Profiles of Play

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 Profiles of Play
Assessing and Observing Structure
and Process in Play Therapy

Saralea E. Chazan

Jessica Kingsley Publishers

London and New York
 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material
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result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution.

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asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patients Act 1988

First published in the United Kingdom in 2002

by Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd
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London N1 9JB, England
and
29 West 35th Street, 10th fl.
New York, NY 10001-2299, USA

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Copyright © Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2002

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ISBN 1 84310 703 1

Printed and Bound in Great Britain by

Athenaeum Press, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear
For Bob
 Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 9
PREFACE 11

Introduction Observing Play Activity 17

Principles of Play 19
Play Activity and the Representational World of the Child 21
The Role of Play Activity in Child Psychotherapy 22
Identifying Play Activity: Segmentation 26
Descriptive Analysis of Play Activity 30
Revisiting Johnny, Jane and Tom: Descriptive Analysis 36

Chapter 1 Structural Analysis of Play Activity 41

Ben’s Therapy Session 42
Affective Components 48
Cognitive Components 52
Narrative Components 58
Developmental Components 64

Chapter 2 The Adaptive Player 74

Adaptive Strategies Used By the Child at Play 77
Clinical Case: Carla and the “Evoked Companion” 79
Clinical Case: Kate and the “Land of the Unwanted” 87

Chapter 3 The Conflicted Player 107

Conflicted Strategies Used By the Child at Play 108
Clinical Case: George, the Mad Scientist, and the Camera 111
Chapter 4 The Rigid/Polarized Player 135
Rigid/Polarized Defensive Strategies Used By the Child
at Play 136
Clinical Case: Rebecca “The Perfect One” and the “Witch” 138
Clinical Case: Anna and Her Therapeutic Baby 156

Chapter 5 The Extremely Anxious/Isolated Player 175

Defensive–Coping Strategies Used By the Extremely
Anxious/Isolated Child 179
Clinical Case: A Child Called Sammy 181

Chapter 6 Play Activity, The Player, and Development

of the Self 198
The Function of Play and Playfulness 198
Distinguishing Reality From Fantasy 201
Coping/Defensive Play Strategies and the Child’s Emerging
Sense of Self 203
Coping/Defensive Play Strategies and the Emergence of
Psychic Reality 206
Profiles of Play as a Measure for Observation of a Child’s
Development 210

REFERENCES 212
NAME INDEX 218
SUBJECT INDEX 219
 Acknowledgments

First and foremost I appreciate the leadership efforts of Paulina Kernberg

and the collaboration of Lina Normandin in working to create the Children’s
Play Therapy Instrument. We worked together as a research group at the New
York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, Westchester
Division. Working on the CPTI was a creative group effort that impacted
constructively upon my effectiveness as a clinician, researcher and teacher.
This book is an independent effort on my part to demonstrate the many
ways I found this instrument to be helpful in my clinical work. I am grateful
to have had this opportunity for professional growth and hope this book
will extend what I have learned to others.
There were several other individuals who participated in the early
stages of thinking about writing a measure for assessing play activity. Elsa
Blum, Alice Frankel, Robert Kruger, and Hannah Scholl were members of
the original research group. To establish reliability for the CPTI, three
experienced clinicians were recruited from the community—Pauline
Jordan, Judith Moskowitz, and Risa Ryger. Their enthusiasm and good will
convinced me that in fact the scale could be useful and generate new under-
standings about the structure and meaning of play activity in psychother-
apy. Through their generous donation of time, the scale took on aliveness
and reality.
Many colleagues, friends, and students endured listening to me
describe the benefits of the scale. Four of them are acknowledged as con-
tributing cases to this book—Eileen Harbader (Carla), Pauline Jordan
(Ben), Andrea Salemanto (Kate), and Jonathan Wolf (George). Other sup-
portive individuals included: Caroline Boettcher, Hillary Meyers, Joseph
De More, Leslie Jacobs, Catherine Mandelovitch, Jennifer Roberts, Amy
Sommer, and Chase Stoball. Many thanks to Marjorie Bresner, Judith
Eisenbach, Judith Lobel, Elaine Seitz, and Ava Siegler for reading parts of
the manuscript and giving me valuable feedback. The clinical psychology
program at New York University welcomed me at a brown bag lunch to

