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The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of the following clinical observation: When a child introduces the game of hide-and-seek or any other type of hiding-and-finding game into the treatment (whether psychoanalysis or psychotherapy), he or she is bringing up the experience of an earlier separation and/or traumatic loss and enacting a symbolic version of earlier loss experiences and efforts at mastery. The context in which the game is introduced, the form that the game takes, and the transference manifestations around it, all these are useful indicators of the child's defenses and the intensity of the anticipated threat. But I do not imply that every child who has suffered such losses makes use of the game.
Hide-and-seek games are sometimes mentioned in passing in case reports as part of the phenomenology of the treatment (e.g., Bergman, 1971; Berna-Glantz and Haflinger, 1988), but only rarely is there any focus on the meaning of the game to the child (Alvarez, 1988). A search of the psychoanalytic literature revealed no study of hide-and-seek as a clinical phenomenon.
It has, however, been considered as a developmental phenomenon. Mahler (1979), Mahler and Furer (1963), and others who have used Mahler's concepts (e.g., Bergman and Lefcourt, 1989; Kaplan, 1978) mention or describe peek-a-boo and primitive versions of hide-and-seek as important interactions with the mother during different phases of separation and individuation; they view it as offering special opportunities for mother and baby or toddler to experience and experiment with a variety of separated and then reunited states.
In the present paper, I explore the meaning of separation-reunion games (essentially hide-and-seek and its variations) when