|
“Where’s your baby?” said the mother to her sobbing 3-year-old daughter. “You need your baby!”
“你的宝贝呢？”妈妈对她抽泣的3岁女儿说，“你需要你的宝贝！”
Her older daughter began digging through the two large diaper bags, and triumphantly extracted a fuzzy pink blanket. The 3-year-old grabbed the blanket and tucked it up under her chin, gripping it tightly. “There’s your baby!” the mother and the older sister said in unison. The crying subsided, and we went on with the medical exam.
她的大女儿开始在两个松松垮垮的大包里翻找，最后得意洋洋地拽出了一个毛茸茸的粉红毯子。3岁的小女儿一把抓过毯子把它塞到自己的下巴底下，紧紧握住。“你的宝贝在这儿呢！”妈妈和姐姐异口同声地说。哭声渐渐平息，我们得以继续进行医疗检查。
So-called transitional objects — beloved blankets, tattered stuffed animals, irreplaceable garments — are frequent in the pediatric exam room. Some children clutch them to ease the stress of being examined or immunized, while others simply never leave the house without their favorites. Ask any small group of parents about transitional objects — or blankies, or lovies — and you’ll get a good story, usually of a precious item misplaced or lost at some critical juncture.
所谓的移情对象——心爱的毯子，破烂的毛绒动物玩具，无法替代的衣物——是儿科诊室里的常客。一些孩子在接受检查或打疫苗时需要抓着它们来减轻压力，而另一些孩子没有这些心爱之物就根本出不了家门。随便找一小群家长来问问移情对象的事——或安抚毛毯，或心爱玩具——你总会听到一个好故事，通常是在什么关键时刻放错或丢失了的珍贵物品。
Ask adults, and the most unlikely people tell you the names of their treasured childhood blankets or get misty-eyed about a stuffed bear.
假如你向成年人提问，你会发现有人竟然会告诉你儿时挚爱的毯子名字，或为一只毛绒玩具熊而泪眼婆娑。
The British experts who first wrote about the term mentioned Winnie the Pooh and Aloysius, the teddy bear in “Brideshead Revisited”; a recent literary incarnation is Knuffle Bunny, in the series of three picture books by Mo Willems. But the formative American take on transitional objects is probably Linus, with his blanket, in Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts cartoons, which date to the 1950s and the moment of the original psychoanalytic discussion of the phenomenon.
英国的一些专家首次提到“移情对象”这个术语，他们提到的是维尼熊和阿鲁西斯——这是电影《故园风雨后》(Brideshead Revisited)版本的泰迪熊；最近的文献化身则是兔子古纳什——莫·威廉姆斯(Mo Willems)三部绘本中的形象。但美国移情对象的造型可能是拖着毯子的莱纳斯，出自查尔斯·舒尔茨(Charles M. Schulz)的花生漫画，最初在20世纪50年代开始发行，那也正是关于此现象最早开始精神分析讨论的时刻。
In 1953, Dr. Donald Woods Winnicott, a prominent pediatrician and psychoanalyst, presented a paper to the British Psycho-Analytical Society: “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena — A Study of the First Not-Me Possession.” The paper, published in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, combines psychoanalytic theory with a clear pediatric familiarity with children and their blankies.
1953年，杰出的儿科医生、精神分析学家唐纳德·伍兹·温尼科特博士(Dr. Donald Woods Winnicott)向英国精神分析协会(British Psycho-Analytical Society)提交了一篇论文：《移情对象和移情现象——关于首个非我占有物的研究》(Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena - A Study of the First Not-Me Possession)。该论文发表在《国际精神分析杂志》(The International Journal of Psychoanalysis)上，将儿童与其安抚物以熟稔的儿科经验进行了明确的精神分析。
“The parents get to know its value and carry it round when travelling,” Dr. Winnicott wrote. “The mother lets it get dirty and even smelly, knowing that by washing it she introduces a break in continuity in the infant’s experience.” In Dr. Winnicott’s view, the object, together with what he called a “good enough mother,” helps the young child navigate the essential problem of separation.
“家长们意识到了它们的价值，并在旅行时随身携带。”温尼科特博士写道，“妈妈听由它变得又脏又臭，明白一旦清洗就可能破坏婴儿体验的连贯性。”在温尼科特看来，这种对象，加上他所称的“合格的母亲”，帮助孩子们探索分离的基本问题。
“The baby knows the teddy bear is not Mom, but the baby can get a certain satisfaction. It is neither Mom nor totally just a stuffed animal,” said Steve Tuber, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at City College, and the author of a book on Winnicott.
