnicott’s ideas. He writes, BIn recent years, the term ‘transitional’… has come to have five main meanings attributed to it by various authors: (1) Btransitional^ from the mother to the larger world of animate and inanimate object relations; (2) transitional from the psychic or inner reality of wishes, desires, feelings, and ideas to the external world of intersubjectively verifiable things—that is (using Winnicott’s terms), from ‘me’ to ‘not-me’; (3) transitional from one level of ego organization to another; (4) transitional from concrete to symbolic object relations; and (5) transitional in the phylogenetic sense^ (p.18). He introduces the notion of Btransitional relatedness^: BTransitional relatedness is defined as the person’s unique experience of an object, whether animate or inanimate, tangible or intangible, in a reliably soothing manner based on the object’s associated or symbolic connection with an abiding, mainly maternal primary process presence^ (p. 35). Further, he reflects upon BTransitional Relatedness as a Lifelong Developmental Process^ (p. 74). 19 James (1902/1982) provided an important and often-followed precedent in his The Varieties of Religious Experience, as he introduced his view of religion with these words: Bfor the purpose of these lectures [emphasis in original]^ (p. 28). By doing so, he conveyed, plainly, that this view was not final, not identifying an essence, but rather was provisional, having the status of a working definition.

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previous work, explained that Bour ultimate concern is that which determines our being and non-being^ (1951, p. 14). What is he saying? Briefly, each of us knows that her or his own life is precarious as well as limited in time and space (that is, finite). I know I will die. As I move through life I know of and seek to address a variety of needs and wants (or concerns), some of which involve more immediate issues of pain and pleasure and others that have to do with matters of life and death. Like everyone, I must make judgments about what will determine my life and death, about what is, in Tillich’s words, my ultimate concern. It is worth noting that Tillich’s concept has a double referent, encompassing the target of concern (that is my ultimate concern) and the subject holding the concern (that is my ultimate concern). Characterizing religion in this form accomplishes two very important tasks. On the one hand, the target to which it refers can include but is not necessarily reducible to something theistic. That is, the target of my concern could, but need not, be called BGod.^ As such, members of both nontheistic as well as theistic religious traditions—as well as those who are members of neither—have (an) ultimate concern. On the other hand, the subject to whom it refers can include but is not necessarily reducible to those who are members of religious communities and traditions. That is, the subject could, but need not, be a member of Ba religion.^ As such, all human beings have not only everyday and penultimate concerns but also an ultimate concern. Everyone is in this sense religious. Twentieth-century American psychologist Raymond Paloutzian (1996) reflects on the concept of religion and concludes that its etymology provides a critical clue in that the English word Bligament^ and the word Breligion^ share a common Latin origin; religion has to do with Bthe process of rebinding or reconnecting^ (p. 7). He elaborates, BUnfortunately, it is not clear from the word itself whether people are to be reconnected to God, Nature, a state of mind, a cosmic force, each other as individuals, or their communities^ (p. 7). Reconnecting—a process or project that presupposes being disconnected from what one had been connected to—is in this view at the heart of religion/ being religious. Note that Paloutzian’s etymological approach, like Tillich’s philosophical one, neither begins nor ends with more traditional (substantive) approaches to religion by referring to Ba religion^ and, by implication, to Bbeing religious^ as being a member of or participant in Ba religion.^ Rather, he, like Tillich, provides a way of thinking of the human project of connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting (perhaps with what is most wanted and needed). Everyone is in this sense religious. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James (1902/1982) sought to characterize religion in ways that would be intelligible to a broad audience because they were phenomenologically accurate to what listeners and readers would know experientially. His task was to balance what could be called validity and reliability by characterizing religious experience in a manner that was at once precise and vague so that diverse readers could say, BThat fits what I know.^ To accomplish this effort, he spelled out two metaphors. In the third lecture of The Varieties, entitled, BThe Reality of the Unseen,^ James (1902/1982) writes, BWere one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists in the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto^ (p. 53). Later in that lecture he declares, BIt is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call ‘something there,’ more deep and more general than any of the special and particular ‘senses’ by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed (p. 58). In Lectures 16 and 17, both

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entitled BMysticism,^ he elaborates: BWe pass into mystical states from out of ordinary consciousness, as from a less into a more, as from a smallness into a vastness, and at the same time as from an unrest to a rest. We feel them as reconciling, unifying states^ (p. 416). And in Lecture 20, BConclusions,^ he explains, BThe individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticizes it, is to that extent beyond it, and in at least possible touch with something higher, if anything higher exist. Along with the wrong part there is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but a most helpless germ. With which part he should identify his real being is by no means obvious at this stage; but when stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives, the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is coterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck [emphasis in original] (p. 508)^. With these ideas—the reality of the unseen, a something more—I propose, following James, everyone is in this sense religious.

