You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
IN SHARP CONTRAST WITH THE FREE PLAY OF YOUNG CHILDREN, THE rule-governed game play of older children has raised little interest among psychoanalysts (Stokes, 1956); (Philips, 1960); (Golding, 1978). The one exception is a paper by Peller (1954), who compares play as an aspect of libidinal and ego development with game-playing in the postoedipal stage. While Peller regards children's games as essentially social and competitive (which they not necessarily are) and also as "primarily a pastime of boys" (which is simply not true), she offers some interesting ideas, derived from the psychoanalytic theory of development.
I shall try to examine games mainly in relation to how their distinguishing characteristics, their framework of fixed rules, may function in unconscious conflicts and fantasies expressed in games and creative expression in games. I am aware that my selection of unconscious fantasies and creativity as the special foci of my exploration of games may seem provocative. For it is precisely with regard to their differences in these two areas that play has been again and again distinguished from games. Free play, as it is often termed, is generally described as "unrestricted" and "spontaneous," and therefore as providing optimal conditions for the nurture of fantasy, imagination, and creativity. In