ABSTRACT
The denial of reality also is, of course, one of the many motives underlying children’s play in general and games of impersonation in particular. The elements for the construction of a pleasurable world of fantasy lie ready to the child’s hand, but his task and his achievement are to recognize and assimilate the facts of reality. It is a curious thing that adults are so ready to make use of this very mechanism in their intercourse with children. Much of the pleasure which they give to children is derived from this kind of denial of reality. When grown-up people consent to enter into the fictions whereby children transform a painful reality into its opposite, they invariably do so under certain strict conditions. The defensive method of denial by word and act is subject to the same restrictions in time as in connection with denial in fantasy.
