Study 188: The Object That Must Never Be Cleaned

Affection is one of the seven territories of this institution's field of inquiry and appears in the titles of eight studies out of a hundred and eighty, several of which are the institution's own name. This study takes the base case: the child's transitional object as described by D. W. Winnicott. It sets out four properties, that the child originates it, that it must survive being hated, that it must not be changed except by the child, and that it must not be washed, and argues that each contradicts something this institution normally assumes. It reads Winnicott's instruction that the paradox