ABSTRACT
Several years ago when my son was very young, we were playing at the beach with toy cars, driving them over sand and logs and jumping them across gaps between rocks. He became deeply engaged, taking on the identity of his car, Lightning, giving it a voice, and playing out actions and interactions in an unfolding narrative. The play was sustained for well over two hours with limited moments of stepping out of role. It was one of the first times I can remember him engaged in imaginative play. As the play progressed, he became increasingly more adept at manoeuvring his car and matching his language and voice to the context and situation, using vocabulary and expressions that I had not previously heard him utter. When we finally left the beach and were driving home, my son made the comment, “I can’t stop being Lightning.” For me, this was a profound statement, a metacognitive realization that he had been playing someone other than himself, a statement made as though he were “beside” himself or seeing himself from another perspective, transported beyond himself to the point that he almost believed he actually was the car (Huizinga, 1950/1955).
