ABSTRACT
Insofar as the idea of helplessness is most thoroughly repressed in sports, the symbolism of the ball seems to emanate from the unconscious. Sports as developed and competitive play partake of various stages of boundary establishment, ego development, and superego formation. In many ways anthropology of games underlies psychoanalysis of sports. The athletes’ tolerance of the physical world’s intrusion that gives sports so much of its excitement of risk has subtle analogies with tribal rituals in which the dancers are possessed by the gods and handle snakes or walk on fiery coals with impunity. Many varieties of sports are often interpreted through some cultivation or refinement of the aggressive instinct. H. Deutsch, and O. Fenichel were the earliest psychoanalysts to explore, albeit within a clinical setting, the counterphobic aspects of sports, which imply prior states of helplessness out of which grow the need for mastery.
