ABSTRACT
In offering a paper mainly concerned with play technique as an introduction to this book, I have been prompted by the consideration that my work both with children and adults, and my contributions to psycho-analytic theory as a whole derive ultimately from the play technique evolved with young children. I do not mean by this that my later work was a direct application of the play technique; but the insight I gained into early development, into unconscious processes, and into the nature of the interpretations by which the unconscious can be approached, has been of far-reaching influence on the work I have done with older children and adults.