“孩子知道泰迪熊不是妈妈，但他们能从中得到某种满足。它既不是妈妈，也不仅仅是个毛绒玩具。”史蒂夫·图珀(Steve Tuber)说，他是纽约市立学院(City College)的临床心理学家和心理学教授，曾写过一本有关温尼科特的专著。
The specificity of the child’s preference — and affection — parallels the developing ability to feel a strong specific attachment to particular people. The transitional object is “a bridge between the mother and the external world,” said Alicia Lieberman, an expert in infant mental health and a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
孩子喜好的专一性——和感情——与其对特定人物发展出强烈的特殊依恋感的能力是平行的。移情对象是“妈妈和外部世界之间的桥梁”，加州大学旧金山分校(University of California, San Francisco)婴儿精神健康教授艾利西亚·利伯曼(Alicia Lieberman)说。
Arietta Slade, a professor of clinical and developmental psychology at the City University of New York, said: “It’s a very adaptive mechanism, if you think about it, that there are things other than mother that kids can hang on to that help them retain that comforted and comforting feeling.”
纽约市立大学(City University of New York)临床和发展心理学教授阿里埃塔·斯莱德(Arietta Slade)说：“这是一个适应机制，你可以这么考虑，除了妈妈之外，孩子还能依赖其他事物，帮助他们保持被安慰和舒适的感觉。”
Some parents are able to “suggest” a convenient object (and buy multiples to keep in reserve), but children are guided mostly by their own mysterious and passionate preferences, and they do not necessarily accept substitutes — witness all those stories about turning the car around to go back for the one true blankie.
有些父母可以“提示”一个方便的对象（并多买几个以备不时之需），但儿童往往只受他们自己神秘而热情的偏好指引，而且通常不接受替代物品——掉转车头回去只为了那个真正的安抚物，此类故事司空见惯。
The transitional object “has to be created by the baby,” Dr. Tuber said. “A child has to pick the one that really becomes theirs.”
移情对象“只能由婴儿制造”，图珀博士说，“孩子选择真正属于他们的那样东西。”
Inevitably, there are parents who worry that the object has become too important, and that caring for it and curating it has become a major burden — or that it’s being held on to past some age of expected maturity and independence.
不可避免的是，有些家长担心移情对象变得过于重要，照看它、维护它已经变成一大负担——或者它阻碍了孩子在此年龄应有的成熟与独立。
“Parents get upset because they think they’re going to lose the transitional object, they think it collects germs, they think it looks babyish, which is a problem in American culture,” said Dr. Barbara Howard, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at Johns Hopkins.
“父母感觉不安，这是因为他们担心弄丢了移情对象，或它沾染了太多病菌，或看上去太孩子气，而这在美国文化中是个问题。”约翰·霍普金斯大学(Johns Hopkins)的儿科发育行为医生芭芭拉·霍华德博士(Barbara Howard)说。
“The biggest problem is stigmatization. There is no ultimate age where it’s bad, but you can get teased for it,” she added.
“最大的问题是招致坏名声。大家都说不上来到什么年龄就不该再抱着安抚物，但你就是会因此被人笑话，”她补充说。
As children get older, some transitional objects — especially stuffed animals — take on distinct personalities, moving toward a combined role as comforter and imaginary friend. Think of how Winnie the Pooh serves as Christopher Robin’s playmate, companion and sometimes problem child. Aloysius, the teddy bear in “Brideshead Revisited,” is taken along to Oxford.
当孩子渐渐长大，某些移情对象，尤其是毛绒玩具，开始拥有了鲜明的个性，逐渐转变为既是安慰者又是虚拟朋友的混合角色。就像维尼熊既是克里斯多·罗宾(Christopher Robin)的玩伴和朋友，偶尔也会扮演问题儿童的角色。《故园风雨后》中的泰迪熊阿鲁西斯还一直被带进了牛津(Oxford)校园。
Indeed, Dr. Howard suggested that as many as 25 percent of young women going to college take along something identifiable as a childhood transitional object. The young adult going off to college, with or without stuffed animals or scraps of a favorite old blanket, should be a reminder that the challenges of separation — and the consolations and complexities of attachment — are not developmentally confined to the first years of life.
实际上，霍华德博士提出，多达25%的年轻女性去上大学的时候会带着儿时的移情对象。年轻人走向大学校园，无论带或不带毛绒玩具或小零碎或最爱的旧毯子，这都在提醒人们，对分离——以及安慰和依恋的复杂性——的挑战，并不仅仅局限于幼年时期。
The familiar image of the small child and the transitional object, generally sweet and mildly humorous, occasionally frantic and even desperate, reminds us that learning to negotiate, and even enjoy, partings and reunions is part of the whole assignment, for parents and for children.
小孩子和移情对象在一起的熟悉画面，通常是甜蜜而略微让人忍俊不禁的，偶尔疯狂甚至绝望，它在提醒我们，无论对家长还是孩子来说，学会谈判、享受、分离和重聚，这都是必需的修行。
本文最初发表于2013年3月12日。
翻译：Skandha
|
- VOA 英语教学节目
-
- 经典英语在线训练资源
-
|
