From seriousness to reality in play: Some considerations on the psychic mechanisms involved in play and their applications in clinical practice

ABSTRACTThe idea that play is a serious matter seems agreed. However, it seems necessary to ask ourselves if this concerns the seriousness with which the activity is performed or the serious character of the activity itself. Is a game that evokes psychic or physical death still playful? Can a game whose rules are not respected scrupulously continue to be regarded as a game? This first consideration will lead me to present the relationship between play and reality with a view to including it in the framework of Winnicott’s transitional phenomena. I put forward the idea that play is first and foremost to do with the relationship between a subject and reality. This leads on to a discussion of the idea, attributed wrongly to Freud, that play can be opposed to reality. I believe, on the contrary, that it is fully grounded in reality, but that it develops in a closed and structured space within it. The notion of play is thus not only related to the creation by the subject of this closed and structured space, bu...