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Erik Erikson's latest book is a slim volume conceived for the 1972 Godkin Lectures at Harvard and originally more descriptively titled, Play, Vision and Deception. Drawing extensively on two previously published papers, one on play, the other on rituals and pseudo-speciation, the author shifts his emphasis to both play and shared vision gone awry. He shifts also to the political stage, the world theatre of war and international confrontation.
Recapitulating his original and creative attempt to define and preserve the meaning of play in human development, Erikson provides a perspective which integrates the meaning of play fairly successfully with the rituals of each culture, subculture, and family by emphasizing the child's need to come to terms with dread and "regain belief in a utopian promise." The author postulates an ontogeny of ritual in the life cycle on the borderline between playfulness and routine on the one hand, and between the individual and society on the other, which leads developmentally to the adult need for a shared vision.
The familiar but well-written short chapters on play and vision