The Transitional Phenomenon Revisited Henry P. Coppolillo, M.D.

In 1953, Winnicott elaborated upon Fairbairn’s (1 952) psychological concept of “transitional” in his classical paper “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena.” Anthony ( 1974) informed me that prior to Winnicott and Fairbairn, the Gestalt psychologists circa 1910 had worked on this concept. I have not been successful in tracking down their work. Winnicott affirmed that an object, a thought or concept, or even a reevoked memory could be experienced by a human being in a particular way. He wrote that besides the capacity to experience external and internal reality, a third mode of experience is available. In his words, “the third part of the life of a human being, a part that we cannot ignore, is an intermediate area of experiencing, to which inner reality and external life both contribute” (p. 90). A teddy bear, for instance, can be appreciated for its size, its impish expression, the sparkle in its glass eyes, and the softness of its fur. As it is brought into the transitional area of experience, to a child it can become much more. It becomes a willing recipient of loving hugs, or the abashed subject of a scolding for naughtiness, or even the victim of a well-placed kick in the rump. In a word, the child’s inner states endow the inanimate teddy bear with lifelike qualities and roles. Yet, for all of the intensity of these contributions from the inner world, the child retains an appreciation of the teddy bear’s objective qualities. It is almost unfortunate that with the idea of the transitional phenomena, Winnicott introduced the term transitional object. This latter term is so captivating that many authors write of the transitional object as being the characteristic object relationship of an early phase of personality development. . Busch et al. (1973) took as their focus the qualities and fate of those objects they defined as “primary transitional objects” to which Dr. Coppolillo is Professor and Director of the Division of Child Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee 3 7232, where reprints may be requested.

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the child becomes attached in the first year of life. While studying the nature of the object and the child’s relationship to it is necessary, it would be restrictive and unproductive if we did not also recognize the importance of the process by which the child acquires and retains the ability to experience objects in the transitional mode. Winnicott clearly indicates that any object, thought, or concept can become a transitional object. It need only be experienced in the “intermediate area of experience.” He goes on to say that “By this definition an infant’s babbling or the way an older child goes over a repertory of songs and tunes while preparing for sleep come within the intermediate area as transitional phenomena” (p. 89). Thus, when a little boy was observed to spread his soldiers across the playroom floor in battle array, and to their leaden external reality he added the life of his internal world, infusing them with aggression, omnipotence, or heroism, he was living in the intermediate area of experience. Winnicott elaborated this concept from a psychoanalytic postulate. It is thought that in early infancy the little being cannot distinguish self from nonself. The infant cannot appreciate any difference in the events that occur within his own body, such as increase in need tension or evocation of a memory trace, from events that occur in the external world, such as the mother’s presenting the breast or bottle. Since, at this stage of development, the infant is not capable of learning from frustration, and since with “good enough mothering,” as Winnicott calls it, the breast is presented almost at the moment that he needs it, the infant cannot help but experience that he, or perhaps his need tension, created the breast. This is the phenomenon that Winnicott calls primary creativity. Psychoanalysts generally believe that since early thought is pictorial in nature and invested with tremendous intensity, when need tensions reoccur, and the gratifying object is once more desired, the infant literally hallucinates the breast. Under the double influence of maturation and the frustration that inevitably occurs in daily life, this illusion of the infant’s ability to create is gradually replaced by acceptance of the more realistic notion that for gratification or relief from need tension to occur, a benign, predictable, and giving object must exist in the external world. Winnicott calls this “acknowledgment of indebtedness” and feels that the task of reconciling the inner world of wish fulfillment with the objective, external world of objects creates a strain which is never fully mastered. That this strain exists, and that this mode of experience is not limited to early childhood, Winnicott makes clear