Reflecting further on approaching Bbeing religious^ in this way The claim that human beings are unavoidably religious—to be human is to be religious—is not without its detractors. Some of the problems and liabilities of this approach merit discussion. By the same token, some of the merits of the claim also deserve attention. For some people, the claim that human beings are unavoidably religious is troublesome because calling someone Breligious^ is tantamount to casting aspersions on her or his character, judgment, and mind. That is, to be religious is to be (a) dogmatic, ideological, arrogant, small-minded, and treating one’s own relative truth as a universal final truth; (b) irrational, falsely equating private fantasies or imaginative beings with facts or truths about what is real; and/or (c) childish, treating the cognitive claims developmentally appropriate to children as sufficiently mature and complex so as to orient and organize adult thinking and acting. Though this anti-religious approach is not uncommon in research and scholarship as well as in the public sphere, the case I am making departs markedly from these judgments. For some people, the claim that human beings are unavoidably religious is mistaken because it conflicts with a different, though widespread, understanding of Breligious^; it refers to people who are participants in or members of a particular kind of community and tradition—Ba religion.^ However, the too-simple binary classification—religious/not religious—is itself problematic. What are the criteria for Bparticipation^ or Bmembership^? Is it determined primarily if not solely in terms of publicly observable factors, such as Battendance,^ and if so, what is the boundary of Bsufficient attendance^? Is it determined essentially if not singularly by acts of self-ascription (e.g., BI am X^)? Must one be an Binsider^ to recognize an authentic participant, or is that judgment left to an Boutsider^? Are there, in fact, instances in which insiders as well as outsiders recognize Bdegrees of being religious^ such that the notion of a continuum challenges, fundamentally, a binary model? Some people will challenge the claim not only in regard to the meaning and use of Breligious^ but also in regard to Buniversality.^ Their challenge takes two different forms. On the one hand, there are those who say that the claim is meaningless. To declare something true about everyone is vacuous, as it must be so vague that it says little, truly, about anyone. On the other hand, there are those who say that the claim of universality is substantively offensive; it accords to someone other than the person her or himself—in this

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case, the author—the privilege and right to use this ascription. To the first, it is for each reader to decide whether the characterization bears any fruit. To the second, a bit more reflection is in order. In a footnote addressing this issue in the second article in this series, I supported the idea that the authority and responsibility for and privilege of ascription rests, first, with a person her or himself. Toward that end, I cited a well-known passage in William James’s (1902/1982) Varieties of Religious Experience: BProbably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. ‘I am no such thing,’ it would say; ‘I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone’^ (p. 9). I agree with what the crab would likely say: BI decide what ‘religious’ means and I decide whether, according to my own definition, I am religious.^ In a similar vein, James Gustafson (1975) introduces a case in the opening chapter of his book Can Ethics Be Christian?, in which a colleague of his intervened on behalf of an inebriated soldier in a bar. He observes, BIf, as Wallace Stevens so beautifully makes clear, there are thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird, so one might twist and turn to get at least as many perspectives on this experience^ (p. 3). When pondering one of those many perspectives, he comments, BMy colleague was not a religious man in any traditional sense....He was not a reflective man… If he were a practicing, believing Christian one might ask what religious beliefs, training, loyalties, and disciplines seemed to be formative of his person and his actions. But he was not. Because he was not, he might be the occasion for a theological puzzle which could be resolved after many intricate theological moves by designating him an Banonymous Christian.^ He would not, however, have been honored or pleased with this appellation, nor would he have been impressed with the intellectual powers and the felt need that would lead to such a conclusion....He would find nothing particularly BChristian^ or even religious about what he did: its motives, its patterns of action, its consequences^ (p. 22). James and Gustafson explain that we should be hesitant and especially cautious about labeling others. We should do so if and only if there are merits that would temper this concern. Keeping the following ideas in mind may equip readers to be open to considering how the position taken in this article displays merits that temper this concern and, further, that that position is plausible, viable, and commendable. Most generally, it is worth noting the simple fact that definitions, characterizations, and descriptions of and approaches to religious and religion are seemingly countless; no position is ultimately convincing, and every position reveals liabilities. Within the plethora of viewpoints, the claim of homo religiosus, though subject to debate, extends a legacy. The claim can be re-presented in the following form: Human beings naturally and inevitably encounter universal problems (for example, finitude, existential anxiety, trauma), have universal needs (for example, for safety, care, love), and carry out universal tasks (including negotiating the conflict between internal wants and needs and what is available in the external world, especially with others, and negotiating the conflict between one’s idea of the world and the world itself). In more specific terms, human beings know that they are going to die; each must figure out on what/whom her or his Bgoing-on-being^ depends—that is, what is her or his Bultimate concern.^ Human beings live in a Bsystem,^ Bnetwork,^ or Bmilieu^ in which they are fundamentally in relation to others. However, relating is never static but always in process; we are always negotiating connections (of different forms or kinds, of matters of degree, of degrees of satisfaction), encountering threats of as well as moments and/or periods of disconnection, and thus extending efforts