9
10 PROFILES OF PLAY

discuss the scale with its students. The Institute for Child, Adolescent and
Family Psychotherapy enabled me to share some of this material with its
students. The Jewish Board of Children and Family Services of New York
invited me to rate the play activity of their therapeutic play groups. All of
these interactions were valuable contributions to my work.
Several of the case studies were previously published in other versions.
Anne was described in the article “Some Comments on the Treatment of
Borderline Children” (1989), in R. Fine (ed.) Current and Historical Perspec-
tives on the Borderline Patient New York: Brunner/Mazel. The article “Toward
a Nonverbal Syntax of Play Therapy” (2001), Psychoanalytic Inquiry 21, 3,
394–406 contained some of the material about Carla’s treatment. Sammy’s
complete treatment was described in detail in Simultaneous Treatment of Parent
and Child (1995) New York: Basic Books. A research presentation of his case
material appeared as an article Using the Children’s Play Therapy Instru-
ment to measure the development of play in simultaneous treatment (2000),
Infant Mental Health Journal 21, 3, 211–221.
Completing this book would never have been possible without the
encouragement of those closest to the endeavor. Nina Gunzenhauser-Hart
agreed to edit the manuscript and was enormously helpful in many ways.
Our family currently spans four generations from my mother Ethel Engel,
through our children, Daniel and Ronit, Michael and Michelle, Rachel and
Daniel, to our grandchildren, Gabriel, Nathan, and Jonah. We all share the
joy of playing together and joining together to participate in each other’s
interests and work. Writing this book emerged in no small part from this
shared family experience. My partner in life has been Robert Chazan and in
dedicating this book to him I once more acknowledge my gratitude for his
continued sustaining faith in my work.
 Preface

…play is in fact neither a matter of inner psychic reality nor a matter of

external reality…if play is neither inside nor outside, where is it? (Winnicott
1971, p.96).
D. W. Winnicott focuses our attention on the sphere containing play
activity, the spatial realm where play takes place. This space or background
for playing is both illusory and real. It begins in the interaction between
parent and child. It develops further as the child hatches out of the
parent–child matrix, now containing within himself the elements for
playing. Playing, at this point of separateness, becomes not only an expres-
sion of one’s individuality but also an extension of the original
parent–child relationship. Thus, play activity exists as an interpsychic and
intrapsychic mix, a careful balancing of relationships that remain poten-
tially activated and energizing.
How can we communicate in discrete, measurable units about this
illusory, yet very real, activity of playing? Play activity is the essence of
child psychotherapy. It is synonymous with ongoing therapeutic transac-
tions between therapist and child patient. It is the child’s personal and
shared vocabulary for describing subjective experience, the experience of
doing and not-doing, being and not-being in the presence of another.
Playing in therapy is a spontaneous expression. It stretches the confines of
everyday reality to the boundaries of make-believe. The impossible trans-
forms to the infinitely possible; private experience is shared with another.
How can we capture the complexity of this essential therapeutic process?
The purpose of this book is to provide a language for child therapists, to
assist them in specifying what occurs within therapy sessions with their

11
12 PROFILES OF PLAY

patients. Categorization is essential to this effort but does not imply polar-
ization, exclusion, or simplification. Psychotherapy with children is a
complex, dynamic process. It cannot be reduced to simple categories. Over-
lapping levels of analysis, overdetermined causation, and multiple levels of
meaning are the rule. Despite this inherent complexity, however, descrip-
tion of events does require units of observation for clarity and comparison
of data. When observations to be collected are specified, data can be juxta-
posed in various ways, like pieces in a puzzle, to yield new meaning.
The field of psychology has been profoundly enriched by the intimate
linkage between theory and practice. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psy-
choanalysis, was both a researcher and a clinician. Freud’s research deeply
influenced his clinical practice, and his experience with patients posed
critical questions for his theorizing, stimulating many of the theses he
developed about the human psyche. The combination that worked so well
for Freud has become generally accepted into the field of clinical psychol-
ogy, with laboratory enriching the treatment room and vice versa. Profiles of
Play attempts to follow this paradigm of linking theory with practice. It
provides the practitioner with a broad conceptual framework that empha-
sizes a psychodynamic understanding of child development and the ideas of
psychic conflict and defense drawn from ego psychology. Because of its
synthetic orientation, however, ideas are included that are derived from
behavioral science, cognitive-behavioral formulations, and attachment
theory as well. It is anticipated that because of the inclusive nature of this
approach to play activity there will be material appropriate for
clinician/researchers from a variety of theoretical frameworks.
Profiles of Play emerged from my experience using the Children’s Play
Therapy Instrument (CPTI) as clinician, supervisor, teacher, and researcher.
The scale was the result of a lengthy research project on the measurement of
children’s play in psychotherapy. This project involved researchers who
were, at the same time, clinicians. As is so often the case, practice illuminated
research and research vivified practice. While the impact of practice on the
construction of the CPTI constitutes an interesting story in its own right
(Kernberg, Chazan, and Normandin 1998), the focus of this book is upon
the usefulness of research for the clinical practice of the child clinician. The
assertion is a simple one: Awareness of the categories developed for scientif-
ically measuring children’s play bears the potential for enhancing clinical
 PREFACE 13

