Religion, Bioethics, and Transitional Objects: Winnicottian and Stieglerian Approaches
Benjamin Parks, Mercy College of Ohio, Toledo, OH; Jeffrey Bishop, MD, PhD, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO; Harold Braswell, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO; and Leigh Rich, George Southern University, Statesboro, GA
According to D.W. Winnicott a transitional object is something (e.g. a stuffed animal) that a child and parent discover together to help the child overcome her frustration over the loss of the feeling of omnipotence. The object opens transitional space where the child comes to recognize and establish a relationship with the exterior world. Additionally, the object becomes a site of care for the child where the “good enough parent” “brings the world” to the child. Eventually, the child comes to discard or even destroy the transitional object because she is at home in the world and no longer needs the object. If the object is taken away too soon or kept too long, psychopathology can result. Finally, Winnicott also notes that social institutions such as universities and religions can hold open transitional space for adults.
Bernard Stiegler picks up Winnicott’s ideas and argues that transitional objects are technical in nature. As technics, transitional objects are tied to our broader technological epoch. The danger is that our current technological epoch places an ever-increasing emphasis on speed, efficiency, and disruption that destroys transitional space. Consequently, children are forced early into a false maturity in which they are not ready to be adults but are expected to think like adults, and adults have abdicated their responsibility to care for the psychic formation of children. There is a breakdown of transgenerational relationships in which adults are supposed to adopt the youths, welcome them into a stable culture, and help them transition into mature thinking in which they think for themselves within a community. As a result, we have an increase in all manner of psychological problems especially feelings of “not existing,” which Winnicott notes is a consequence of not having had adequate time in transitional space as a child.
Religion, according to Winnicott, holds transitional space open for us in adulthood. In a bygone time, religion in the form of clergy and spiritual discipline, helped patients come to terms with the failures of medicine. It is no surprise, then, that as religiosity has declined we have lost the ability to cope with the failure of medicine. Moreover, as part of the broader technological epoch, modern medicine suffers from the emphasis on speed and efficiency. Additionally, medicine implicitly promises omnipotence to its practitioners and vicariously to patients. The destruction of transitional space by the speed of medicine coupled with the feeling of omnipotence is part of why there is such great distress when medicine fails. In this distress, bioethics does or should function as a transitional object that opens transitional space (i.e., consultations, case analyses, committees, humanities courses in medical school) that helps practitioners and patients come to terms with the loss of omnipotence.
Examples of the questions the panel will explore while considering the role of bioethics and religion in transitional space, the spaces between: How exactly does bioethics function as a transitional object? What can it learn from religion about holding open transitional space? How should bioethics as a transitional object inform ethics education in the classroom and clinic? Consultations? What does it mean for a bioethicist to be a “good enough parent”? Would such a conception help resolve questions on ethics expertise? Would it be too paternalistic? Was the birth of bioethics an intervention in medicine by religion, philosophy, and the humanities or was it discovered by medicine and those other fields like a child and parent discover a stuffed animal? Does the professionalization of bioethics, which emphasizes efficiency, threaten the transitional nature of bioethics?
Bernard Stiegler picks up Winnicott’s ideas and argues that transitional objects are technical in nature. As technics, transitional objects are tied to our broader technological epoch. The danger is that our current technological epoch places an ever-increasing emphasis on speed, efficiency, and disruption that destroys transitional space. Consequently, children are forced early into a false maturity in which they are not ready to be adults but are expected to think like adults, and adults have abdicated their responsibility to care for the psychic formation of children. There is a breakdown of transgenerational relationships in which adults are supposed to adopt the youths, welcome them into a stable culture, and help them transition into mature thinking in which they think for themselves within a community. As a result, we have an increase in all manner of psychological problems especially feelings of “not existing,” which Winnicott notes is a consequence of not having had adequate time in transitional space as a child.
Religion, according to Winnicott, holds transitional space open for us in adulthood. In a bygone time, religion in the form of clergy and spiritual discipline, helped patients come to terms with the failures of medicine. It is no surprise, then, that as religiosity has declined we have lost the ability to cope with the failure of medicine. Moreover, as part of the broader technological epoch, modern medicine suffers from the emphasis on speed and efficiency. Additionally, medicine implicitly promises omnipotence to its practitioners and vicariously to patients. The destruction of transitional space by the speed of medicine coupled with the feeling of omnipotence is part of why there is such great distress when medicine fails. In this distress, bioethics does or should function as a transitional object that opens transitional space (i.e., consultations, case analyses, committees, humanities courses in medical school) that helps practitioners and patients come to terms with the loss of omnipotence.
Examples of the questions the panel will explore while considering the role of bioethics and religion in transitional space, the spaces between: How exactly does bioethics function as a transitional object? What can it learn from religion about holding open transitional space? How should bioethics as a transitional object inform ethics education in the classroom and clinic? Consultations? What does it mean for a bioethicist to be a “good enough parent”? Would such a conception help resolve questions on ethics expertise? Would it be too paternalistic? Was the birth of bioethics an intervention in medicine by religion, philosophy, and the humanities or was it discovered by medicine and those other fields like a child and parent discover a stuffed animal? Does the professionalization of bioethics, which emphasizes efficiency, threaten the transitional nature of bioethics?