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towards reconnection—precisely because the nature of our connections are central to our wellbeing, to our being alive and real—or not. Connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting are aspects of the human condition and thus reflect a basic human problem, need, and task. To be human is to become not only aware of but also increasingly thoughtful and articulate about the contrast between our construals or notions (or knowledge) of the real, and the real itself. The real—the world, nature, reality—is complex, ambiguous, beyond our understanding. The real is constituted not only of what is seen but also of what is unseen. There is what is and Ba something more.^ To be human is to address problem, need, and task regarding these matters. Further, these matters have, in the literature, been characterized as having to do with Breligion.^ Though the original aim of the research undertaken in this article and the two others in this series was to extend the literature in the study of Winnicott’s writings, an unexpected contribution to the study of being religious became increasingly prominent. That is, these articles examine and illumine aspects of Bbeing religious^ that have been neglected and underdeveloped: for example, the universal experiences of and needs for being held, holding, and holding onto (the first article), for connecting and reconnecting, such that our doing so is, truly, a matter of going-onbeing and not going-on-being (the second article), and for developing the facility, with another or others, of negotiating transition and creating space so as to be more fully real and alive (this third article). To understand more fully one of the primary contributions this article makes to the study of being religious, we must retrieve a distinction that emerged in the study of religion between the substantive and the functional approach. In the former, religion is understood in terms of what it is—and for all intents and purposes that means that religion shows itself in the languages and practices of a group of communities and traditions (Breligions^). In the latter, religion is understood in terms of what it does— so, for example, any perspective that outlines a way of understanding the world and who and how one should be in that world is religion. This article examines, then, a person’s being religious in functional terms—as she or he has been forming in infancy and early childhood. Further, it argues that the more public aspects of being religious acquired subsequently in participation in a religious community are built upon, and secondary to, what was already there. Researchers and scholars have conventionally studied being religious in this more public, substantive sense and have paid less attention to the developmentally earlier (and perhaps more significant) formation of being religious in the functional sense. Understanding why this has been the case requires drawing upon some of the most basic assumptions in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Mental activity unfolds at the intersection of, and involves the convergence of, consciousness and the unconscious. Experiencing represents the interplay of different processes (primary and secondary) that follow different principles (pleasure and reality). Freud’s reflections on the concept of Btransference^—as Bamalgamation^—is especially pertinent; mental processes and products are amalgamations. The formation of amalgamations must be understood in conjunction with another idea; we are unceasingly engaged in Bdefense^ or, as Heinz Kohut (1984) put it, in Bself protection,^ attempting to keep from consciousness what causes Bunpleasure.^ As such, amalgamations are the product of psychic negotiation. Freud used a term to discuss the notion of symptoms that is translated as Bcompromise-formation.^ The amalgamations are, at the same time, Bcompromises^ that serve at once to reveal as well as to conceal, to show as well as to hide.

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Of course, Freud discovered and formulated these ideas in relation to the experiencing and acting of individuals. However, every individual is born into and participates in traditions that provide the Bcategories^ through which to understand and interpret phenomena, events, other persons, and oneself. One could suggest, though, that these Bsocial^ categories themselves have been designed in the service of defense, as means to form compromises, hiding as they show reality. That is, participants and members of religious communities, and the researchers and scholars who study them, assume that to understand religion and being religious one must focus primarily if not exclusively on the experiences, beliefs, and practices of religious communities (substantively understood). Given this, one could ask, What dimensions of human problems, needs, and tasks having to do with the big questions have in part been Bhidden^ or Bconcealed^? What explorations could be carried out that look behind, before, and beneath what has been foregrounded in Breligious^ communities and the study of them? Behind, before, and beneath the accumulated wisdom of the range of religious traditions lies knowledge (that we may not know as religious, that we may not know we know), knowledge basic to human beings that has been present in hints, clues, and traces, less directly than other knowledge. This article (and the two others in the series) explores the nature and acquisition of such knowledge that is known only indirectly and grasped only symbolically—because it is protoverbal. That knowledge is treated as given; it is assumed, taken on faith—because it is Bknown in one’s bones.^ That knowledge provides the foundation of our judgments about all that is, about what is a matter of life and death, about the answers to the big questions—because it was formed prior to our being at all aware of forming (that is, constructing) knowledge. Turning primarily if not solely to religious traditions as the singular keeper of this elemental knowledge itself serves to protect us, to conceal as we reveal. Perhaps the most significant contribution embedded in the claim that human beings are unavoidably religious is best articulated in terms of intellectual as well as moral implications. Winnicott’s practice and theory, presented in his writings, express as well as support a deep appreciation for the uniqueness of each person. Each of us unfolds along a more or less novel trajectory. By implication, it could be said that each of us is religious in ways that differ from one another. Some of this is due, in part, to our respective biographies and some to the fact that there are varieties of being religious that differ across communities and traditions. Ignoring uniqueness, collapsing difference, presuming similarity if not sameness is deeply problematic. The disposition to do so is in part natural because each of us is inclined to treat our maps of reality as the scale according to which others (and their maps) may be measured (and reduced). Doing so ignores that our respective maps are personally as well as socially constructed. We thereby, in general, misrepresent what is real and true and, more particularly, unwittingly regard other persons as objects of our own creation. Interestingly, focusing too exclusively on uniqueness and difference has unintended consequences and an unforeseen underside. I turn, briefly, to explain this more fully. Human beings are inclined to experience reality in terms of distinctions between subject and object (or me and not-me). This supposedly value-free contrast is often readily recast in two related value-laden dichotomies: Bus and them,^ and Bfriend and foe.^ Put simply, BIf you are not with me you are against me.^ Consider, for purposes of illustration, the well-known and often-cited work of Samuel Huntington (1996), who

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writes about Bthe clash of civilizations,^ where Bcivilizations^ is a code word for Breligions.^20 In his thinking, religions are fundamentally different, one from another— and human beings who are members of different religions differ, fundamentally, from one another. We cannot truly understand the Bother^ who is, first and last, Bother.^ We will inevitably face Bclashes^ because we are fundamentally different. Ironically and regrettably, acting on the assumption of uniqueness and difference displays liabilities similar to acting on the assumption of similarity or sameness. In the latter, the other is not only like me; she or he is a version of me, understood through the categories through which I interpret me. The other is an object I can readily understand. In the former, the other is inherently unknowable, a stranger. She or he is an object who cannot be known. The perspective underlying this article and the others in the series seeks to hold in tension similarity and difference (or universality and particularity), or what is in some circles called Bthe problem of the one and the many.^21 The claim, then, that we are unavoidably religious proposes to the reader—or one could say, Bmirrors^ the reader— that we are participating in a common human project that unfolds differently in different communities and traditions and differently within each individual. But, it is a project that is nonetheless shared.