work. The child psychologist who absorbs the central ideas of the CPTI
will develop useful sensitivity to key aspects of children’s play. With this
knowledge she will be able to structure her work more effectively and
monitor the progress of her patients more intelligently. While not fully
trained to utilize the children’s play scale scientifically, the attentive reader
will gain valuable new insight from immersing herself in the technicalities
of the scale. The dimensions of this insight will be illustrated by a series of
case studies that show precisely how clinical practice can be informed by
careful scientific research.1
It is hoped the reader will be intrigued by this work and consider the
use of these parameters to describe play activity. The utility of having a
method of analysis with which to articulate treatment process, as well as the
attributes of the playing child that interact to produce play activity, is indis-
pensable to the practicing clinician-researcher. The apparent simplicity of
play activity disguises its underlying complex structure. The author’s goal
is to expose play activity in child treatment to close scrutiny in order to
better understand the meaning of the experience for the playing child.
The central hypothesis of this book is that patterns of play activity can
be identified by observing children while at play. These patterns articulate
the relative contribution of the various parameters that combine to produce
play activity. The patterns, or profiles, of play activity reflect a specific
child’s experience of himself and others while playing, as well as his strate-
gies for coping and adaptation.
The introductory chapter explores more fully the importance of play
activity for child psychotherapy. Contrasting descriptions of three children
are given to illustrate differences between a child’s expected play activity
and play activity suggestive of the need to intervene. The first steps in
analyzing play activity in the therapy session are then described, including
pre-play activity, play activity, non-play activity, and interruptions. When
the units of play activity have been identified, one such unit is selected for
further analysis. The first level of analysis, descriptive analysis, includes the

1 Generally therapists will be referred to in the feminine gender, while

child patients will be referred to in the masculine gender. Exceptions
occur in the description of actual clinical cases.
14 PROFILES OF PLAY

more overt characteristics of the play activity, and who participated in it and
how.
Chapter 1 describes the next level of analysis of the play activity, struc-
tural analysis. The case of Ben, a three-and-a-half-year-old child referred for
consultation because of aggressive behavior at home and in daycare, is used
to illustrate. The therapist’s process notes of Ben’s session are analyzed into
a profile of segments indicating the child’s movement in and out of play
activity, and the processes underlying play activity are measured using four
major scales: affective components, cognitive components, narrative com-
ponents, and developmental components.
Chapters 2 to 5 introduce the analysis of coping–defensive strategies
observable in a child’s play activity. These coping–defensive strategies are
arranged along a continuum of four clusters: adaptive, conflicted,
polarized/rigid, and extremely anxious/isolated. In the CPTI, these
clusters were originally named to correspond to the continuum of diagnos-
tic categories: normal, neurotic, borderline, and psychotic. In this book,
however, the descriptors for the clusters of play strategies have been
changed. This change in naming the clusters was introduced to make them
appropriately descriptive of play activity and not synonymous with
pathology. They were chosen to emphasize the quality, style, and focus of
the play activity, not to be isomorphic with a diagnosis of the child’s mental
health.
Chapter 2 highlights the playing style of the adaptive player, as defined
by a relative predominance of adaptive coping–defensive strategies in the
play activity. Two cases are introduced, those of four-and-a-half-year-old
Carla and nine-year-old Kate. Carla is able to retrieve early nonverbal expe-
rience through play activity, expanding earlier rigid punitive play themes.
Kate creates a wishful world of fantasy that uses humor to offset disappoint-
ments in the everyday world.
Chapter 3 presents almost six-year-old George, a conflicted player, who
begins treatment as a child preoccupied with his own thoughts and distant
from his therapist. As interaction increases between the two participants in
play, George’s conflicts become more apparent. He is torn between mischief
and compliance. Through make-believe he is able to openly express his
ambivalent feelings without fear of retaliation. This is a relatively brief
treatment that results in gains in both behavior and playfulness, although an
 PREFACE 15

approach-avoidant conflict remains a major characteristic of the play. Most

important, George is able to share his state of loneliness with his therapist
and depict it in the creation of an imaginary planet.
Chapter 4 describes two very different young girls, rigid/polarized
players, whose defensive strategies deeply restrict their capacity to play.
Rebecca is a shy, constricted, inhibited child who begins her treatment at
age six and ends at age eight. She longs to be a novelist, but cannot express
herself in writing. She tentatively at first, and then with increasing fervor
begins to play out her wishes and fears. Colorful, outgoing characters
emerge that fill the space once occupied by a rigid and frightened child.
Anna, also six years old, enters treatment an aggressive and oppositional
child. Her play activity is interrupted by fierce disruptive outbursts of
destructive impulses. Over a three-year course of treatment, she gradually
gains control over her polarized states of “goodness” and “badness” and
these opposite feeling states no longer threaten her creativity in play.
Chapter 5 introduces Sammy, a child who entered treatment at age two
years, four months, an extremely anxious/isolated player. Nine months of
treatment were recorded on videotape. Sessions from the beginning and
end of treatment were rated by two independent raters, originally trained
for participation in the reliability study of the CPTI (Chazan 2000).
Profiles based on ratings of the level of segmentation, as well as the shift in
coping–defensive strategies are presented, documenting change over time.
Since Sammy is a very young child, he and his mother are seen in simulta-
neous treatment. The mother has her own individual sessions with the
therapist, and also participates in dyadic sessions with her child. These
dyadic sessions are described with a dual focus, Sammy’s increasing
capacity to play and changes reflected in the mother–child relationship.
Chapter 6 focuses on the role of play activity in the overall develop-
ment of the child. The child’s awareness of himself as playing is viewed as a
measure of his awareness of being in the state of pretending. This mental
state of pretense is explored as a forerunner to the child’s capacity to
become cognizant of perspectives other than his own. Revisiting three of
the clinical cases presented earlier in the book, the author traces how for
each of these three children a shift in the profile of coping–defensive strate-
gies accompanies these important developments in self-awareness.
16 PROFILES OF PLAY

