For this installment of Sex Toy Tuesday, I decided to look to the past, way “past”…and to ask:
How did ladies of ancient times (and men, for that matter) get-off?
My research has uncovered some fascinating facts…
Sex Toys, and specificallyDildosin one form or another have been present in society throughout history.
Artifacts from the Upper Paleolithic (period) which have previously been described as batons were most likely used for sexual purposes. However, there appears to be hesitation on the part of archaeologists to label these items as sex toys: as archaeologist Timothy Taylor put it, “Looking at the size, shape, and—some cases—explicit symbolism of the ice age batons, it seems disingenuous to avoid the most obvious and straightforward interpretation. But it has been avoided.” (Wikipedia)
Why? Well it seems that our (oft-exhibited) shame related to sexuality and sexual functions even inhibits our ability to interpret history accurately (What a shock!). Still, if we eschew puritanical skeptics, it seems that the world’s oldest known dildo is a siltstone 20-centimeter phallus from the Upper Palaeolithic period dating nearly 30,000 years ago-during the ICE-AGE!
Additionally, ancient dildo relics span the globe! Findings of the archaeologists show that ancient Egyptians used dildos 2,500 years ago.
These pre-modern dildos were constructed of stone, tar, wood and other materials that could be shaped as penises and that were firm enough to be used as penetrative sex toys (…obviously).
Chinese women in the 11th through the 15th centuries used dildos made of lacquered wood with beautiful and ornate textured surfaces.
Sex toys were apparently well known to the ancient Greeks and sometimes depicted in art, specifically Greek-vase ceramics. Some pieces show their use in group sex or in solitary female masturbation . One vessel, of about the 6th century BC, depicts a scene in which a woman bends over to perform oral sex on a man, while another man is about to thrust a dildo into her anus.
In addition to countless ceramic depictions, these phallic-shaped toys (or oblisbo meaning ”to glide or slip”) are described in literature of the time and are known to have been commonly given as gifts to Grecian women whose husbands were going off to war or who had passed away.
Recently, in Greece, an ancient brothel was unearthed, revealing a 2,000 year old “sex-toy shop” where stone vaginal and anal probes, penis paraphernalia, and a variety of lubricants were discovered.
But just how prevalent were sex tools in ancient Greek society? According to numerous historic texts, sex tools–especially penis-shaped dildos–were so integral to day-to-day Grecian life that they were commonly sold in the marketplace, and men and women took them virtually everywhere they went, including the afterlife.
And so, girls, when fucking time comes… not the faintest whiff of it anywhere, right? From the time those Milesians betrayed us, we can’t even find our eight-fingered leather dildos. At least they’d serve as a sort of flesh-replacement for our poor cunts… So, then! Would you like me to find some mechanism by which we could end this war?(Wikipedia)
Herodas‘ comic Mime VI, written in the 3rd Century BC, is about a woman anxious to discover from a friend where she recently acquired a dildo.
METRO
I beg you, don’t lie,
dear Corrioto: who was the man who stitched for you this bright red dildo? (Wikipedia)
She eventually discovers the maker to be a certain Kerdon, who hides his trade by the front of being a cobbler, and leaves to seek him out.
John Wilmot, the 17th century English libertine, published his poem Signor Dildo in 1673. The piece was meant to be a mock address anticipating the ‘solid’ advantages of a Catholic marriage, namely the wholesale importation of Italian dildos, to the unspeakable joy and comfort of all the ladies of England:
You ladies all of merry England
Who have been to kiss the Duchess’s hand,
Pray, did you not lately observe in the show
A noble Italian called Signor Dildo? …
A rabble of pricks who were welcomed before,
Now finding the porter denied them the door,
Maliciously waited his coming below
And inhumanly fell on Signor Dildo …(Wikipedia)
Comparative evidence from around the world shows that sex toys and tools are common to virtually every known culture on the planet! Are you shocked? No…of course not…you read this BLOG! (insert: light chuckle)….Enjoy Your Sex Toy Tuesday…..xxx c
When I thought about what to call my blog, I brainstormed with a good friend of mine about how to express the qualities I value in myself. I knew that I wanted to talk about sex, erotic….yet I also wanted to incorporate psychology and my training as a clinician. We talked about developing a kind of erotic analysis, where I take specific erotic encounters and then break them down from a analytical/psychological perspective, however that seemed ripe with controversy and quite honestly not that much fun…but what did come out of that meeting was a name:
NYMPOBRAINIAC
I liked it. It fit. It fit…ME. It fit my philosophy about sex…and the sexual…if I am going to do it, I am going to do it…mindfully!
