ABSTRACT
Before talking about play, I would like to make a few observations on fairy tales, as I feel that play is very much like a personal fairy tale which children make up as they go along.
Play originates in the early relationship of a caring mother with her child. Their games often consist in making faces and noises, and such activities are highly communicative (Stern 1977, 1985). This communication is accompanied by the exchange of projective identifications transmitting emotional and affective states. The child’s projections are then received, metabolized and transformed by the mother’s reverie (Bion, 1962, 1967b; Bordi, 1980). These primary relationships constitute the soil that gives rise to both fairy tales and play.