It is important to make clear that the concept of profiling is used to

describe a method of capturing the individuality in a child’s style of playing.
The complexity of the process of being at play has always made it elusive
and difficult to identify. What is seen as simply playing is in fact a unique
mental state, a unique set of attributes, and a unique perspective. It must be
emphasized that the use of the concept of profiling is not to create a set of
stereotypes in which to rigidly categorize children. On the contrary, these
categories of playing contain many different variables describing levels of
relationship, levels of cognitive and affective development, as well as
capacity for creating narrative. The reader will come to recognize that styles
of play activity are not necessarily synonymous with behavior or overall
emotional well-being. Rather, it is the unique state of playing that permits
the full expression of a child’s individuality to emerge. The function of these
play profiles is to capture the essence of play activity in all its complexity.
For whom is this book written? Certainly child clinicians, including
therapists and practitioners who focus on treatment issues, as well as their
students preparing to enter the field. Clinicians working with adults might
also find this approach to play activity useful in understanding their
patients. Academicians studying child development will find the definitions
of play activity relevant to their work. Although not written from a research
perspective, many of the formulations contained in this volume can be
applied to formal scientific studies. Social workers, speech and language
therapists, pediatric nurses, child development workers, pediatricians, and
teachers are all professionals with allied interests who can gain insights by
observing play from a new viewpoint. Finally, parents who are involved
with and vitally interested in the development of their children can learn
much about the unique role of play activity in the lives of their children.
With this enhanced understanding they can gain a greater appreciation for
their own important contribution to play activity, a contribution that
usually goes unacknowledged.
 Introduction
Observing Play Activity

I can tell the story of my child’s play.

I can read it without words
From the sounds that resonate within me,
The sounds of laughter—the sounds of joy.
Johnny is just four years old. His mother notices him one day closing
and opening the swinging door to the kitchen. It is a bright sunny day,
and light is streaming in through the windows. Mother wonders why
he doesn’t stop the racket and come and join her in the kitchen.
Anyhow, he might even catch his fingers in the door! As she
approaches, she stops as she hears him saying, “Hi! Do you want to
play?” Mother looks around her, certain—or almost certain—that no
one else is about in the house. Slam. There it goes again! What is going
on? She decides to approach slowly.
The hall is narrow, and Johnny does not see her. As she continues
to observe, the meaning of Johnny’s actions becomes clear. As he
opens the door, the light from the window projects his shadow on the
floor. When he closes the door—slams the door—the image is gone!
Johnny is heard to call, “Bye, bye!” And then he opens the door and the
process is repeated. Mother is amazed. Although Johnny has had a
fantasy friend, that friend has always existed in imagination only. Here
is the friendly image appearing at Johnny’s behest! Or is Johnny aware
it was his own shadow? Mother decides not to intrude, but to keep a
watchful eye on this intriguing dialogue.

17
18 PROFILES OF PLAY

Jane is entering kindergarten this fall. She generally enjoys activities on

the playground and going to friends” houses for play dates. In addition
to social activities, Jane enjoys quiet solitary time, and she tends to seek
it out after a busy morning in preschool. Jane does not want to play
with anyone else; she clearly wants to be alone, although she takes
comfort with the presence of her mother or the housekeeper elsewhere
in the house. This afternoon, Jane has set up a school scene with her
miniature figures. She spends considerable time arranging the tiny fur-
niture into a doll corner, a block corner, and a place for sharing experi-
ences and listening to stories.
Jane is busy and involved with her play. She begins to speak for the
different characters. There are three girls involved in playing house; a
boy joins them to be the father. Another child is building blocks. First
he builds a tall tower and then a train station. As his play becomes
noisier, another child comes and grabs a block from him. The teacher
intervenes. A mother arrives with her daughter, who is crying; she does
not want to stay alone in school. Jane does not know what to do this
time. The toy child cries louder and louder. The other toy children turn
to watch. Some of them begin to cry, too. Jane goes off to find her
mother. She cannot continue to play alone.
Tom is eleven years old. His parents have finally arranged to have the
basketball hoop hung up over the garage door. It seemed forever until
the carpenter could come. But now it is ready! Tom runs to find his ball.
“Yup! There it is!” Thump, thump, thump goes the ball on the pavement
as Tom reaches back for a sure shot, and then—he’ll try again. The
afternoon becomes evening, but Tom doesn’t notice. It’s time for
dinner. But Tom doesn’t notice. His parents are amazed at his persis-
tence. Tom tries his lay-up, then he tries a jump shot and a dunk. He
feels his body jump and his feet pound the pavement. He speaks in
quiet tones to intimate comrades and fans, of whom others are unaware.
Just in time for supper, the buzzer sounds. And Tom does notice. As the
crowd cheers, he knows they notice, too, and are proud of his grand
achievements!
 OBSERVING PLAY ACTIVITY 19

