Creative illusion in couples: thoughts about the value of transitional experience for couple relationships

Abstract

This article explores the importance of transitional experience—the intermediate area between internal and external reality, and a necessary and vitalising arena throughout life—in couple relationships. It considers the relationship between containment, transitional experience, and creativity, and how these ideas might add an element to Morgan's "creative couple" concept. Enlisting the thinking of Winnicott, Bion, and more current thinkers such as Goldman, Ogden, Peltz, and others, technical implications such as the importance of flexibility in emphasis between prioritising interpretation of projective processes and in non-verbal avenues of containment are explored.