Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

June 10, 1969. A CONSIDERATION OF THE NATURE OF THOUGHT IN CHILDHOOD PLAY. Eleanor Galenson, M.D.

Galenson explores some aspects of the underlying thought processes in both the verbal and nonverbal components of play, and proposes two alternative developmental lines: one leading from play toward creative work and sublimation, and one eventuating in acting out.

Many authors have considered language and conscious thought as essentially unitary. Greenacre has written of nonverbal communication as manifest in body language as well as acting out, and relates such forms of communication to a preverbal form of thinking. Vigotsky describes thought as having its own structure distinct from speech. Langer questions that language is the only means of articulating thought, and distinguishes two types of symbolism. Furth and Vernon have demonstrated that severe or total language deficiency may be present without loss of the capacity for logical thought and symbolization. Piaget has characterized the mental organization of the first two years of life as 'sensori-motor intelligence'. Action and ideation are a continuum: early action patterns devoid of imagery gradually give rise to representational though in which imagery is present.

Various attempts have been made to define the structural or organizational properties of play in terms of modes derived from body function. These patterns have 'vectorial properties', or organizing principles, such as direction, force, balance, rhythm, and enclosingness. Clinical examples illustrate a method of categorizing and recording the derivatives of body sensations and affects through a structural or organizational frame of reference. In contrast to the symbolic richness of the artist's work, and the wide variety in the play of normal children, there is clinical evidence that the symbolic play of disturbed children tends to be narrow in variety, richness, and originality. There is also a greater proportion of direct expression of imp