Playing for Real

Room's definition of itself as a “sketchbook of psychoanalytic action” got me thinking: What is psychoanalytic action? Is it action informed by considerable analysis of all its components and determinants? Is this what Freud had in mind when he said “thought is trial action”? In “Playing and Working Through,”1 I suggested that if thought is trial action, could play perhaps be thought of as trial thought? I was imagining a child full of unruly instincts and stimulating thoughts needing an experimental theatre in which to explore his fantasies before acting on them. I argued that play, by definition, was such an exploratory space. Freud had defined play as being synonymous with fantasy except that play needed concrete playthings that the child must manipulate as s/he experimented with the extravaganzas of fantasy. To Freud's definition of play as “fantasy and its playthings,” I added, or at least stressed, the component of action, since while intrapsychic fantasy is devoid of action, the action component of play is prominent and defining.

I have begun on a highly theoretical note rather than on a practical one: I could have begun by citing current courageous psychoanalytic actions that need no theory to prop them up at all, given how self-evident they are (e.g., when psychoanalysts take to the streets carrying placards saying “Shrinks for Sanity,” they are decrying the long list of socially insane actions our government has taken in recent months and years). When psychoanalysts volunteer their services to help the families being mistreated and discriminated against at our borders, this is psychoanalytic action in statu nascendi. When one of Room's articles is read into the permanent record of the US House of Representatives, this is psychoanalytic action going center stage. All publications in Room to date could be cited as examples of serious, well-thought-out psychoanalytic action.

The word serious brings to mind Eudora Welty: “All serio