Reading Winnicott’s concepts as having to do with being religious In the context of ambiguous situations and a complex reality that too often transcend sufficient understanding, the infant, child, adolescent, and adult must form judgments and 20

Huntington’s (1996) map of the territory of international affairs—The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order—became a benchmark for a wide range of commentary. Some scholars prized it for mirroring reality and for shaping future analysis. Others pointed to crucial theoretical problems and practical liabilities. For Huntington, the clash of civilizations is a collision of (seemingly) monolithic worldviews (read: religions) in which each side customarily assesses itself as good and the other as evil. All relations turn, finally, on the clash across difference, on negotiating Bus^ versus Bthem.^ Huntington (1996) writes, BThe central theme of this book is that culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world^ (p. 20). BLocal politics is the politics of ethnicity; global politics is the politics of civilizations. The rivalry of superpowers is replaced by the clash of civilizations^ (p. 28). For Huntington, BA civilization is a culture writ large^ (p. 41). He explains further, BTo a very large degree, the major civilizations in human history have been closely identified with the world’s great religions^ (p. 42). BReligion is a central defining characteristic of civilizations, and, as Christopher Dawson said, ‘the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest’^ (p. 47). Amartya Sen’s (2006) Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny offers a critique of Huntington’s book. In Sen’s judgment, Huntington’s effort is conceptually wrongheaded, conceptually, and misleading, practically. Huntington’s Bline of thinking^ represents Ba ‘solitarist’ approach to human identity^; it categorizes people in terms of Bsome singular and overarching system of partitioning^ (p. xii). Said a different way, BThe difficulty with the thesis of the clash of civilizations begins well before we come to the issue of an inevitable clash; it begins with the presumption of the unique relevance of a singular classification^ (p. 11). Consider the theoretical implications of reducing all human identity and affiliation to one factor—civilization (or religion). A wide range of factors—for example, race, class, ethnicity, language, gender, or professional identity—are entirely ignored and rendered invisible. As a result, relationships between and among people are reduced to two camps: one either is or is not a member of a particular civilization (religion). The solitarist approach presupposes a binary framework: us versus them, friend versus foe. 21 The effort to hold this tension extends a tradition within which William James stands. Although he is well known for appreciating uniqueness and difference—Bbe prepared to look for and find varieties^—these varieties are varieties on a theme, on something shared—Breligious experience.^ He emphasizes that the varieties are held in tension with something shared by the wording of the subtitle to his lectures, BA study in human nature.^ Nature is in the singular.

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make decisions in the service of sustaining connection(s) as well as seeking reconnections—that is, so as to promote the going-on-being of one’s true self, being alive and real, and must therefore inhibit if not foreclose events that would precipitate not going-on-being. Consider these issues from another angle of vision. Throughout the human lifespan, from birth forward, each of us encounters phenomena (or stimuli) moment-to-moment that require immediate attention and action. Most information processing occurs quite rapidly, more or less habitually and thus unconsciously. Each of us is constantly addressing questions that are, necessarily, immediate, narrow, local, and particular: BWhat is happening?^ BHow do I make sense of this phenomenon, this event, this situation?^ BWhat am I to do?^ Our answers to these questions, perhaps expressed less in thoughts than in behaviors, determine the nature and quality of our survival and adaptation. At the same time, the infant, child, adolescent, and adult cannot evade phenomena (or stimuli) that engender questions of a different order—questions that need answers, answers that also promote survival and adaptation. These are the big questions: BWho am I?^ (What is Bme^?) BWhat is not-me?^ BHow do ‘I’ relate to and know what and who are not-me?^ Not insignificantly, these questions and answers have to do with my being and nonbeing, emerge as I seek connection, and may involve phenomena and an Border^ that are unseen, a Bmore.^ These questions and answers become embodied in habits of mind and action from the very beginning; I am constituted of my answers to questions, most especially of my answers to big questions. In this sense, every person is a lay metaphysician-theologian; to be human is to be unavoidably religious. Noting that habits of thought and action and our very character are designed not only to maximize survival and adaptation—living into the next moment—but also to enhance the goingon-being of true self—becoming increasingly real and alive—a self ’s particular version or style of being religious is itself expressly and uniquely functional. William James (1902/1982) remarks, BThe truth of the matter can be put,^ says Leuba, Bin this way: God is not known, he is not understood; he is used [emphasis in original]^ (p. 506). The God I have is the God I need is the God I use. In other words, my way of being religious embodies and expresses what works for me. Of course, each person’s experience is in part unique, and what each person and each group needs and uses will in part differ one from another. By addressing particular needs and expressing different uses, an individual’s or a group’s version of being religious is designed to enhance that individual’s or that group’s survival, adaptation, and going-on-being and becoming. In some instances, a version may—to a limited degree—take into account the well-being of others; in other instances, however, others are at best ignored.22

Being religious—A fuller elaboration From the outset of each person’s existence, her or his mother embodies her own answers to the big questions. In her Bpreoccupation^ and subsequent process of Bdisillusionment,^ she models and transmits a version of being religious. As the child grows and the circle widens, she or he engages others who express versions of being religious that differ not

22

I am reminded of a maxim taught to a class I took in Christian theology with Paul Holmer while at Yale Divinity School (in 1976): BReligion is a crutch we lean on as well as beat others with.^ Holmer’s maxim reminds us that the functional vision we construct and carry out on behalf of our own survival and adaptation at best ignores and at worst hurts others whom we do not regard as part of Bus.^ Our being religious helps (us) while it neglects if not harms (others).