Principles of Play
The three children described were all engrossed in play activity. What do
these activities have in common? Can shared principles of play be
discerned in their behavior?
Play is first and foremost playful. Play occupies a realm outside of
everyday events. It has to do with imaginings and trial action. Anything is
possible, and no consequences need intrude. Outcome is open-ended and
up for grabs. Play can be infinite or finite, depending on the whim of the
player(s); play is active, not static. It emerges as part of the movement of
actions and ideas across space and time.
Play activity is of crucial importance to children of all ages. It provides a
context for social relationships and spontaneous learning. It can follow sets
of rules, private or shared. Play activity is characteristic of living and life. It
is both regressive and progressive. It provides a medium for the growth of a
sense of self, competence, and confidence in the surrounding world.
Play is recognized by its focused attention. All three of our players are
absorbed in their activity. This attention provides the framework within
which the play activity emerges. The quality of this absorbed attention is
palpable. The attentive state seems to arise from within the child and
transport him to a different sphere—a place of possibilities. The quality of
this unusual absorption informs us that this activity is important. In fact, the
activity at that moment seems to define the child himself.
Play is also recognized by its expressiveness. It is a universal language
of communication. The major avenues for expression are feelings overtly
expressed and feeling states shared. The concentration informs us of the
importance of these messages, often nonverbal and universal in their
appeal. Human feelings are the basic data generated by play activity, and
play activity cannot exist without the expression of feelings. Feelings
expressed can range from terror to infatuation. Modulation and regulation
of these feeling states are necessary to assure continuity of the play activity.
If outbursts occur, there is potential for the disruption of the focused state
that maintains play activity. Within the sphere of play activity, feelings can
be fully expressed, as they are severed from consequences that might be
encountered in the everyday world.
Initiation of play activity may be signaled by the child with the direct
invitation “Let’s play!”, or by a spontaneous smile, or the expression of glee,
20 PROFILES OF PLAY

surprise, anxiety, or fear that shows something important is occurring. In

initiating play, the child is clearly representing an aspect of his world. He is
conveying an aspect of his experience and how he organizes this experi-
ence. Thus, Johnny is showing us the anticipation of the appearance of his
shadow. He is telling us to watch with him and witness the emergence of
the shadow image he anticipates. We learn from his play that he can begin
to construct the image of a partner and hold it in mind, even though the
fantasy partner is not there to be seen. This capacity to hold images in
memory is an important developmental advance. Tom clearly has the image
of successfully landing the ball in the basket. His anticipation of success
accounts for his persistence.
Play activity can also be a measure of developmental advance. The child
uses objects in a symbolic way to represent other objects that are not
available. Parents are often chagrined to find their children inventing toys
from ordinary objects in preference to expensive store-bought toys. Jane’s
use of small objects gives her a sense of control over events in her
mini-world. As language develops, it makes possible the narration of events.
Jane is able to tell the story unfolding in her play activity and speak for each
of the characters represented. Now the child is able to encompass past and
future in his play, as well as to share the many possible outcomes of his imag-
inings. Make-believe becomes a recognized arena for play activity,
extending the present moment to magical imaginary realms.
It is difficult for a parent to recall the antecedents of this elaborated
narrative play activity. It has evolved as the direct descendant of the baby’s
concentrated gaze at his caregiver’s features, the sound of her voice, and his
first sights of the physical surroundings. Slowly, play activity has come to
engage the various functions of the child’s thinking, talking, imagining, and
interaction with others. As development progresses, play activity differenti-
ates in its various forms to contain cultural meanings and increasingly
abstract forms of expression. Play activity, then, should not be underesti-
mated. It is the human equivalent of infinity and the hope for tomorrow.
 OBSERVING PLAY ACTIVITY 21

