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Freud derived his basic concepts mainly from the study of dreams, daydreams, neurotic symptoms, the phenomena of parapraxis, wit, and, last but not least, play. He deals repeatedly with the dynamics of play and also makes many incidental remarks about it. Waelder presented a psychoanalytic theory of play in 1932. To our knowledge, Waelder's presentation is the last systematic approach to play in psychoanalytic literature. Several excellent papers, among others Bally (1945), Erikson (1937), (1940), Hendrick (1943), dealing with one or another of its aspects have been published since, but there has been no attempt to fit the wealth of observational data into a larger conceptual framework. This may be due to a feeling that play is a descriptive term, more at home in academic than in dynamic psychology.
We believe that a study of the dynamics of play, of the motivations for play, of its changing form, style and range, offers increased insight into the interdependence of libidinal and ego development. The recent emphasis on direct observation of children may be expected to lead to a revival of interest in play.
In this paper we are not offering anything entirely new on play; nor are we attempting to revise the Freudian theory of play as presented so lucidly by Waelder. All we intend to do for the present is to apply some of the theoretical formulations laid down by Freud in The Ego and the Id. That is, we shall attempt to synchronize the psychoanalytic theory of play with our current psychoanalytic insight.
Waelder (1932) characterizes play as a method of "assimilating piecemeal an experience which was too large to be assimilared instantly at one swoop" (p. 218). An event becomes traumatic because there is "an onslaught of more events in a relatively brief interval of time than could