Yet, as I look in the urban dictionary, I see that Nymphobrainiac is defined as: A person who can’t stop thinking about sex.
I take argument with this immediately…as wouldn’t that be a nymphomaniac? Defined as:
Using the root meaning of NymphoBRAINIAC, we can then derive the meaning to be:
NYMPHOBRAINIAC /nym.pho.brain.iac./noun: The mindful and intellectual exploration of sexual desire and behavior by a female. [Derived from the Greek nymph + English brain/mind].
And so…there we have it!
A Nymphbrainiac is a woman who intentionally sets about to explore the intellectual implications of sexual desire and behavior, with curiosity and without judgment…THAT is what I strive to be to YOU…and hope very much that you will join me, as a fellow nymphobrainiac…as we explore all things erotic TOGETHER!
You are probably wondering: What in the world is this post doing here? Well…I was going through some of my previous research on attachment and found some things on the development of MORALITY in infants. Morality as defined as: the principles that govern our behavior…and yes, all evidence points to this being a bi-directional process, established in infancy…when considering the concentration of this blog I actually found this essay quite applicable…so I polished and picked it apart and present it to you here…for a little intellectual food for thought! Hope you enjoy it, xxx c.
Development of Morality in Early Infancy:
A Pathway Through Attachment and the Emergent Self
If we understand morality to develop through a culturally specific process of socialization and learning wherein, “moral values are evaluations of actions believed by members of a given society to be ‘right’” (Berkowitz, 1964) then the origin of this conception necessitates that we develop a fuller and increasingly specific understanding of the individual’s attachment in infancy through the lens of intersubjectivity.
Morality is arguably culturally situated and yet is born from our initial inter-relatedness as infants, through our capacity for empathic connection with our caregivers. And while empirically supported research has demonstrated that aspects (or rather prerequisites) of empathic connections may be biologically based (Buck & Ginsburg, 1997), we still must learn how to employ these innate capacities within our particular social contexts, in fact through our socially and culturally defined contexts. Implied therein is the development of self, representing the pathway through which understanding of another is achieved.
How?
When does this quantum leap in infant development from self to other occur?
The answer differs slightly depending on one’s theoretical orientation, however the purpose of this essay is to attempt to make those divisions in orientation less obvious and increasingly inter-connected.
Two general views of human nature predominate psychological theories of social influence and cognitive development of self (Lewis & Feinman, 1991). In the first view, referred to as the mechanistic perspective, the child is acted on by a variety of external forces, relying on both biological and social control paradigms. In the second, the child acts upon these forces, requiring action that is necessarily dialectic in nature and course. This latter, bi-directional or constructivist view has become the more accepted theory of development of self across variant psychological schools of thought although each seems to hold theirs as unique. Michael Lewis (In Lewis and Feinman, 1991), a socially instructed developmental researcher, understands this dynamic of self-knowledge and social influence as such:
Socialization and the uses of social control involve the parent as the agent of the distribution of social rules, ideas, and action, and the child as an agent of receipt. Adaptive significance requires the wish to become conspecific. It is not a struggle between the child and the parent, but a mutual learning experience. To be socialized does not involve, for the child, a passive role but an active one. The infant’s development of consciousness or objective self awareness facilitates this process. (p.111)
Related, classic psychoanalytic theory envisions the development of self as beginning in early childhood when young children utilize their interactions and relatedness with their particular environments to establish notions of self and of self-with-other (Winnicott, 1965, 1960; Stern 1995, 1985; Bergman & Fahey, 1999; Pine, 1992; Bretherton, 1992; Murray, 1989; Beebe, et al., 1997; Emde, 1999). Contemporary developmental researchers argue (with the help of compelling empirical data) that in fact the stage for the self is set at birth, and perhaps even prior to birth (See: Stern, 1985). However, this view is not without contention from the field of child development, particularly psychoanalytic theorists and researchers who differ in their views as to whether or not the birth of the psychological self coincides with biological birth.
This argument is further deconstructed into selective theoretical gradients therein:
Does sense of self precede and occasionally coincide with conception of other (Stern, 1985)?
Does understanding of an-other in fact facilitate a sense of self (Winnicott, 1956)?
