The Adolescent Play: Averting the Tragedy of Hamlet

Thinking necessarily involves other people, because thinking develops and matures in the context of social communication. In adolescence, as throughout the life cycle, other individuals remain essential to nurture the play of the mind, which preserves the thinker and fosters emotional growth. W. R. Bion outlined three prototypes of object relationships that may support or interfere with the adolescent's drive to think, and therefore, to fantasize and to play. The three prototypes are relational models (images and unconscious fantasies) of early caretaker experiences involving containing and being contained. For clarity, I denote these prototypes as bonding, symbolic, and antilinking relationships. A brief analysis of Hamlet introduces the reader to the tripartite model of the container-contained; the protagonist's words and action typify the troubled adolescent's conflictual traversing of relational levels, from participation with, to destruction of, play and players. Clinical examples follow, illustrating how the therapist may cultivate bonding and symbolic communication and challenge antilinking. The therapist's acceptance of ambivalent and ambiguous communications as types of play, or potentials for play, may further productive individual, family, and group treatment.