Why I Write: Surprise

For me an essential part of writing has been playing with ideas and words. Writing is the playground of the imagination. Over the years I have written articles playing with efforts to understand the process and therapeutic action of play in the analysis of children and adults (Ablon, 2000, 2001, 2014). These explorations started very early in my life.

Like many children, I spent enjoyable hours playing with my toys. I sent pirates on adventures and soldiers into epic battles. Figures reenacted tense meetings between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. In my play there were surprising turns of events. I found that playing with words as in all play took me to surprising places. As Einstein said, “combinatory or associative play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought” (Hadamard, 1945, p. 144). Much later I learned that the element of surprise for the analyst and the patient provides conviction, which is not there when the analyst is too far ahead of the patient in shaping or interpreting material.

As far back as I can remember this powerful interest in play also extended to playing with words and eventually writing. As I wrote I discovered surprising things about the explorations of Vasco da Gama, and the present state of Nigeria. This also applied to creative writing. I recall a sonnet I tried to write according to my sense of Shakespeare. One couplet turned out to be, “I planned in secret how to kill another, only to find that I had killed my brother.” At the time there was a spark of discovery and recognition. In high school after a painful break up with a girlfriend I wrote a poem for English class about a girl being like a cold. It was a success in class, but I discovered my anger and the long miserable course of heartbreak.

Through writing I discovered different parts of myself. Assignments in high school involved writing some fiction in the style and voice of