Or must we fuse (through “symbiosis”) with an-other before we can develop a sense of differentiated self (Mahler et al., 1975)?
These and similar questions have continued to confound and engage psychoanalytic researchers and theorists concerned with development, as demonstrated through more than fifty years of compelling and constructive discussion beginning with Freud, Anna Freud, Mahler, Kohut, Klein, Winnicott—to name only a few. These early psychoanalytic theorists, in particular those from the British “school” of object relations including Klein (1952) and Winnicott (1956, 1960), recognized the significance of relatedness and empathic connection as essential to the development of self, beginning in early infancy. Additionally, Bowlby (1969) and Ainsworth (1979) further defined prior related work through their attachment paradigm, yielding objective support. Thus, the continuation of attachment-related research throughout the 1970’s marked a theoretical shift in psychoanalytic theories of development. A model understanding infant development of representations of self and other as necessarily a bi-directional philosophy, integrating the effects of others on the infant as well as the infant’s effect on the environment.
Distinguished among more interdisciplinary developmental researchers, Daniel Stern (1985) attempted to bridge original psychoanalytic theories through incorporating research on infants drawn from varied orientations, bolstered by empirical support. His work has yielded an integrated account of the formation of the self, beginning at birth and inclusive of (even dependent upon) interpersonal relatedness.
Stern conceptualizes the development of the self over four phases that capture self-experience and social relatedness (1985). Stern suggests that these phases form a developmental line (Freud, 1965) that continues to exist and further evolve throughout life. Superimposed upon this distinct developmental line concerning the formation of self are what Stern refers to as, “domains of relatedness,” equally necessary to the infant’s psychological growth and connected to each specific sense of self forming gradients of self-being-with-other. Sterns work suggests that:
Only when infants can sense that others distinct from themselves can hold or entertain a mental state that is similar to one they sense themselves to be holding is the sharing of subjective experience or intersubjectivity possible. (p.124)
Following the development of the subjective self, the infant senses that an attunement process bridging the two minds between infant and caregiver has been created. The caregiver’s empathy is now crucial to the infant’s development, becoming a direct subject of the infant’s experience. Hinde (1979) refers to the emergence of this capacity in the infant as psychic intimacy or the permeability that occurs between two people.
In a pre-verbal infant, what might constitute empirical evidence for intersubjective relatedness?
Trevarthan and Hubley (1978) operationalize intersubjectivity as: “a deliberately sought sharing of experiences about events and things.” These researchers as well as others (Stern, 1985; Bruner, 1977) found subjective experiences that infants can share without the need for translation into language. Stern (1985), through a meta-analysis of 30 years of attachment related infant research identified three mental states that are of great relevance to gaining insight into the infant’s interpersonal world yet do not require language including: sharing joint attention, sharing intentions, and sharing affective states.
How is empathy developed in the infant?
Margaret Mahler was perhaps one of the first researchers to observe this developmental trajectory of moral development through social relatedness later in infancy. Mahler (in Bergman, 1999) identified the period of 18 to 24 months (“rapprochement” phase) as an essential process in individuation, wherein the shared moments of a caregiver’s understanding and acknowledging of the child’s desire to be present in the caregiver’s mind ultimately help to bridge the gap of separateness of self that also marks this period of development. Related work on attachment done by Peter Fonagy (Fonagy & Traget, 1998) further illuminates this process as a dialectical theory of self-development, which assumes that the psychological self develops through perception of this self in another person’s mind.
Mahler’s famous observation studies beginning in the early 1960’s, children were seen to display empathic behavior near the end of the second year of life. This occurred through what Mahler referred to as, “role-play.” A commonly enacted script by children of this age required a mother to cry when her child left or when she had been hurt:
A little boy of 20 months bites his mother playfully and wants her to pretend to cry. Then he runs and brings her his blanket, the beloved transitional object, to comfort her. He shifts from being the playful biting or aggressive hurtful baby to being the comforting parent. (Bergman, 1999, p.22)
Mahler felt firmly that the ability to play these games, to put oneself in the role of the other, reveals self and object representations and provides evidence of object constancy as well as early identification with the caregiver (or in Mahler’s case, the mother) and the working through of issues and conflicts related to aggression, separation, and socialization.
