ABSTRACT
Playing is one kind of beneficial protective mask that has an important intermediary or transitional function between subject and object, especially for vulnerable autistic and abused individuals. In particular, it is psychotherapy with children that highlights the play of masks as both showing and hiding. As initiated by Melanie Klein, playing in child psychotherapy tended at first to be more confined to the therapist’s commentaries on the child’s playing and the meaning of what the child did with the toys provided. Extended by D. W. Winnicott and others, the therapy increasingly took the form of mutual playing, where playing becomes interpretation. With instinctive imagination, in taking on the role of the dust, Blake took on—introjected—as a “free” mask, the despised part of Steven—Steven’s “forced” mask. This forced mask the child had split off and transferred to—projected into—the dust balls.
