The transitional object (as roadkill)

From A Child’s Dictionary Of Psychoanalysis

Winnicott famously said there is no such thing as a baby, only a mother and a baby. He developed the idea of the transitional object — not just the teddy etc itself but the way the teddy etc stands for something beyond its physical self, not so much the physical mother as the relationship with the mother. I saw this in the gutter at the junction of Annette Rd and Lowman Rd, N7, right opposite El Commandante. I thought: there is no such thing as a transitional object, only a transitional object and an infant. When the transitional object is lost, it’s really the infant that is lost.