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when he states, “It is assumed here that the task of reality-acceptance is never completed, that no human being is free from the strain of relating inner and outer reality, and that relief from this strain is provided by an intermediate area of experience which is not challenged (arts, religion, etc.). This intermediate area is in direct continuity with the play area of the small child who is ‘lost’ in play” (p. 96). Whether or not one subscribes to this construct as a point of departure, clinical experience and introspection oblige us to accept the concept that there is a continuum extending from what could ideally be called pure subjective creativity to that which is objectively perceived. That the two ends of this continuum are ideals and probably exist only in the imagination does not deny the gradations of the middle portion of the continuum. I should like to attempt to define more discretely that portion of the experiential continuum in which there is an amalgamation of acknowledged, objectively perceived external reality and internally created subjective reality and which Winnicott called the transitional area of experience. Furthermore, I should like to claim for the transitional phenomenon a greater significance than has been accorded it. I would maintain that the ability to experience in the transitional mode is essential for optimal ego development and important in man’s striving to achieve resonance with his culture. Let us begin by exploring certain aspects of ego development with concepts from the structural model as modified by Hartmann (1939) and Hartmann et al. (1946) (see fig. 1). We must then conceptualize that as ego and id evolve from an undifferentiated matrix, one group of functions develops from the stimulation that impinges on them from external reality. It appears that although these functions can be directed and stimulated by drive activity, they do not depend on drives per se for their maturation. They are, however, dependent on stimulation from the external world. Hartmann called these the autonomous functions of the ego because they are relatively autonomous from the id and drive activity (see fig. 1 , A). Perceptual ability, motoric ability, capacity to lay down and retrieve memory traces are a few of these functions. There are, however, a number of other ego functions that are dependent for their development on the interplay between the drives and external reality. Let us take a grossly simplified example. Suppose that Johnny, age 4,driven by voyeuristic impulses, is peeking through the keyhole in the bathroom door at his mother or an older sister who is taking a bath. This rapturous interlude is interrupted by the footfall of that hobnailed booted giant who is

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known as “Dad” around the house. As Johnny stands there quaking internally, let us contemplate only two of the infinite number of possible parental responses as perceived by the boy. Suppose that in one instance, either because of the father’s conflicts about sexuality, or because of cultural or moral convictions, or possibly because of Johnny’s perception, his father’s response appears massively threatening. Johnny, under this threat, must avoid expressing his impulse. Remembering that a 4-year-old’s capacity for abstraction does not permit him to differentiate between wish and deed, we must assume that in most instances he will soon find it necessary to turn away not only from the deed, but also from the wish. In this way, repression has begun, and at least a part of the drive is lost for further use as a force in ego development (see fig. 1, c>.

/

B

C

\

ID Figure 1 Following Hartmann, some aspects of ego development are: A Maturation and development of autonomous functions B Sublimation and neutralization of instinctual drives C Repression of component instincts, defenses against their emergence, and subsequent compromise formation.

In the second example, Johnny’s father may approach him and say, “Look, buddy, you can’t go peeking at people through bathroom doors. Everyone has a right to privacy. You’ll be able to see what nude women look like when you’re older.” Or perhaps, as happens in more intellectually oriented people, he shows his child a picture of a nude woman. This latter response, while still prohibiting the direct expression of the child’s wish, offers in addition two important bits of communication. It says that while the wish could not be gratified in the manner Johnny was using, Johnny