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only from mother’s but also from one another’s. These differences show themselves in words, in professed beliefs; but they show themselves, perhaps more influentially, in patterns of action. The developing child and adolescent may be exposed to or even immersed in multiple groups and communities whose express identities have to do with a communal, shared version of being religious (see, for example, Goosen 2007; Holmes 2014; Schreiter 2011; Suomala 2012). Especially in the 21st century, the child, adolescent, and adult are exposed to and may engage diverse others across a wide spectrum and thus have to deal with persons whose notions of being religious compete and conflict. Those persons seek diverse objectives: mutual enhancement, peaceful coexistence, tolerance, avoidance, disdain and dismissal, or outright destruction. In these regards, the unavoidably religious self is perpetually in the process of negotiating transitions in and of multiple spaces, potentially revising and amending assumptions and judgments, raising new questions and articulating new answers—all of which are held in conjunction with and may be synthesized with the foundation laid in earliest experience in the primary dyad. Extrapolating from Winnicott’s writings in a manner consistent with them enables us to consider what being religious is like for different individuals (and groups), as those differences reflect differences in transition and space. An individual’s and a group’s way of being religious may at the same time be facilitating as well as inhibiting, enhancing as well as harming. Correspondingly, an individual’s and a group’s way of being religious may engender support as well as challenge and convey positive responses as well as hostility. Being religious thus differs depending on whether one is a member of a dominant, subordinate, marginalized, or oppressed group.

Transition and being religious Transition is a quality or dimension of every time and place. If change is the only constant, if process is fundamental, then human beings are always in transition, whether or not we are always conscious of this fact. We are continually registering new phenomena and encountering new events in new situations and thus are continually assessing what we perceive, judging what to think, and deciding how to act. These unceasing activities determine our safety and danger, pleasure and pain, goingon-being and not going-on-being. In this regard, how we negotiate transition determines not only our well-being but also our being at all. These negotiations express our answering not only the mundane and little questions but also the big questions. In early experience, the infant and the small child lack the capacity to differentiate between images, impressions, and ideas of the real and the real itself. Judgments about space and time, formed in early experience in the Bprimary transition^ (in the emerging awareness of not-me) unfold within the context of the reality of the unseen. To say it another way, these are judgments about all that is, about not only what one has seen but also what one has inferred about what one has not seen. These are grand judgments, answers to big (religious) questions that include BWhat is? What is real?^ In early experience, there is no distinction between creating and finding, constructing and discovering, an interpretation and what is interpreted. Experience provides knowledge or, better, truth. Maturation and development expand not only one’s fund of knowledge but also one’s critical capacities. Nonetheless, early experience remains profoundly and insistently influential in two related senses: The content of early experience is given, beyond question, and the patterns of early experiencing and knowing, the patterns of

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negotiating transition, are similarly given, beyond question. Early experience establishes an objective foundation. Not only do we treat what we experience (as infants and children) as what is, but everything is eminently and profoundly personal, a matter of me and mine. We regard answers to these questions as observations about what is objectively given and thus not bearing the imprint of or expressing anything in particular about BI^ who is judging. Our comments about Bthis space^ and Bthis time^ always speak both of what has been Bfound^ (it is Bthere,^ Bgiven^) and of what has been given as Bmine.^ This is what transition is for me, to me. BI^ who is always Bliving an experience^ is always in the process of Bliving this experience in this time and in this space.^ In other words, to be in transition is, from early on, to be registering and acquiring truths about all that is, to be engaged in addressing the big questions. Transition is, essentially, about movement and change and also about achieving and preserving safety and tempering if not avoiding danger. Safety represents the conditions in which the self can be, can go on being, can become; danger represents threats to going-onbeing. Transition is thus about being and nonbeing. Transition has to do with encountering the novel—whether in curiosity, adventure, excitement, and/or with anxiety about the unknown for which one may be unprepared. Transition has to do with being in a moment different from the last moment and thus having to let go of and mourn the loss of what was, who one was, what one knew that worked, etc. Transition is about change and thus about what is gained and what is lost. It has to do with what we value and what we can give up (that is at best of penultimate value). That is, it is about what we hold—in ideas and actions but also in our very being—and about what we can allow to pass. It is about what we value, what is most dear, to which we must be connected and remain connected. With maturation and development we become aware of the distinction and gap between our experience, ideas, and knowledge of the real and the real itself. We must deal, regularly, with revising the relationship between notions of what is not-me and what is truly not-me. In other words, we are always in the process and project of having to correct our finite, provisional, and partial hypotheses and beliefs (our knowledge and truths) about the world—a cognitive as well as existential task. Carrying out these everpresent tasks cannot but involve other big questions: BWhat is real?^ BHow is the real known?^ On the face of it, carrying out this process represents a remarkable achievement, enlarging our abilities to perceive, think, and act. It represents, at the same time, a series of losses. We lose the ignorance that our knowledge was equivalent to truth and the safety that was embedded in that ignorance. We lose the certitude that our ideas corresponded to reality and thus the confidence in our knowledge and ourselves. We must reconcile ourselves to the fact that our knowing is partial and provisional, that we ourselves are finite. Transition points beyond itself. Transition points to questions—BWhat, if anything, is beyond transition?^ BWhat is not merely finite but is infinite?^ BWhat is not merely human but is transcendent?^ BWhat is not merely in time but eternal?^ Our responses express value— what we could and should hold dear—but also express safety—we are not without a foundation, are we? If everything (including BI^) is always in transition, the only thing constant is change. Everything is transitory, or transient; everything passes, or passes away. (BI^ is, then, in a perpetual state of loss, grief, and mourning.) If everything is in transition, nothing is stable;