Play Activity and the Representational World

of the Child
Earliest representations begin as subjective experiences within the dyadic
relationship of caregiver and child. Daniel Stern (1985) calls these repeti-
tive experiences of self in the presence of a self-regulating other “Represen-
tations of Interactions that have been Generalized” (RIGs). Memories of
having been with the caregiver are available to the child whenever an
attribute of the RIG is present. When different memories of being with a
caregiver are activated, Stern suggests, different RIGs are activated and the
child reexperiences the many ways of being with this caregiver. In the case
of both caregivers who are present and those who are absent, the child must
deal with the complete array of experiences, or history, of being with this
self-regulatory other.
Stern describes the activation of the subjective experience of being
with a historical self-regulating other as an encounter with an evoked
companion. This evoked companion emerges from the RIG, a generalized
representation of the interaction with the self-regulating other, not as the
recollection of an actual happening but as “an active exemplar of such hap-
penings.” RIGs are continuously updated by new experiences occurring as
the child interacts with significant others. As with John Bowlby’s (1969)
internal working models, RIGs tend to be conservative. The more past
experience is built up and consolidated, the less impact any one single event
will have. If the child is actually alone, the current experience in the here
and now can include the memory (in or out of awareness) of having been
with another. The RIG can be conceptualized as the basic building block
from which Bowlby’s working models are constructed. Like working
models, RIGs represent accumulated past experience and serve a guiding
function in creating expectations for the present and future. Similar con-
ceptualizations of how early representations are formed out of social inter-
actions include merger experiences (Mahler 1968), self-objects (Kohut
1971), early forms of internalization (Kernberg 1975; Sandler & Sandler
1978), and the origins of self-object experiences (Beebe & Lachman
1988).
A child at play is invested in his own representational world. As D. W.
Winnicott (1971) noted, play is an active process that occurs in a “play
22 PROFILES OF PLAY

space,” the overlapping spheres of two persons at play. The first such space
may be the caregiver’s lap. Gradually, play space expands and loses its sense
of physicality. The floor becomes the terra firma supporting the playing
child, and time contains the actions of the play. Time may be experienced as
“timeless” as the child becomes absorbed by play. Past and future become
condensed in the present moment, as memories are evoked by the play
activity. Joseph Sandler and Bernard Rosenblatt (1962) stressed that the
crucial factors determining the child’s play activity flow from his cumula-
tive relationship history, rather than from an isolated event, behavior, or
personality characteristic. Thus, if a child can distill from his experiences
with others a zest for inquiry, a curiosity about the unusual, a confidence in
his world as a safe place, these experiences hold the promise of rich and
diverse play activity (Moran 1987; Neubauer 1987).
Erik and Joan Erikson (1972) studied play structures of children who
were given the instructions to “build something” and then to “tell a story.”
Following ten to twenty minutes of play, each child presented a structure
characterized by a unique style of representation. Observing these same
children over time, the Ericksons recorded impressive variation as well as
continuity among play themes. Thirty years later these same play construc-
tions, or representational worlds, could be discerned as condensed state-
ments of a theme to become prominent in the child’s later life. Although
some themes were repetitive, as seen in “working through” a traumatic expe-
rience, other themes reflected playful renewal. Play themes served functions
of both confession and communication; the Eriksons stressed, however, that
play activity also served the joy of self-expression. Play activities exercised
growing abilities, as well as helping to master complex life situations.
The Eriksons valued all of these variations in play representations
equally. They described play activity as depending upon an interplay of the
child’s inner resources with the nature of the task. In their view, play activity
connotes freedom within prescribed limits. Whenever either the freedom or
the limits are withdrawn, the play activity ends.

The Role of Play Activity in Child Psychotherapy

Play activity has been widely acknowledged as ubiquitous to child
treatment. Indeed, when a child is unable to play, that inability is understood
 OBSERVING PLAY ACTIVITY 23

by others as an indication of his distress. What characteristics of play

activity make it intrinsic to the process of psychic recovery and repair?
Creativity, as experienced while playing, comes alive as a dialectic
between the past and future, experienced in the present moment. It occurs
in a middle ground between the impossible and the probable. In play,
disbelief is suspended and belief is extended to include the imagined or
conjured reality. For children who suffer the pain of trauma, disappoint-
ment, and untimely disillusionment, the opportunity to play is a chance to
revise and transform the effects of the past. The greater the trauma, the
more overwhelming and powerful are the intruding disabling feelings and
images. In many instances, perception of the possibility for change may
occur only as the child becomes aware of himself as a player, playing in
relationship to others. Thus, the evolution of play activity proceeds in
tandem with the development of separation–individuation processes and
the growth of the self (Mahler, Pine, & Bergman 1975).
Play activity in child treatment undergoes a process of change that in
many ways parallels the process of development experienced in the normal
course of a child’s growth. Play activity is sensory, perceptual, and poten-
tially symbolic. Through its use of symbols play activity is extended into
the sphere of representational thought and abstract elaboration. In
treatment, play activity facilitates the modification of past experiences and
the innovation of new coping strategies. During treatment, changes in the
child’s play activity transform his perspective on significant relationships
and alter his adaptation to his surroundings.
In the treatment of very young children and more disturbed children,
the emphasis in therapy is upon facilitating the discovery of meaning,
rather than uncovering the hidden meaning in their play (Slade 1994).
Thus, the therapist cannot understand the meaning of play activity without
the child’s active participation. Meaning is not an a priori presupposition
imposed on play activity. Rather, meaning is an attribute of play activity
emerging out of shared moments of subjective experience. Before the play
becomes truly representational, the therapist plays alongside the child to
make sense of things. Experiences are labeled and linked together. Tangles
of feelings and impulses are unraveled. By means of such play these
children discover what they feel, what they know, and what they want.
Enacting experiences and feelings in play, rather than speaking words
24 PROFILES OF PLAY

