ABSTRACT
Over the past several decades psychoanalysis has increasingly recognized the significance of the capacity for play as a central dimension of successful child development. Winnicott (1971) was perhaps the first to assert that the eventual real work of analysis was the liberation of a capacity to play. The implications of observationally based infant research further deepened the understanding of play as a primary intersubjective template for the subsequent capacity for self-cohesion (Lichtenberg 1983; Stern, 1985; Beebe and Lachmann, 1988). Most recently, Meares (1993) has made a systematic effort to expand the scope of self psychological theory and practice in regard to the treatment of severely character-disordered individuals by charting the vicissitudes of their incapacity for effective symbolic play.