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would have the right to gratify the wish in the culturally proper way and at the proper time. Secondly, the communication underlines that there are culturally sanctioned ways of gratifying need tensions. With these communications, Johnny is not only authorized and encouraged to avoid squelching and repressing an impulse or desire, he is also invited to imitate, discover, or invent socially acceptable ways of meeting these wishes. Father has acted as a mediator between the impulses, the ego, and reality. He has assumed the role of a temporary auxiliary ego and fostered sublimation and neutralization (see fig. 1, B). These new-found, culturally acceptable ways of gratifying drives and component instincts will one day again be subjected to optimal frustration, and the process of acquiring increasingly more mature and productive techniques for adaptation will continue. It is evident, too, that in our schematizing the ego, as in figure 1 , external and internal stimuli are involved in varying degrees. While in A, external stimuli are essential for maturation and development of function, internal stimuli are necessary only to a small extent. In B, where we have attempted to portray processes of sublimation and neutralization, stimuli resulting from drive activity as well as percepts from the external world are necessary to achieve structuralization. Finally, in C, where repressed impulses are depicted, it is the internally generated stimuli that create the situation, while external factors are less important. I would submit that, while in many instances, especially in childhood, the ego is supported in its sublimatory activities by a person, the transitional object and the transitional mode of experience can serve the same function. To support this claim, we must review another set of concepts. In two papers, Rapaport (1951, 1958) formulated his elegantly articulated ideas of the relative autonomies of the ego. He underlines that although man’s behavior is determined by instinctual drives, it is not passively at their mercy. Man can respond to external reality and adapt his behavior so that it is appropriate and relevant to his surroundings. He achieves this freedom from drives through his ego’s apparatuses of primary and secondary autonomy. Rapaport terms this freedom “the autonomy of the ego from the id.” On the other hand, there is much to indicate that man’s behavior is by no means completely dependent on the external world. Psychoanalytic observations clearly demonstrate the persistence of both pathological and normal behavior forms in adverse environmental conditions. Rapaport states this in saying: “To the medical man, it is a commonplace that nonliving matter cannot es-

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cape the impact o f . . . environment and its reactions are strictly (or statistically) predictable, but that organisms can escape such impacts, can avoid responding to them, and when they respond, they can do so in a variety of alternative (vicarious) ways” (1958, p. 16). He later elaborates: “Man’s constitutionally given drive equipment appears to be the ultimate (primary) guarantee of the ego’s autonomy from the environment, that is, its safeguard against stimulus-response slavery” (p. 18). Finally, Rapaport postulates that the ego’s two autonomies (from the id and from reality) exist in relationship to each other, and any marked alteration of the state of one is necessarily accompanied by an altered state of the other. If, for example, the ego is forced into a state of autonomy from the environment through, say, sensory deprivation (see fig. 2, A), it is not long before it becomes so permeable to, and dependent on, the id that its adaptive functions are overwhelmed by rampaging id impulses. On the other hand, should the environment become so intrusive that the ego is constantly bludgeoned by stimuli from it, as in brainwashing techniques, the ego can be rendered so autonomous from the id that the person forsakes practically all of his own desires and strivings (fig. 2, B). The converse, of course, is seen more frequently clinically. Increased drive tensions, whether in adolescence, climacterium, or pathological states, render reality-oriented behavior much more difficult (fig. 2, C), while in those conditions in which there is great blocking of drive tensions, as in the severe obsessional neurosis or in schizophrenic echolalia, the individual may become a slave to external stimuli (fig. 2, D). EXTERNAL STIMULI BLOCKING

A

B

C Figure 2

D

It would appear obvious that in neither of these two extreme states is the ego in an optimal position to develop modes of sublimating and neutralizing drives. It cannot develop those structures which will insure reconciliation of internal wishes with external reality. T o be able to achieve this structuralization, the ego must function within a range where it is not overwhelmed or disin-

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tegrated by the impetus of the drive. The child does not learn to channel and direct his aggression from having had a temper tantrum. Neither can he be so coerced by external forces that no internal participation is experienced. Brainwashing produces robots, not creative, adaptable persons. Graphically this concept can be represented as an area in the ego in which need tensions, desires, or subjective states can mix in optimal proportions with relatively undistorted percepts from the external world (see fig. 3). External Stimuli

internal Stimuli

Figure 3

I should like to submit that the transitional area of experience can provide an ideal arena in which the ego can mix these two tides of stimuli. Furthermore, the products of a culture’s creativity, its graphic and dramatic art, its legends and myths, its games and toys, songs and rhymes, lend themselves ideally as objects that can be taken into the transitional area of experience. I believe this is true both when the artist is creating them and when the consumer is using them. T o have an object available in this way is invaluable for the ego because it affords it a great degree of control. If the drive component becomes too imperative, the ego can cathect the realistic qualities of the object. If, conversely, the reality becomes too oppressive or boring, more of the inner world of wishes is permitted into awareness. Let us imagine a boy of 5 in the throes of his oedipal struggle, listening to his mother tell him the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. As the heat and joy of hearing that Jack is besting the giant begin coming a little too close to home, the child introduces more reality, perhaps by asking where Jack lives, or where the giant lives, or who wrote the story. Once control is regained, the story can go on. The next night the story is requested again, and again the next, and so on. And woe to the mother who dares skip a line or miss a sentence! One day the story is requested no more. But old friend Jack is not forgotten. Like any transitional object, he lies there in a