alone, the child creates structure. By playing with the child, the therapist
becomes a part of the discovery of what the child means to say and means to
feel.
Arietta Slade cautioned that it is only when experience can be known
and represented in activity that it can be hidden, and we can then interpret
the symbols as having hidden meaning. Once representational structures are
in place, wishes can be disguised and the assumption be made that the
symbols available to consciousness are linked to unconscious processes. For
example, we do not understand why Johnny is opening and shutting the
door until he verbalizes, “Hi! Do you want to play?” We then can understand
the meaning of his actions as a prelude to a fantasy of shared activity.
The profiles, or configurations, of play activity reflect a specific child’s
experience of himself and others, as well as his strategies for coping and
adaptation. Do the profiles of play activity of children in treatment differ
from those whose behavior has not suggested the need for treatment? The
answer to this query is both yes and no; rather than being a categorical dis-
tinction, the difference observed is usually a matter of degree. To illustrate
let’s revisit Johnny, Jane, and Tom and imagine what their play activity
might be like if it were cause for concern and they were referred for profes-
sional consultation.
Four-year-old Johnny is a door slammer. It began insidiously about six
months ago. Whenever he passes an open door, he must slam it shut. If
it is not latched shut, he will work at opening it again and closing it
again. If left to his own devices, he will continue this behavior until
forcefully told to stop. Compliance is an issue for Johnny, and he does
not seem to listen. Rather, he is absorbed by the activity of closing and
shutting objects. Sometimes it is not a door but a drawer or a box.
Johnny seems transfixed by this activity, as if in a trance. It is usually
repetitive, with no variation in movement or any verbal communica-
tion. Johnny’s mother watches this activity perplexed. At first she
thought he was playing, but it is an odd repetitive play, with a monoto-
nous tone. When she tries to interrupt his play, he ignores her. She feels
hurt by this rejection and tends to withdraw rather than intervene.
When she does have to put a stop to it, she becomes infuriated.
Recently, she has come to feel increasingly distant from Johnny, and
this estrangement alarms her. Although he is eating and sleeping well,
 OBSERVING PLAY ACTIVITY 25

she decides to seek a consultation regarding this strange play

behavior.
Although Johnny’s behavior here bears a resemblance to the activity in the
first vignette, the communication to the observer is vastly different in these
two scenes. In the first instance, Johnny is not alone. He has conjured a
playmate who comes and goes at his initiative. Johnny need not feel lonely
in this play; he can always welcome in his fantasy friend to play. Mother is
reassured by his immersion and even smiles in recognition, as she can
understand the fun of having a guest appear at your behest. In the second
instance, there is little communication in the act of playing. Johnny seems
self-absorbed in a repetitive act that has little meaning. His play does
nothing to further human connectedness and leaves mother feeling
rejected, while he is impervious to his surroundings. In treatment this same
repetitive behavior would reappear, and the therapist would need to test the
limits of his rigid play stance. Would they pervade the entire session, or
could he be distracted in some way? Would he become more lively in inter-
action, given appropriate support?
Five-year-old Jane will not play alone. Although she can play with her
toys and dolls in an age-appropriate manner, she always needs her
mother to participate. Unlike Jane in the first vignette, who can play
alone if an empathic caregiver is available, Jane clings to her caregiver
and will not relinquish her for an instant. Mother often feels trapped
by her daughter’s demandingness, although she is intrigued by the
doll play that ensues. Mother worries that perhaps she has “spoiled”
her daughter with too much attention. What can she do to become free
of this entanglement? Mother feels Jane should be sufficiently inter-
ested in her own playing and should not need her to make the play
complete. Most upsetting, when mother refuses to play with her, Jane
refuses to play at all.
The two vignettes are strikingly different. Jane in the first instance is
capable of playing alone in the presence of another, and even in the
proximate presence of the other, not immediately present in the room. In
the other instance, play activity ceases without the immediate presence and
involvement of the caregiver. Although the level of play remains consistent,
it is not consistently available to the child in the second instance. Her need
26 PROFILES OF PLAY

