Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Dr. Phyllis Greenacre re-emphasized the need to understand nonverbal communications during the analytic hour; they sometimes derive from preverbal responses as well as from experiences which had not or could not be verbalized at the time they occurred. When we consider the interacting relationship of play with ideation and word formation, biological considerations are relevant. The keynote of play in humans and other animals is anticipation of modes of activity characteristic of adult life. The earliest forerunners of play lie in the variable stimulation of responses by the mother over and above what is necessary for the maturational stage. This maternal contribution becomes integrated into the infant's internal functioning and subsequent reactions to maternal activities take on a more definitely imitative or complementive character, and gradually these patterns become the child's own. The deepest roots of acting out are to be found in disturbances in the period in which action as a way of communication is being supplemented and supplanted by speech. Regarding the development of creativity, special characteristics are inborn in the potentially gifted child.

Dr. John B. McDevitt emphasized the role of object relations in the onset, nature, configuration, and structure of symbolic nonverbal play. The earliest social games and symbolic nonverbal play are intimately and inherently tied with the mother-child relationship and the child's need to cope with threats of object loss as well as his need to achieve a sense of separateness from the mother. In addition to endowment, the quality and nature of the child's object-relationships are probably a major factor in determining whether early play eventuates in creative work or in acting out. Dr. McDevitt agrees that certain types of pathology can interfere with the development of imaginative symbolic play and its progress toward creative work. Clinical experience makes it doubtful that the degree of path