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closet called memory, ready to be reevoked when needed. Perhaps when our little boy is 9 or 10 and is struggling to make a decision of his own, rather than obey a parental edict, he recalls the story and is amused that Jack accepted beans rather than money for the cow his mother asked him to sell. O r maybe more poignantly, the story remains in storage until our boy is a man, and after a difficult and turbulent day with his own 5-year-old child, he quite inadvertently does just the right thing to reestablish peaceful harmony-by proffering it as a bedtime story. That the cultural products of mankind are optimal transitional objects finds support in statements made by some men of letters and philosophy. In discussing genius, Charles Lamb (1833) said, “But the true poet dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his subject but he has dominion over it” (p. 260). In The Liberal Imagination, Trilling (1950) quotes from Jacques Barzun’s discussion of Freud: “the difference between a work of art and a dream is precisely this, that the work of art leads us back to the outer reality by taking account of it” (p.45). Later, in the same chapter, while discussing Freud’s concepts of art, Trilling says, “He does not deny to art its function and its usefulness; it has a therapeutic effect in releasing mental tension; it serves the cultural purpose of acting as a ‘substitute gratification’ to reconcile men to the sacrifices they have made for culture’s sake; it promotes the social sharing of highly valued emotional experiences; and it recalls men to their cultural ideals” (p. 46). T o return from this poetic excursion to the realm of metapsychology, we should explore some other issues regarding the transitional area of experience. From what has been said, we must assume that at least at certain times, dimly perceived or unconscious wishes or impulses form a part of the transitional experience. It would seem appropriate, then, to attempt to differentiate the transitional phenomenon from two mental activities in which wishes and impulses are represented: fantasy and transference. So far as fantasy is concerned, I feel the difference is simply this. In the process of fantasying, there is no reliable representative of external reality. In fact, if the fantasy is sufficiently compelling, it, in and of itself, acts as a barrier to the intrusion of reality. Freed then from the restraint of reality, the impulse component of fantasy can sometimes acquire an impetus that renders the ego impotent to curb or modulate it. Clinical experience reveals how often anxiety states are occasioned by fantasies that have overthrown the control of the ego or superego. How different this is from the

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soothing effects of the transitional object. In fact, we may often see children utilizing transitional objects to avoid, limit, or curb anxiety-laden fantasies. Turning now to transference, let us consider it in its broadest sense as Freud conceptualized it in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), rather than in the narrow sense in which it is frequently used, as that which a patient experiences vis-a-vis his therapist. Used in its broad meaning, transference can be thought to be the process by which attitudes, wishes, or impulses not readily available to conscious scrutiny and usually applicable to past situations are transferred onto objects or situations in the present. Freud’s examples of transference, of course, were stated in the way a latent dream wish used the day residue as a lightning rod onto which it would attach itself, or in the way the word we consciously meant to say was distorted by the word or thought we unconsciously meant to convey, as in slips of the tongue. This sort of transference is invariably accompanied by anxiety, which in its turn is more or less successfully controlled by the mechanisms of defense. We need only recall the defenseless feeling of embarrassment we experience when we make a slip of the tongue-especially if it is in the presence of one of those parlor analysts who find it beyond the scope of restraint to inhibit their genius and feel compelled to interpret and call attention to it. Again, we must nQte that this feeling of discomfort is far different from the serenity we feel even in the presence of others, when we contemplate an object in our own transitional area of experience. S o phenomenologically we may say that the difference between fantasy and transference, on the one hand, and the transitional phenomenon, on the other, is that in the case of fantasy, the ego is vulnerable to a loss of control with possible resultant anxiety, while when functioning in the intermediate area of experience, the ego is in excellent control. In the case of transference, the ego is always in a helpless position and prey to at least signal anxiety. More fundamentally, I believe that in the case of transference and fantasy the ego either is in constant danger or is actually overwhelmed by impulse life and therefore can be in a state of discomfort, while in the case of the transitional mode of experience, it is in excellent control and experiencing its finest hour. It can achieve this control .because there is in the experience representation from the external world to buffer internal impulses, and representation from the internal world to safeguard against stimulus slavery. Each of these representations can be readily cathected in the transitional area of experience. This hypothesis may be an alternative, or perhaps a