Later, Zahn-Waxler and colleagues (1992) constructed an experiment wherein mothers of infants ranging from between one to two years were instructed in setting up situations that invoked distress responses, to observe development of empathic reactions in infants of different ages. Their findings reflected much of the earlier work as done by Mahler and others, mainly that behavioral expressions of empathy arise in conjunction with the development of self-awareness or intersubjectivity and what the researchers referred to as role-taking abilities. The researchers concluded that:
Empathic other-oriented patterns were linked in development to self recognition in this sample of children. Self-referential behaviors (e.g., pointing out one’s own injury when another is injured) may also reflect some capacity for role-taking. Such responses are sometimes interpreted as ego-centrism and self-concern. Rather, at this age, they serve to connect another’s experience to the child’s own and hence increase comprehension of the other’s experience. Our data support this interpretation: Self-referential responses were correlated with self-recognition; they predicted later prosocial behaviors and empathic concern, and they were unrelated to self-distress. (p. 133)
Zahn-Waxler et. al, further solidified, through empirical demonstrations, the existence of the capacity for empathic connection and inter-relatedness as a specific and central developmental line. Their work takes Stern’s one step further by linking intersubjective attunement with empathy, combining to form the developmental origin of morality in early infancy.
Ladies…as a woman who adores the artistic expression that costume offers…I am also not unaware of the erotic possibilities of “dressing up” in the bedroom!
Psychological theorists representing variant perspectives, from Freud to Tajfel & Turner (Social Identity Theory, 1979), have long understood the need for people to explore their multiple identities.
This is of course different from Multiple Personality Disorder, which is a mental diagnosis/disorder…rather, I refer to our desire, need even, to create disparate parts of self in order to feel…complete. You may be asking:
A healthy expression of the heterogeneous parts of ourselves as distinct personae as opposed to integrated self-states…and what better way to achieve that therapuetic exercise than through:
PLAYING DRESS-UP!
Assuming the identity of an imagined and exaggerated yet appealing “other” was a part of everyone’s childhood…why not re-enact such playful behavior as an adult…from a more sensual perspective? And why not appeal to that nearly iconic archetype:
The Naughty School Girl
Here we arrive at our theme, Sex-Toy Tuesday has inspired this entry suggesting what I find to be perhaps the most tantalizing aphrodisiac of all…foreplay that not only employs the external:
a short play skirt and a prim white blouse
BUT…also pulls on the internal:
the naughty school girl…within us ALL!
I realize that the fall serves for ample opportunities to get dressed-up…and so this year…I challenge you to draw on some of the lesser developed sensual-selves within you…and don a costume that engenders erotic exploration with your partner…both psychologically and…PHYSICALLY!
What is it about the little protagonist, Alice and her fantastic adventures in Wonderland that entertains children and adults, spurring a multitude of movies (both animated and live action) in addition to various interpretations that span politics, psychology, and philosophy? There can be little doubt that what primarily draws first the child, and then the adult back to this enduring narrative is the nonsensical “underworld” of Wonderland; yet there is another compelling element and that is the character of Alice. Alice’s confusion, in her dream of utter chaos, somehow feels familiar. Uncertain of even who she is at times, Alice indulges in a constant dialog (with herself) in an attempt to rationalize her alternating dysmorphic proportions:
‘Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not I’ll stay down here until I’m somebody else—but oh dear!’ cried Alice with a sudden burst of tears… ‘I am so very tired of being all alone here!’ (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, p.21)
Alice’s identity, her awareness of self, proves as elusive as the Cheshire Cat: appearing only to spew nonsense and then disappear again, leaving all but his beaming smirk behind as merely a suggestion of his tangible existence.
In actuality all of the creatures Alice meets in Wonderland appear to have a similar instability to their character, if not their material identity altogether. They present as fragmented and disembodied entities; landmarks from which Alice repeatedly attempts to anchor her own understanding concerning her constantly evolving (as well as, alternating) experience of self. These exchanges are most often unsuccessful causing Alice only increased bewilderment, ultimately serving only to intensify her anxiety. Alice’s struggle to secure her sense of self occupies many of us throughout a good portion of our lives, at differing times and to varying degrees. Considering development from a psychodynamic perspective, as healthy adults our sense of self and of other as both separate and related constructs is somewhat fixed by early adulthood. In adolescence, self and other provide a foundation from which various intra-psychic entities battle for prominence, wherein identity is often a diffuse concept. However, Alice is ill prepared for development a la Wonderland and although not an infant, she is forced to regress and redefine/recreate her sense of self, as if she were:
“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”
“What do you mean by that?” said the caterpillar sternly. “Explain yourself!”
