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Games, while being an excellent, highly interactive and participatory projective vehicle, are not for real. One's fantasy life and creativity can be less hesitantly involved. Yet, there are, as in life, the constraints of the reality of the games' rules…. The game may represent life, and hence, an opportunity to tangle with and master its complexities and vagaries in a telescoped and therapeutically focused manner. [Nickerson and O'Laughlin, p. 184]
Though the title of my paper is playful, how child analysts deal with cheating often is not. Patients who cheat while playing games with their analysts are ubiquitous, yet the psychoanalytic literature focused on this topic is practically nonexistent (e.g., Beiser 1970, Meeks 1970). This has always struck me as curious, because as a therapist and supervisor I am frequently confronted by the dilemma of how to work with such patients. Even more surprising, there is little written in the psychoanalytic literature about game playing either outside of treatment (Eifferman 1987, Opie and Opie 1976, Peller 1954, Phillips 1960) or in treatment (Bellinson 1999, Capell 1968, Coriat 1941, Levinson 1987, Loomis 1964) though structured board games and sports such as basketball are often the primary means of communication used by school-aged children in treatment.
Is it simply because board games are boring and inherently unworkable, or is there something else going on? That's what I will explore in this paper—how we as analysts view cheating and how this may affect our stance with patients. In doing so, I will suggest that our stance on cheating is influenced