Play and Playing in Adults and in Adult Psychoanalysis: An Addendum to the Paper ‘On Inconsolability’

When my daughter heard that I was preparing a paper on play, she related what her professor in a course on child development had told the class one morning. ‘The study of child's play,’ he had suggested, ‘is child's play as compared to child's play.’ I would guess that he is correct, but then the study of the play of adults is not so simple either. In fact, there is some doubt if all of the ‘older’ psychoanalysts were convinced whether adults really played (Freud 1908, p. 145; Waelder 1932, p. 220); and if there is some equivocation on that subject, it may be due to the fact that it is not easy to find a clear-cut and comprehensive definition of what ‘play’ really means and is, even though most of us are prepared to vouchsafe that we do know.

The 1978 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary devotes more than eight three-column pages to play and playing, in the course of which several hundred kindred but somewhat different meanings are noted. These vary from possible synonyms such as ‘movement, action, clapping the hands, gestures of the male birds to attract the female of the species, elusive changes in transition, freedom of room for movement, exercise or action for amusement and diversion,