“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sire,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself you see.” (p.60)
The development of self has been hypothesized by psychoanalytic theorists to begin in early childhood when young children utilize their interactions and relatedness with their particular environments to establish notions of self and of self-with-other (Winnicott, 1965, 1960; Stern 1995, 1985; Bergman & Fahey, 1999; Pine, 1992; Bretherton, 1992; Murray, 1989; Beebe, et al., 1997; Emde, 1999). Contemporary developmental researchers argue (with the help of compelling empirical data) that in fact the stage for the self is set at birth, and perhaps even prior to birth (See: Stern, 1985). However, this view is not without contention from the field of child development, particularly psychoanalytic theorists and researchers who differ in their views as to whether or not the birth of the psychological self coincides with biological birth. This argument is further deconstructed into selective theoretical gradients therein: Does sense of self precede and occasionally coincide with conception of other (Stern, 1985)? Does understanding of an-other in fact facilitate a sense of self (Winnicott, 1956)? Or must we fuse (through “symbiosis”) with an-other before we can develop a sense of differentiated self (Mahler et al., 1975)? These and similar questions have continued to confound and engage psychoanalytic researchers and theorists concerned with development, as demonstrated through more than fifty years of compelling and constructive discussion beginning with Freud, Anna Freud, Mahler, Kohut, Klein, Winnicott—to name only a few. These early psychoanalytic theorists, in particular those from the British “school” of object relations including Klein (1952) and Winnicott (1956, 1960), recognized the significance of relatedness and empathic connection as essential to the development of self, beginning in early infancy. Their views were collected through observational and clinical experience however, and lacked empirical support. Winnicott suggested that the mother-to-child bond fosters the foundation for development of self, beginning at the birth of the infant through what he conceptualized as a discrete developmental stage, Primary Maternal Preoccupation (1956). Additionally, Bowlby (1969) and Ainsworth (1979) further defined prior related work through their attachment paradigm, yielding objective support. The introduction of attachment-related research throughout the 1970’s marked a theoretical shift in psychoanalytic theories of development. The described model, of self and other, is currently understood as necessarily a bi-directional philosophy of infant development, integrating the effects of others on the infant as well as the infant’s effect on the environment 1970’s (Beebe, et al., 1997).
Distinguished among more interdisciplinary developmental researchers, Daniel Stern (1985) has attempted to bridge the original psychoanalytic theories through incorporating research on infants drawn from varied orientations, bolstered by empirical support. His work has yielded an integrated account of the formation of the self, beginning at birth and inclusive of (even dependent upon) interpersonal relatedness. Stern conceptualizes the development of the self over four phases that capture self-experience and social relatedness, including the sense of: (a) emergent self—the process of the organization coming into being and self-affectivity (from birth to two months of age), (b) core self—self-agency, self-coherence, and self-history/continuity (from two to six months), (c) subjective self—the sharing of affective states through “mirroring” and “empathic responsiveness” (seven to fifteen months), and finally (d) the sense of verbal or narrative self (fifteen months of age and beyond) (1985). Stern suggests that these phases form a developmental line (Freud, 1965) that continues to exist and further evolve throughout life. Superimposed upon this distinct developmental line concerning the formation of self are what Stern refers to as, “domains of relatedness,” equally necessary to the infant’s psychological growth and connected to each specific sense of self forming gradients of self-being-with-other. Throughout Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland, Alice attempts to circumscribe a cohesive sense of subjective self through connecting with the creatures of Wonderland. Unfortunately her efforts are largely in vein, but she persists and does not give-up trying to exist as herself, in their space, with them:
“Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”
“—I believe I can guess that,” she added aloud.
“Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?” said the March Hare.
“Exactly so,” said Alice.
“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.
“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.”
“Not the same thing a bit!” Said the Hatter. “Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat ’is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!” (p.97-98)
At a basic level Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland represents a rough approximation of the process of self-actualization through relatedness that defines psychodynamic theories of infant and child development. Wonderland embodies an illustrative example of Winnicott’s conception of the infant’s inner-world, a battle between good and evil combined with a healthy mix of magic; “the child’s inner world, where there is a tremendous continuum between forces, where magic controls, and where good is in constant danger from the bad. It feels mad to be in a child’s inner world,” (1988, p.71) The Cheshire Cat would agree, remarking to Alice that, “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad…” (p.90).
