A Note on a Child's Game1

I have had the opportunity of observing a game played by a girl aged seventeen months which seems to me to be worth reporting because it raises some interesting questions about the hedonics of play. The game consisted merely in standing upright on the couch and then slowly swaying and overbalancing so as to fall over and sit down with a bump, after which the child scrambled up and the game was repeated, many times. During the subsequent repetitions the time taken in swaying about before the final fall became lengthened more and more until ultimately interest in the game was lost and she turned her attention to other activities.

The manifestations of affect in this game were very striking and altogether delightful to watch. During the standing and overbalancing phase there was an expression of breathless pleasurable anticipation tinged with anxiety, rising in a kind of crescendo, until, when she finally toppled over, her pleasure was discharged in unrestrained laughter. Whilst she was getting up again for the next repetition there was no show of affect, from which I conclude that this getting up was no part of the game, but merely the necessary preliminary to its repetition.

In response to my inquiry, the mother informed me that the child had fallen over on several occasions in learning to walk, but without hurting herself to any extent. In spite of this I shall avoid shelving the problem of this game by referring to the repetition compulsion, because I am in agreement with Kubie when he writes2: 'Thus we are finally forced to conclude that there is neither any need nor any evidence for a "repetition compulsion"—and that the phrase itself has become a mere descriptive epithet …'

It might be argued that the purpose of the game was simply to obtain the erotic pleasure of falling and landing on the soft couch; that the game was in fact a form of auto-erotism and nothing more. But if that were all, it would not be easy to account for the prolongation of the game in t