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there is no foundation.23 In this regard, transition may inevitably evoke not only mourning and perhaps depression but also existential anxiety.24 We human beings are constantly Bthrown^ by crises small and large, not knowing truly what is happening, not knowing if we will ever understand. We seek to be able to stand on something solid and sound—terra firma—to be able to be rooted in and connected to something grander than we are, something eternal, immutable. The more we feel unstable, the more we require finding and becoming connected to something stable. This is basic to human existence. How do we survive and perhaps thrive under these conditions? As we pursue the quest for Bsome fixed point,^ we seek to keep Bthe specter that hovers in the background^ from awareness. Much like the awareness of finitude gives rise to questions about what is infinite, we are disposed to wonder, if everything I know is temporal, what does it mean to speak of eternal, and eternity? If everything in transition is by definition always (in some ways) changing, what does it mean to speak of immutable, unchanging? If we experience ourselves, most generally, as moving in space, what does it mean that we can also experience Bstanding outside of ourselves,^ Becstatically^? Correspondingly, if we experience time, most generally, as a moment in time, something that passes, what does it mean that we can also experience time, at times, as if Bout of time,^ Bbeyond time,^ as if Beternity^? We see in all these ideas the themes introduced about Breligion^; we negotiate life and death and must decide what is a matter of my life and death, what is my ultimate concern. We see our own ongoing connecting but also disconnecting and needing to reconnect, not only with the world, and with others, but also with something beyond, the reality of the unseen, a something more. Addressing the big questions is never-ending.

Space and being religious We are always in space. Not insignificantly, Winnicott introduces space not in terms of an observation or an assertion but rather in the form of a question: BWhere are we?^ To ask the question means several things. The answer is not readily known; it is not self-evident. The answer changes; we are in different spaces at different times. The answer is something we ought to seek; knowledge of where we are is important.

23 In BTransitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena^ Winnicott (1953/1971d) provides Bsome clinical material from an adult patient,^ at one point quoting her, BI suppose I want something that never goes away^ (p. 23). 24 Ideas about foundations and about anxiety are explored by the philosopher Richard Bernstein. In his book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, he coins the concept of Cartesian Anxiety: BI do not want to suggest that this [Cartesian Anxiety] begins with Descartes or even that thinkers after Descartes have accepted it in the form in which it is found in his work. To speak of the Cartesian Anxiety is to speak of a construct, but one that is helpful for getting a grip on the primary issues^ (1983, p. 16). He continues,

Reading the Meditations as a journey of the soul helps us to appreciate that Descartes’ search for a foundation or Archimedean point is more than a device to solve metaphysical and epistemological problems. It is the quest for some fixed point, some stable rock upon which we can secure our lives against the vicissitudes that constantly threaten us. The specter that hovers in the background of this journey is not just radical epistemological skepticism but the dread of madness and chaos where nothing is fixed, where we can neither touch bottom nor support ourselves on the surface. With a chilling clarity Descartes leads us with an apparent and ineluctable necessity to a grand and seductive Either/Or. BEither there is some support for our being, a fixed foundation for our knowledge, or we cannot escape the forces of darkness that envelop us with madness, with intellectual and moral chaos [emphasis added].^ (p. 18)