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parallel, to Tolpin’s (1971) elegant concept that the child internalizes the soothing experiences of the transitional phenomenon. If we can accept these concepts as metapsychologically logical, we must next seek evidence that supports o r disproves the thesis. Evidence supporting the validity of this construct emerged in the analysis of a man whose case was previously reported (Coppolillo, 1967). Mr. T. came to analysis because of a sexual problem. In the course of treatment, he revealed that despite excellent intelligence and a master’s degree, he had never heard of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. He knew nothing of Gulliver, or Pinocchio. He thought that a poem about “going down to the sea again” had been written by “Mike Mansfield, the United States Senator from Montana.” When I could finally invite his attention to his cultural aridity without humiliating him, his associations revealed that whenever during childhood he had attempted to take an object into the transitional area of experience to play, to fantasy with toys, a psychotically depressed mother intruded and forced his attention back to her person. In the course of the analysis, we were able to discover the origins of his tendency to seek gratification or express aggression directly in the form of physical contact with the people to whom he related. This tendency had direct causal connection not only with the latently appealing intrusiveness of his mother’s body, but also with an inability to use substitute objects as deflectors or modulators of his wishes and drives. More recently, Horton et al. (1974) compared the use of transitional objects in a group of patients with character disorders with a control group of “good sailors” and a third group of “good corpsmen.” T h e method used was to interview patients and control groups directly and to conduct phone interviews with the families of those subjects who recalled no favorite toys, games, or nursery rhymes-those persons, in a word, who showed no evidence of being comfortable in the transitional area of experience. O u r findings were that 17 of the 19 patients with character disorders used no transitional objects. We were able to reach the families of 16 of these 17 patients. They confirmed this nonuse in a very convincing fashion. In contrast, virtually all of the “good corpsmen” and “good sailors” recalled and vividly described transitional objects, and even described in some instances how their use helped them adapt to military life. Finally, an anecdote from direct child observation may be convincing. Robbie was about 4 when one of the supermasculine type dolls became very important to him. He carried his ”Big Jim” doll

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with him everywhere-he slept with it near his bed at night, and insisted that it be in sight when the fanlily ate. T h e clothes the doll wore had become torn and dirty, and most of the equipment with which he originally came was lost, but Robbie cared little about the frills. His investment was in Big Jim. Several months after the duo had become inseparable, Robbie had a very bad day. He had been irritable and demanding with his mother, and had managed to provoke a couple of fights with his brother and a playmate. When it appeared that there was no other recourse, he was sent to his room. Big Jim was taken with him, and somewhat later in the afternoon his father overheard him talking to the doll in play. “Big Jim,” Robbie said, “we’ve got to get u p this mountain.” There followed much effort, encouragement, and tribulation. Then it appeared that the mother and sister in the play couldn’t make the climb. “Big Jim, I’ll help her,” said Robbie. “No! I’ll do it,” said Big Jim in the voice of a basso buffo. T h e grunts, groans, and a few descriptive words indicated that Big Jim had started u p (or down) the mountain. A terror-stricken mock scream and a thud signaled that tragedy had struck. T h e soliloquy that followed explained that Big Jim, not nearly so adroit or agile as he had claimed to be, had fallen down the mountain, and Robbie (playing himself) was called to the rescue. In the course of the drama, Big Jim had become separated from one of his snap-in arms. To this catastrophe Robbie reacted by saying, “Gosh, Big Jim, it’s lucky you’re a doll with arms that go in and out, so I can fix you without your getting dead.” In the weeks and months that followed, Robbie performed many feats of strength in real life, such as holding a board that his father was sawing, o r helping to tighten a bolt on the lawn mower. Gradually, Big Jim became less and less favored until he occupied a safe but undistinguished corner of the toy box. Certainly, more research is necessary, and my own goal in this area is to develop a prospective study with children which may permit us to observe the maturational and adaptive use of transitional objects o r the transitional mode of experience, and predict its effect on their ego development. I think it obvious, too, that there are many areas in which discrete differences between the transitional phenomena and other phenomena such as pure learning, o r interest and fascination are not articulated. T h e boundary lines are fuzzy, and the net called “transitional” may be cast too broadly. My colleagues and I hope that by continuing to contemplate these modes of experiencing, we can delineate their qualities. If our formulations are valid and the model of the transitional

