ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the meaning of play for the players, and its role in human development. It considers the way play evolves as children get older, as well as the way play is a language in its own right, a way of communicating. The aspect of play is used by child analysts and psychotherapists in trying to understand what troubles children or what is affecting them adversely. One of the difficult tasks of development is to learn to cope with intense and contradictory feelings. The capacity of children to express themselves through play is used by psychotherapists and psychoanalysts as a language which can help them understand what may be upsetting and disturbing them. Humans with their extremely long period of dependency, their highly developed mental capacities, and especially their language ability, have by far the greatest and most complex repertoire of play in the animal kingdom.
