ABSTRACT
Without the safety to let one’s mind play, without the freedom to think any thought just for the fun of imagining, we might find that childhood rhyme terrifying. Like a person’s dancing simply for the pleasure of feeling the music of movement rather than the need to perform, and like a wit’s expressing a pun for the play of the words rather than the import of the message, whimsy arises from desire embodied in the pleasure of expression and expressive mastery rather than conflictual, vital need. Aggression and sexuality, narcissism, the internalized voice of criticism and restriction, the constraints of reality — all of these are readily apparent when we think of conflict and compromise. Whatever the underlying urges, conflicts, and fantasies, the very nature of whimsy is the playfulness of contentedness, the freedom when the instinct for mastery has succeeded and the individual can take pleasure in its functional pleasure.
