Publication Announcements by Ken Corbett (USA)

Play Changes Us: Playing the Object, Becoming the Analyst

(2022). Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 70(2): 263-282.

The manner in which play changes us is examined, with particular attention to the role of paradox. Sustaining paradox and illusory experiencing are held as key to the framework of psychoanalysis for patient and analyst alike. Particular attention is also paid to the ways in which the analyst becomes a potential object of change through playing. The transitive hospitality of playing is examined in the treatment of a four-year-old boy, and in his resurrection of a near-dead mother and her neglected child. This treatment is examined in order to better understand the preoccupation of playing within illusion, as opposed to quickly naming play content. Playing is itself transformative, prior to any reflection or interpretation that may follow.

“The Moon of the Magic Casement”: Transitional Phenomena, the Moon, and D.W. Winnicott’s Death

(2022). Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 70(2): 373-385.

Near that end of his life, Winnicott had much to say about the moon in letters, lectures and a poem. He takes up the moon in the manner of a transitional object. Considering Winnicott’s possessive attachment to the moon as his nights waned, we are given the opportunity to consider the ways in which transitional objects may be not only the first “not-me” possession, but also the last. Infants employ transitional objects to transition from merged states with primary caretakers toward distinct others and the sweep of the world. In a similar spirit, if we step between Winnicott and the moon, we are left to ask, do the dying traverse the intermediate area of transitional objects seeking a resting place and the substance of illusion, as they move from the living to the dead?

Ken Corbett, Ph.D.
New York, NY, USA
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