ABSTRACT
Games possess the security of explicit aims and are more concerned with control and knowing — or trying to know — in advance, though there is, of course, an overlap: playing need be no less aggressive than games. For D. W. Winnicott, playing is associated with spontaneity, aliveness, creativity. The capacity to play implies a fullness of being, spaciousness, and presentness. Playing is open-ended, with world and time enough. In psychotherapy, whether an encounter between therapist and patient falls more into these loose categories of games or of playing. Indeed, of “toying” or “trifling”, is inseparable from that therapist’s imagined position and what he or she does with his or her analytic “understanding” of the patient. From his/her transference communications, seen as directed to the person/figure of the therapist and extended to the whole of the analytic setting, the patient is encouraged to experience and express increasingly elemental, primitive passions and needs.
