ABSTRACT
In my earlier book I have described play psychologically. Before moving into the nature of its specific use in sandplay therapy I would like to quote this background material to the psychology of play. It is important to grasp the idea of a wide-ranging, inherent field of play before coming onto its therapeutic uses.
Play is a universal element of childhood. Play is a concept on its own, not reducible to any one sociopsychological view of the universe or to any one stage of civilization. The play element has existed in all cultures and in all known historical periods. It may be described as a suprabiological form through which society expresses its interpretation of life and the world (Luria 1966).
Why is play civilizing? The play element introduces into civilization certain rules and the concept of fair play. This enables civilization to presuppose limitation and some mastery of the self, which gives people the ability to understand that personal conduct within any civilization must remain within certain freely accepted bounds.
A general characteristic of play is tension and uncertainty. ‘Will we win? Will it come off?’ are uncertainty conditions fulfilled in card games or football, in crosswords or archery, in shaking a rattle or reaching for one’s toes. In the play world, if the rules are transgressed, the whole world collapses. In the same way, nations go to war if the currently accepted lawful rights of national sovereignty are overstepped.
Play has been considered both as a physiological phenomenon and as a psychological response. These approaches overlook an aspect of ‘at-playness’ in play that imparts meaning to action. The fun of playing is rarely measured when experimenters view play as quantitative. In some types of play, biological functions may be seen. A biological approach assumes that play must serve something which is not play. Theories about this mention the need for abreaction, for outlets of harmful impulses, for wish-fulfilment, and for a means to bolster the feeling of personal value. This may involve the release of extra energy through imitation, experimentation, assimilation, and competition.
The contrast between play and seriousness is a fluid one. Vygotsky (1962) thought that for the very young child serious play meant the child was not separating the imaginary situation from the real one. In this way aspects of play are irrational. A game can represent a contest, or it may become a contest for the best representation of something. Both Luria (1966) and Piaget (1951) agree that play is the leading source of development during preschool years.
In viewing play it is important to note how useful it is to early ego-strengthening. The child both pretends and tries to master adult situations through accommodation to external conditions and assimilation of experience into meaning. Play is an activity occurring before a behaviour is fully organized, suggesting that aspects of ego-development are underdeveloped. Play can be a preparation for life via the realization of the environment that it can demonstrate, as a repetition of experience and as the communication of symbolic fantasy. Symbolic play is assimilative in that it organizes thinking in terms of symbols and images already partly mastered. The child’s egocentric position during symbolic play enables him to make a transition, over time, to a more and more accurate representation of reality. As the child is more adapted, play becomes constructive and eventually the child very gradually plays less by himself after he enters the arena of school life (Millar 1968).
The idea that play may be an antidote to understimulation or boredom suggests that the building of more ego-experience is needed within an optimal amount of stimulation. But the concept of optimal stimulation has a wide application, given the great variation in individual babies’ metabolic and environmental stimulation levels. Both in its inner and outer reality for the child, play constantly challenges the ego through its directedness, concentration, and release of another form of play or non-play activity. Play is very much the child’s own private ego-directed world and is therefore a strong conglomerate, integrated around the ego very early. As the child grows, he learns through play’s zone of proximal development: the imaginary is often near to the memory of the real, and voluntary intentions may combine with the formation of real-life plans and volitional motives. In creating imaginary situations, abstract thought develops. These abstractions, when expressed as rules, lead to the understanding of rules and the later division between work and play at school age. Play is a preamble to work. In the young child there are many unrealizable tendencies and desires. Under age three, the infant wants immediate gratification. Play can be said to be invented at the point when the unrealizable tendencies appear in development. What interested the infant no longer interests the toddler. Piaget describes the transitional nature of play as an intermediary between the situational constraints of early childhood and play ideas free of an actual situation. In game rules, the child can set the rules by himself free of the one-sided influence of an adult or making rules he jointly establishes with his parents. Freely chosen game rules include both self-restraint and self-determination. The ego is being relativized and has a close developmental relationship to play for this reason.
(Ryce-Menuhin 1988, pp. 224–6)