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phenomenon proves useful, we will be authorized to draw several inferences from it. First, it will support that which artists, theologians, anthropologists, and literary persons, among others, already know: that a culture's artistic expressions are a psychological necessity for the individuals in that culture. Secondly, that the individuals of a culture utilize these artistic creations not only to achieve resonance and unity with the culture, but also as drive modulators and catalysts for their own ego development. Finally, as our societies evolve toward providing more welfare and support for larger segments of our population, there is a growing tendency to invest in tangible physical care and material provision. I fear that this may be happening at the expense of cultural considerations and those more abstract qualities of the human condition that we call psychological. Should we not admonish a welfare department, for example, that insisting that a mother buy a second warm sweater for her child, when she really wants to use her money to buy the family a television set, may be a form of logic that produces short-term physical comfort and long-term psychological disaster? Finally, it would seem that many of the psychological phenomena we have comfortably accepted as commonplace can be reexamined and scrutinized with profit. Pathology is so fascinating that the psychological underpinnings of daily life compete with it poorly for our attention. This may be one reason why we have attempted to study man's health through his pathology. Perhaps the psychophysiology of everyday life must be studied, on its own terms and for itself, if we are to experience in an undistorted fashion the breadth and depth of the human condition.

REFERENCES ANTHONY, E. J. (1974), Personal communication. BUSCH,F., NAGERA, H., MCKNIGHT,J., & PEZZAROSSI, G. (1973), Primary transitional objects. This Journal, 12:193-214. H . P. (1967), Maturational aspects of the transitional phenomenon. Int. J . COPPOLILLO, Psycho-Anal., 48:237-246. FAIRBAIRN, W. R. D. (1952), Psycho-Analytac Studies of Personality. London: Tavistock. FREUD,S. (1900), The interpretation of dreams. Standard Edition, 4 & 5. London: Hogarth Press, 1953. H. (1939),Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation. New York: International HARTMANN, Universities Press, 1958. KRIS,E., & LOEWENSTEIN, R. M. (1946). Comments on the formation of psychic structure. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 2: 11-38. HORTON, P. C., LOUY,J. W., & COPPOLILLO, H. P. (1974), Personality disorders and transitional relatedness. Arch. Gen. Psychiat., 30:618-622.

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LAMB,C. (l833), Sanity of true genius. In: Everybody’s Lamb, ed. A. C. Ward. London: G. Bell & Sons, pp. 260-263, 1950. RAPAPORT,D. (1951), The autonomy of the ego. Bull. Mennznger Clin., 15:113-123. (1958), The theory of ego autonomy. Bull. Manznger Clzn., 22:13-35. TRILLING. L. (1950). The Liberal Imaeination. New York: Vikine. TOLPIN, M. (1971),’0n the beginnilgs of a cohesive self. The Fsychoanalytic Study ofthe Child, 26~316-352. WINNICOTT, D. W. (1953). Transitional objects and transitional phenomena. Znt. J . PsychoAnal., 34:89-97.

The transitional phenomenon revisited.

The Transitional Phenomenon Revisited Henry P. Coppolillo, M.D. In 1953, Winnicott elaborated upon Fairbairn’s (1 952) psychological concept of “tran...
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