Alice is quite literally born into the madness of Wonderland where “up is down” and “down is up.” In this place survival of self is dependent on the ability to negotiate an integrated core sense of self despite a multitude of environmental impingements. Stern asserts that the core self is at all times in impending danger of the threat of annihilation (1985; Winnicott, 1962). These fears and anxieties regarding threats to self are played out in children’s fantasies, dreams and nightmares, and favorite fairy tales. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is no exception as the story epitomizes these worries manifested in Alice’s frightful experiences of self including feelings of: fragmentation, disembodiment, and the potential risk of extinction. As healthy adults, these anxieties continue although their effect is more titillation than panic; in children’s stories, these unspoken fears materialize as an imaginary dream, mingled with our most pleasant wishes—Winnicott’s world of madness.
Our heroine’s plight begins soon after her arrival in Wonderland, finding that she is physically too large to fit through the tiny door that the White Rabbit has disappeared into. Upon looking around Alice sees a bottle marked “drink me.” Imagining it may alter her size Alice drinks the potion and realizes she is, “shutting up like a telescope,” (p.11). The ensuing rapid and unregulated shrinking greatly disturbs Alice, “for it might end in my going out all together, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?” (p.11). At this point Alice demonstrates an adequate sense of, what Stern would refer to as emergent self, considering wish-based alterations to her size (self) as within her control, however her sense of core self remains fragile, apparent in her expressed fears—derived directly from experienced threats to the self. When her size reverts in the contrary direction, Alice feels further disconnected from her sense of being and contemplates how she might attempt to integrate:
“Oh my poor feet I wonder who will put on my shoes and stockings for you now,
dears?…I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must
manage the best way you can;–but I must be kind to them,” thought Alice, “or
perhaps they won’t walk the way I want to go.” (p.16)
Winnicott accounted for this special set of fears through his conception of “primitive agonies” or “unthinkable anxieties” in infants and children, inclusive of: (a) going to pieces; (b) having no relationship with the body; (c) having no orientation, and (d) complete isolation due to there being no means of communication, leading to what Winnicott considered characteristic of the schizoid defense (1962). The schizoid defense is further defined through a pathological organization of defenses wherein the phenomena of dis-integration of self is primary.
Connected to Winnicott’s notion of the fear of annihilation, is the creation of a false self for the infant or child, a protective mechanism used to prevent what the child or infant fears will be certain extinction (1962, 1986). Winnicott believed that consistent failures of mothering bring about too early a reaction to the external world resulting in disruption of the maturational process. If this process occurs consistently it may set, “going a pattern of fragmentation of being,” or, “unintegration,” (Winnicott, 1962, p.60-61). One result of not good enough mothering is the fabrication of the false self opposed to the true self. The good-enough mother, who understands and responds to her infant’s “spontaneous gesture” (non-verbal communication), gives the infant’s weak ego the strength necessary to retain the expression of the true self following the threat of annihilation. Alternately, the not good-enough mother, who cannot understand nor react to such expressions from the infant, subjects the child to her own needs. As a result the infant or child is required to comply with the mother’s needs and not the mother to the child. Winnicott calls this compliance an expression of the false self.
While we are not privy to Alice’s mothering-experience, we do know that all of her interactions with others in Wonderland only serve to further distance her from her own needs and felt distress, forcing her to comply instead with the illogical demands of her sole supportive network: the self-involved and at best ridiculous, at worst cruel, characters, therein. Thus, Alice is in a desperate state, protection of her true self requires the creation of multiple false selves that act as a defense from further feelings of fragmentation and isolation, which may ultimately lead to dis/un-integration:
She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed
it,) and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears to her eyes;
and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in the game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. “But it’s no use now,” thought poor Alice, “to pretend to be two people! Why there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!” (p.12-13)
In the preceding monologue, Alice is referring to both her diminished proportions and insecure sense of core self. The madness of Wonderland has stripped her defensive structures and exposed her to the threat of annihilation.
