THE "INTERMEDIARY OBJECT"

Abstract

The rapid acceptance of the term "intermediary object" induced me to write the present paper, in order to clarify the meaning I assigned to it. I started to use this term-scarcely three years ago-when referring to the doctor-patient relationship, and presented it for the first time at the II International Congress of Psychodrama, Barcelona, 1966.
Historically, the term is related to the experiment conducted with chronic psychotics, using puppets to capture their attention during psychodramatic sessions.