Long considered a technique reserved for child analysis, play has gradually established itself as a central element of the analytic method that is capable of shedding light on the psychic life of both adults and children. By linking theoretical references – from Freud to Winnicott, via Melanie Klein – with clinical scenes, the author explores the fruitfulness of play as a royal road to the infantile, understood in its dynamic and transferential dimension. Play appears here both as a means of representing the most archaic unconscious movements and as a transitional space where experiences of loss, separation, destruction and creation can be replayed, transformed, and even repaired. Whether woven into words, objects or enacted scenes, play involves a specific relationship to the frame and rules and a unique form of analytical listening, where analyst and analysand meet in a space of psychic co-construction.