From Truth or Dare to Show and Tell: Reflections on Childhood Ritual, Play, and the Evolution of Symbolic Life

Hide-and-Seek

The game starts with all players in a central location. One player is given the designation of “it.” There are two portions to the game: the hiding—all the players, except “it,” locate a place in which to hide, and the seeking—“it” attempts to locate at least one of the players. The overall objective is to not be discovered by “it.” (“Hide-and-Seek,” retrieved from Wikipedia, November 30, 2008)

In his 1963 essay on communication, D.W. Winnicott evoked this familiar children's game to capture the poignant plight of the child who longs for a sacred zone of privacy even as he wants to share and be known. “It is a sophisticated game of hide-and-seek in which it is joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found” (p. 186) .

In her 1994 article “Love in the Afternoon,” Jody Davies finds herself with her adult male patient, Mr. M, in a paralyzing dance of secrecy, privacy, and unspoken—even unthinkable—desires. Davies describes her particular entanglement not only with her patient but with psychoanalysis’ history and with its ensnaring legacy—a legacy stemming from the analyst's so-called quest for “neutrality” and from implicit (and, at times, explicit) demands for handling countertransference and erotic desire in a private, undisclosed manner. In parallel, Davies’ patient, Mr. M, has his own zone of privacy and shame, his own unmentionable erotic desire. We can interpret Davies and Mr. M as engaged in their own sophisticated game of hide-and-seek: At times both members of the relationship are in hiding; and at times Davies ventures to seek, but when she does her patient stonewalls her, rebuffs her, and preserves his camouflage.

In this essay, I revisit Davies’ exchange with her patient and then present an extended clinical illustration of my own. My goal is to illuminate the reciprocal ways in which an evolving dialogue about desire is both predicated upon and conducive to symbolic life. Let me first place these