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In offering a paper mainly concerned with play technique as an introduction to this book,1 I have been prompted by the consideration that my work with both children and adults, and my contributions to psycho-analytic theory as a whole, derive ultimately from the play technique evolved with young children. I do not mean by this that my later work was a direct application of the play technique; but the insight I gained into early development, into unconscious processes, and into the nature of the interpretations by which the unconscious can be approached, has been of far-reaching influence on the work I have done with older children and adults.
I shall, therefore, briefly outline the steps by which my work developed out of the psycho-analytic play technique, but I shall not attempt to give a complete summary of my findings. In 1919, when I started my first case, some psycho-analytic work with children had already been done, particularly by Dr Hug-Hellmuth (1921). However, she did not undertake the psycho-analysis of children under six and, although she used drawings and occasionally play as material, she did not develop this into a specific technique.
At the time I began to work it was an established principle that interpretations should be given very sparingly. With few exceptions psycho-analysts had not explored the deeper layers of the unconscious—in children such exploration being considered potentially dangerous. This cautious outlook was reflected in the fact that then, and for years to come, psycho-analysis was held to be suitable only for children from the latency period onwards.2
My first patient was a five-year-old boy. I referred to him under the name ‘Fritz’ in my earliest published papers.3 To begin with I