For Alice, Wonderland is a dream, but to children and adults, who repeatedly delight in this story, it represents something else, something much more intimate: our fantasies. Wonderland is the eccentric world we create as children that Winnicott would contend facilitates self-integration and the creation of a secure true self. It is found in the imagination of inner reality—play. In Winnicott’s Playing in Reality (1971), he introduces an idea that has proved to be one of his defining theories—appealing and intuitive to both parents and clinicians. The theory holds that most infants (beginning anytime between four and twelve months) have an object or image that represents for them a transitional object or transitional/potential space (a special blanket, toy, idea, or even a word), creating an intermediate area, the space between the subject and what is objectively perceived. This intermediate area is that which is allowed to the infant between primary creativity and objective perception. This transitory space presupposes reality testing wherein both inner reality and external life contribute to this “third part of the life of a human being,” (Winnicott, 1951, p.230). Winnicott acknowledges that, “infants and children and adults take on external reality in, as clothing for their dreams, and they project themselves into external objects and people and enrich external reality by their imaginative perceptions,” (1989, p.57).
Why is it necessary for us to, experience transitional phenomenon in our development? Readers should not forget that Alice is dreaming and that she makes references to her awake-life, calling on these memories to act as anchors and soothing transitional objects throughout her misadventures in Wonderland. Alice extracts from her waking life, her beloved pet cat, Dinah into her dream world. While, Dinah is not physically present, thoughts of Dinah, and how she might react to the anxiety-provoking scenarios that Alice encounters, act as a useful protective mechanism against her loneliness and anxiety:
“Dinah’ll miss me very much to-night, I should think!” (Dinah was the cat.) “I
hope they’ll remember her saucer of milk at tea-time. Dinah, my dear! I wish you were down here with me!” (p.6)
Winnicott asserted that this unique experience is vitally important to the infant for use as a defense against anxiety, especially anxiety of the depressive type:
Patterns set in infancy may persist into childhood, so that the original soft object continues to be absolutely necessary at bed-time or at time of loneliness or when a depressed mood threatens. In health, however, there is a gradual extension of range of interest, and eventually the extended range is maintained, even when depressive anxiety is near. A need for a specific object or a behavior pattern that started at a very early age may reappear at a later age when deprivation threatens. (1951, p.232)
The transitional object operates as a “neutral zone experience” which remains unchallenged, thus the question of whether it came from within or without is not asked by the child. It is neither strictly a mental concept nor is it a possession: “The transitional object is never under magical control like the internal object, nor is it outside control as the real mother is,” (1971, p.10). It develops into a space “that is intermediate between dream and reality, that which is called cultural life,” (1965, p.150).
Cultural life is the adult equivalent of transitional phenomenon in infancy, wherein communication is not referred to as subjective or objective (Winicott, 1965). The outcome of the child’s relationship to the transitional object is that it loses meaning because the transitional phenomena have become diffused, spread out over the whole transitional territory between inner and external reality. Yet, Winnicott expands this phenomena adding that, “this intermediate area of experience…constitutes the greater part of the infant’s experience and throughout life is retained in the intense experiencing that belongs to the arts and religion and to imaginative living, and to creative scientific work,” (1951, p.242). In this space between the objective and subjective, the sense is that there exists a permeable boundary through which information is free to flow in both directions. Wonderland captures this intermediary and highly accessible space. We may join Alice in her “mad” reality, straining with her to understand this fantastic environment, enjoying the magical qualities, while sharing simultaneously her peril. Through our empathy we share in her search for a secure sense of self. We take comfort in the knowledge that these dangers and threats to self are imagined or dreamt and can therefore be safely negotiated, enacting through an imaginary play the process of developing and fortifying the complete “senses” of self.
The story ends with Alice’s older sister, who had been reading to Alice when she fell into her dream. The older sister is now also “half dreaming of Wonderland,” sharing in the adventures revealed to her by her (now reconstituted) younger sibling. Her focus however shifts to thoughts concerning Alice:
Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the
after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her
riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would
gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with
many a strange tale, perhaps even the dream of Wonderland of long-ago: and how
she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find pleasure in all their simple
joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days. (p. 192)
Multiple layers of the self and development are contained within this children’s story. Scenarios of self and inter-relatedness are presented through several elements in the narrative: the real Alice dreaming of the difficulties and pleasures associated with securing an integrated sense of self—mirrored in her actual-lived childhood, the imaginary Alice in the dream—fearful of the threats to her core sense of self and struggling in a regressed state where sense of self is lost, the adult (Alice’s sister) observing the child-Alice indulging in her own dream with a kind of removed amusement, empathically connecting to her sister’s experience as something understood, but no longer known, and finally the reader who possesses the magical ability to enjoy all of these layers of experience while also connecting to their own individual fantasies —and they are all are playing in reality…toward an emergent sense of self/a sense of self.
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