ABSTRACT
Playfulness is the cornerstone of emotional fulfilment, a key to insight and volition. It can be activated by any kind of everyday task, from gardening to washing up. The idea that there are sharp divisions between sanity and madness is doubtful. Rather, there is a spectrum, ranging from super-realism at one extreme, via average realism, minor illness, and Personality Disorder, to major delusion at the other extreme. In people with a weak sense of self, schizophrenia can be viewed as a regression to the childish stage of development as an escape from unbearable adult realities. In English-speaking work-places, there has been a strong tendency to prohibit play or to exploit it through faux 'fun', like that satirized in David Brent's The Office. The modern office also provides abundant opportunity for charlatans, charmers, machiaevels, and Marketing Characters to employ playfulness as a method for self-advancement. Such game-playing perverts a fundamental human need, but fortunately, this perversion is not global.
