ABSTRACT
The "Squiggle Game" was used by Donald W. Winnicott, emerging from his own interest in drawing, combined with an ability to find an appropriate way of communicating with a young child by inviting him to play. He came to call his use of the Squiggle Game a "psycho-therapeutic consultation", to distinguish it from psychoanalysis or psychotherapy and to indicate that the first consultation, in and of itself, can be therapeutic. As, in the Spatula Game, the “set situation” is crucial, so in the Squiggle Game the framework offered by the consultant is crucial as a foundation from which to move freely. Winnicott found that the Squiggle Game suited his purpose for the first—although usually not more than the first—therapeutic interview. By “dream screen”, Winnicott is referring to the unconscious nature of the squiggles, akin to a pencil drawing of a dream, replicating aspects of the early mother–infant relationship.
