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In a statement prepared for the section on Play Therapy of the 1938 meeting of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, Homburger-Erikson stated:1 'Our common interest in the play of children has one of its roots in a strong ideological movement which confidently expects the child's own nature to show the way to a more realistic education. Psychiatry tries to utilize what education tries to preserve, namely, the autodidactic and autotherapeutic faculties inherent in play… to "play it out" is the most natural autotherapeutic measure childhood affords. No matter what experience has threatened the child's psychic integrity, he attempts to restore it by mastering in play a sphere of reality in which his acts are "physiologically safe, socially permissable, physically workable, and psychologically satisfying" … His play, however, and thus his psychic integrity, are easily disturbed whenever external rivalry, authoritative pressure, or internal conflict (such as ambivalent feelings towards the protecting mother) accelerate his gradual weaning from maternal protection. It is for this reason, I think, that an opportunity to play is particularly beneficial to a disturbed child if he is alone with a sympathetic adult, sure of having the toys and the adult to himself during a given period… Thus many children are able to use the protective sanction of an understanding adult to heal themselves by means of play (an especially effective procedure if the mother also has an opportunity to talk to someone and to relieve her ambivalence to the child).'
Although the author of the present paper does not specifically indicate that she is familiar with Homburger's statement, nevertheless she presents an excellent demonstration of the successful application of its principle at the Broadoaks School of Education at Whittier College. The children at the Broadoaks Preschool 'show the effect of certain frustrating cultural impositions … deprivation of cuddling experiences; too early toi