The Development of Play: David Cohen,  New York University Press, New York,  184 pp. Price: $32.00.

This book is a useful contribution to the study of play, its development, expression, meaning, and value. The book has nine chapters of which the first is an introduction and the last a summary. Each of the seven intervening chapters pursues an independent line of thought concerning the main subject, play. Although

this structure seems clear enough, it is the structure of the book that disappoints. Effectively, there are seven individual papers each complete in itself and all roughly related to the same subject. The longest, “Playful People?” describes the development of play in the author's two sons. This is a valuable clinical description of healthy children developing individual play patterns within a specific family context. For my personal point of view as a preceptor for residents and medical students studying child psychiatry, I believe this chapter is one of the most provocative reports of child behavior in a family context that I have ever read. For me the purchase of the book is worthwhile for this chapter by itself. In this chapter the author seems to be trying to develop his own theory of play. In other chapters he devotes himself to describing the published works of other writers on play behaviors collected in various settings. He comments intelligently on the problems presented by the need to devise research protocols with which to study play and upon the attitudes of researchers that intrude upon the play gestalten they are trying to observe. These problems directly affect the therapist who is using play techniques and the supervisor who is trying to teach these techniques.

Each chapter has its own references. There is a good index at the end of the book. Although the many references are not limited to the current literature, I missed one reference in particular, a paper Lauretta Bender (1932) published on her observations of children at play in the public playgrounds of New York City, complete with diagrams and the chants and rhymes of the children.