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When we ask the question BWhere are we?,^ we are asking something that on its face seems mundane and straightforward but which at the same time is anything but. The question has multiple referents. Prior to asking the question we are somewhere, though we are not conscious of where. Once we have posed the question we are mindful of wanting to know something and correspondingly mindful of actually not knowing something, that is, lacking an answer. To ask the question, in other words, shifts the space from what it had been prior to the asking. But there is yet another sense or referent—not only something there out of awareness, or there but not known and sought, but something bigger. A viable answer to the question may take the form, BI’m in my office, thinking about ‘space.’^ This is a concrete answer. A viable answer may also take the form, BI’m playing, finding what Winnicott has written but at the same time creating something real for me.^ This is a psychological answer. Both are immediate, and local. Another viable answer is more intellectually abstract, existentially compelling, and global: BI’m not sure where it is that I am, because I’m not sure how best to understand reality and what is truly real.^ This is a philosophical, metaphysical, or even religious answer. That is, we ask and should ask this question, and our inquiry is carried out along multiple trajectories. To ask, then, BWhere are we?^ is, at the same time, to ask, BWhat is real?^ BWhat can I know?^ BWhat can be done?^ BHow ought I to respond?^ We are no longer simply in the territory of the concrete or even the psychological; we are in the territory of the big questions. One of the most fundamental and significant features of space has to do with safety and danger. I am constantly monitoring, though not persistently asking consciously, BTo what degree is where I am a place in which my going-on-being is not at risk?^ Or, cast less defensively and more positively, BTo what degree is where I am a place in which I can be more and more myself, real, alive?^ To ask about space, then, and need to know about danger and safety is to ask, BTo be or not to be.^ It is a question of my living and dying. (And, as I discussed in a previous article in this series, Winnicott explains that in fact we live on a continuum of living and dying, which he casts in terms of true and false self.) When Winnicott asked BWhere are we when…?,^ he was inviting us to be attentive to a key idea. We are always involved in a project of being, of being true self. We are always choosing, whether consciously or not. We are choosing how to be (with other[s]) and who to be. Expressed in many of our choices is inhibiting, as fully as possible, re-experiencing not going-on-being, whether that loss or death of self is in the experience of trauma or of crisis. Conversely, expressed in many of our choices is enhancing, as fully as possible, spontaneity, creativity, authenticity, being real, being alive. Though we may consciously be occupied with particular tasks and problems at hand, we are perpetually addressing questions having to do with being and not being. How do we choose to be (and not be)? With whom do we choose to be (and not be)? How do we properly orient toward and relate to that which concerns us ultimately, what we hold dear? These are, at their heart, expressions of our being religious. Winnicott’s remark, BThere is no such thing as a baby,^ has significant implications for space. Each of us is not only apart from other(s) but a part of other(s). As such, every space bears the imprint of particular others, current connections with others, as well as the history of connections with others. In other words, because BI^ is living experiences together with other objects (however those objects may be experienced), there is no such thing as BI^ alone determining the space in which she or he experiences and relates. In other words, much of the nature of the space is reflective of who is with us and how we are relating with her, him, or them. The space of being alone and lonely is different from being alone, in solitude (if we have achieved, as Winnicott put it, Bthe capacity to be alone^). The space of being with a stranger is

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different from being with an acquaintance and then again from being with an intimate friend. The space of being with an object subjectively conceived is different from being with an object objectively perceived. The space of being with a prized object (a transitional object) is different from having misplaced or lost it. Since Bthere is no such thing as a baby,^ being and being real are more fully characterized as being-with and being-real-with. In these moments, BI^ experiences and knows the most full and profound sense of connection and relation, in which ideas about Bwho I am^ necessarily involve ideas about Bwhose I am.^ The awareness that space changes can engender a wide range of responses. Consider some among them. BIn some larger sense I don’t feel safe; life is precarious. I can’t count on continuity and sameness. Even if in moments I feel safe, or good, or content, I know it is only temporary.^ BThis is exciting, never boring. I don’t have to worry that something new, unexpected, and mysterious won’t happen at some point, even if it may not be happening at the moment.^ BThe fact that something so elemental like ‘space’ constantly changes leads me to need to formulate an understanding of it, one that I can count on and trust. Even if I can’t trust a particular space, I can find some solace in holding on to my theory of it all.^ These are some among innumerable answers. But individually and collectively they point to the fact that we are asking big questions. That Winnicott terms this third intermediate area B‘potential’ space^ is suggestive. BI^ may, at any moment in time, Bactualize^ something that has only been there Bpotentially.^ This space, then, holds Bpossibilities,^ Bopportunities,^ Bemerging but yet to be solidified abilities.^ BLiving an experience together,^ then, is not simply the occasion for practicing something with which one is familiar or taking a developmental next step but rather creating something new with another, such that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Thus, the present is the occasion for spontaneously generating what is novel. Time may involve a reenactment (the past overriding the present) or a next step (the extension of the past into the present) but also the place for the new, the unfamiliar, the unexpected. Space has to do with an ever-present intellectual/existential strain, negotiating the relationship between one’s notions of what is not-me, notions one has constructed, and what is, actually, not-me. One is always involved in a constructive, creative, imaginative project. The strain is both negative and positive. On the one hand, one can never know, finally, and can never assume that what one Bknows^ fully matches what is there to be known. This awareness of ambiguity may engender helplessness and anxiety. On the other hand, one always plays a role in constructing the ideas according to which one lives, in creating the world one inhabits. This awareness may be empowering: I am the author of my existence. On the one hand, no space or version of space is universal or final—I am always moving among versions of space, with myself and with others. Anxiety. On the other hand, the task is creating ways of understanding and living in space, and moving across the boundaries between and among spaces. Creativity. These are big questions and answers. That space changes regularly means that I am always subject to negotiating the unexpected, unfamiliar, unknown, and in part unsafe—anxiety-provoking—and at the same time coping with the loss of what I had a moment ago, what I’d known, and who I’d been, as well as with loss having to do with mourning, depression, even despair. This constant negotiation, in much the same ways as always dealing with questions of danger and safety, means that space—not in the sense of what is immediate and local, right here and now, but space in the sense of what is global, across the changes—involves big questions. We can overhear, in these reflections, how making sense of Bspace^ moves in the vicinity of what we have spoken of as Bbeing religious^—having to do with life and death and what

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determines our being and nonbeing; with connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting; involving awareness of and judgments about all that is, the reality of the unseen, a something more; concerns, in other words, that involve the big questions.

