Spatial play

Abstract

More than sharpening our tools or making them sterile, our task in psychotherapy and analysis is to enliven them, find in them the organic, the animate, and the fecund. For our tools are formed of language, more like living nets than like knives, dies, taps, or templates, and our familiary with them might as well be a marriage of love as one of convenience. One's own onymy (Forrest, 1973) of words and phrases that seem to be one's property and private treasury will include, in the case of a doctor who uses words, several such verbal tools that have acquired greater frequency of use and richer and deeper meanings with experience. For me the word play in its affinity for very spatial senses has grown increasingly helpful in meeting both the practical demands of therapeutic communication and the personal need to maintain theoretical structures to support therapeutic work. I wish here to explore the concept of play--contributions to its definition, its developmental stages, applications of play, and its extended properties.