BTransition,^ Bspace,^ and other concepts—and being religious In my introductory remarks I observed that concepts have meaning only in a network of concepts, and in this regard Btransition^ and Bspace^ cannot be understood independently of a series of ideas with which they are intimately related. It serves to illumine the nature of transition and space, and readings of these concepts as having to do with being religious, by considering the interplay with holding (and being held) and holding onto (the primary focus of the first article in the series), and going-on-being (living), not going-on-being (dying), true self, false self, and connecting-disconnecting-reconnecting (the primary focus of the second article). From one angle of vision, one could say that human beings naturally seek the experience of being held (to be one with another, to be whole and one with oneself). That may involve holding another (being one with another, enabling her or him to be whole) and holding onto another by way of symbols of them (that is, transitional objects). Those transitional objects may be something reminiscent of the other or their presence (for example, a blanket, an idea, a behavior, etc.). From another angle, one could say that human beings naturally seek connecting (being true self with true self), that is, being alive, avoiding and overcoming disconnecting, and reconnecting. That may be done directly and immediately, in the presence of another or others; it may be done indirectly and symbolically, for example, through transitional objects. Finally, what is it that we are seeking when seeking to be held, to be connected, and to be real and alive but good enough ways of moving through transition, good enough space? Individually and collectively, these concepts orient our awareness and attention to some very basic dimensions of our being and becoming. They are, as has been demonstrated, intimately related to notions of being religious, whether that is understood in terms of life and death (and what determines them); connecting and reconnecting; the reality of the unseen, a something more; and/or the big questions.

Implications Researchers and scholars, instructors and clinicians, and leaders in political and religious institutions, as well as parents pass along the wisdom of received traditions to the next generation not only in the theories they cherish but also in the practices they carry out. Winnicott exemplified a unique and somewhat unusual approach to these matters. He was not a disciple or clone of anyone, nor did he seek to cultivate disciples or clones. Rather, he was himself, he sought to become more and more himself, and he sought the same for others. In his view, theorizing and practicing too strictly within the parameters of any tradition, field, or approach expresses conformity, the (self-harming) activity of false self at the expense of being alive and real. He encourages, in contrast, living experiences together in which one is creating as one is finding, constructing as one is discovering. Living experiences together is not simply replicating received traditions but being held by tradition while living it anew, potentially in ways that are new. Winnicott wants to understand—to understand a squiggle, a movement, a comment, a person as fully as possible. Even more, he wants through that understanding to facilitate—to provide the

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occasion for becoming increasingly alive-with. And through that understanding and facilitating, he wants to be and become more fully with another—for both to be there, real, authentic, alive, true, as fully as possible. To achieve these hardly simply aims, each of us must be able to draw from any and every resource at our disposal. Our use of these resources is not straightforward, linear, or deductive, and our achievement of aims is not guaranteed. Rather, we must be about the rather serious project of playing—of being open and committed to forming and responding to questions as they arise, from wherever they come, however small and big they may be.

In regard to transition and space To be human is to act according to answers to questions whose range extends from the here and now to every place and time. Where am I going? How am I getting there? What do I need along the way? How can I do this differently? How can I be different? How can we be different? Where am I/where are we as we are doing what we are doing at this moment? Is this all there is, or is there something more? If I have but one life, how should I understand Blife^ and live differently? What, finally, is real or is reality? More often than not we do not actually ask these questions aloud; rather, we proceed according to our assumptions and beliefs, our habits of thought and action. Periodically, however—especially when those answers are less than satisfactory and Bthe irritation of doubt^ (Peirce 1878) arises—we are forced to ask them more directly, explicitly, fully, and critically. And in these moments, we can realize that many are big questions.

In regard to the study of religion Reading Winnicott’s contributions has led to understanding aspects of being religious that have otherwise been underdeveloped. Many researchers and scholars as well as much of the general public may be inclined to regard being religious as referring to participation or membership in Ba religion.^ By implication, some people are religious, others not, and people are religious in different ways. I have sought to extend the legacy of a different approach, to speak of human beings as unavoidably religious.

In regard to clinical care All clinical conversation may be approached as exploring and revising answers to questions, some of which have not been consciously asked. Presenting problems, narratives, and behaviors, as well as character, are answers. The statement that we live according to answers to a range of questions we have not asked orients our attention in several important ways. First, it treats what we have come to know less as truths, hypotheses, or beliefs than as answers, that is, conclusions. As conclusions, they are regarded as if the end of a completed inquiry. Second, the statement invites us to consider a frame within which to understand unfolding processes, less as gathering and organizing facts, or even formulating and testing hypotheses, than as forming and addressing questions. We are perpetually addressing questions. Third, it encourages us to consider that some questions have never been consciously and verbally formulated—and perhaps they ought, finally, to be thoughtfully addressed. Fourth, the statement intimates an awareness that the questions and answers are of different kinds; some are immediate and quite particular to a moment, others are more general, and some are of the most expansive and encompassing nature.

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In the spirit of Winnicott—in playing—I ask some unasked questions. How can we approach human relationships, personally and professionally, as moving through transitions, as expressing a changeable space, within which we can create the conditions to ask questions we have not yet asked? How can we envision research and scholarship as involving the human tasks of individually and collectively forming increasingly mature and life-giving answers to the big questions? How can we carry out clinical theorizing and practice in a manner more directly and immediately mindful of always being in transition, of always being in potential space that can be altered, of always revising our answers to questions that we enact in habits of thought and action? Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank Nancy Devor, Courtney Goto, Leonard Hummel, George Stavros, and two anonymous reviewers for critical responses to earlier drafts of this article.

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