for the presence of the other is unremitting. The difference in social level of
development in these two vignettes results in two different profiles of play
activity. In the second instance, psychotherapy is indicated to assist the
dyad towards separation and the child towards individuation.
Tom’s parents eagerly await the arrival of the basketball hoop. Tom’s
father remembers having his own basketball hoop over the garage door
when he was a boy. He spent endless hours of fun, shared with friends
in the neighborhood, throwing balls and shooting baskets. His antici-
pation is great as he envisions his son’s delight. He arranges to mount
the basket in time for Tom’s eleventh birthday. Much to his parents’
astonishment, Tom is at first very excited and then walks away from the
basket as though it were not there. Several weeks later Tom is still not
using the hoop. He sits and stares at it sometimes, as though making a
careful plan of approach, but never begins to play. When his friends
come over, they play, but Tom sits on the sideline. Tom’s parents are
puzzled: Is Tom discouraged, intimidated, not interested? In their per-
plexity they cannot figure out why Tom will not play. It only makes
matters worse when they try to intervene. They decide to seek profes-
sional assistance.
In the second vignette, Tom is acting to negate the fun of playing ball. His
play profile is vastly different from the active initiative he takes towards
mastery in the first vignette. The two different patterns of play activity
suggest two very different family contexts. In the second instance, the con-
straints placed by the child on play activity suggest a need for consultation.

Identifying Play Activity: Segmentation

Play activity is an ongoing component of all creative life processes. At times
it is the dominant and sole component; at other times it serves a background
function, providing a context for other kinds of activity; and at still other
times it is a barely discernible element within the context of a larger activity.
Segmentation is the process of sorting out a child’s activity into categories.
Identifying shared commonalities among child behaviors enables the
observer to begin to arrange and label his observations. Establishing a
nomenclature is always a combination of arbitrary and subjective decisions.
However, it is a first step towards isolating the aspect of a child’s activity the
 OBSERVING PLAY ACTIVITY 27

observer seeks to understand. In order to study play activity the observer

must be able to consistently identify play activity and share his criteria with
others also observing the playing child. When agreement is attained the
observer choosing to study play activity can focus on play activity itself, its
duration, content, and function. All further analyses of play activity depend
upon this first step of segmentation.
Can play activity be distinguished from non-play activity? What are the
attributes specific to play activity? In the manual of the Children’s Play
Therapy Instrument (CPTI) (Kernberg, Chazan, & Normandin 1997) the
attributes of play activity versus non-play activity are used to define
discrete segments of a child’s activity. These segments can then be sequen-
tially ordered over time to render a quantitative representation of the pro-
gression of a child’s ongoing activity. This categorical analysis enables the
observer to compare segments of predominantly play activity with
segments identified as predominantly non-play activity. It also provides a
profile of the overall progression and flow of child activity within the ther-
apeutic hour. In order to be classified as an independent segment, the
child’s activity (play, pre-play, non-play, interruption) must last at least 20
seconds.

Play Activity
Play activity is identified by the absorption of the child in what he is doing.
There are several behavioral markers that are characteristic attributes of
play activity. Play activity is often accompanied by a verbalization of intent,
such as “Let’s play.” For example, four-year-old Johnny invites his phantom
friend to join him in playing. “Hi! Do you want to play?” is his invitation to
his partner in fantasy who will join him in playing. Although the shadowy
friend comes and goes, he supplies the social component necessary to
sustain Johnny’s play.
On the other hand, Jane is playing alone (although she is aware a caring
adult is also at home). She is involved in solitary play with a group of
fantasy characters; she is the director of their actions. She takes the initiative
to define roles for the different characters: mother, father, three children,
and teacher. Jane does more than just assign roles and activate the charac-
28 PROFILES OF PLAY

ters; she also devises a script for the play. Jane’s fantasy narrative has a
beginning, a middle, and an end.
What if a child does not extend an invitation to play or create a play
scene? Are there other markers of play activity?
Tom is very engrossed in his ball playing. As mentioned above this pur-
poseful concentration is an important attribute of play activity. He also
expresses pleasure and delight in his activity, another marker of play. The
specific feelings expressed may vary from positive glee, surprise, and fun to
negative anxiety or fear. Some children are curious about the threat posed by
danger. Their focus on a specific activity and their purposeful use of toy
objects are both indications of play activity.
Play activity is infinitely variable and is identifiable by the nonverbal
attributes of focused concentration, purposeful choice of a toy or object,
and specific affective expression. It may be introduced with a verbal invita-
tion and elaborated to contain role representations and narration of a story
of play events. At times the role representations and narrative may be com-
municated through actions (mime), liberating play activity from the con-
straints of verbalization. All of the attributes of play activity may be present,
or only one attribute of play activity may be present. Regardless of the
number of attributes observed, any one or more of the above attributes
indicates the presence of play activity.

Pre-Play Activity
It is often discernible that a child is preparing or “setting the stage” for play
activity. For instance, a child may pick up a toy, begin to explore it, manipu-
late it, or give it symbolic meaning. Sometimes a child does not proceed into
the play activity itself but spends the entire therapy session in preparation.
In other instances, a child may be fully engrossed in the activities of sorting,
aligning, and constructing, which become the play activity, rather than
preparation for more elaborate play. Oftentimes pre-play can only be
discerned by reviewing the play session in its entirety. Pre-play may occur
not only at the beginning of a segment of play activity but embedded within
the context of continuing play. For example, the child pauses, chooses a new
toy, or focuses upon the therapist in the midst of his play activity.
 OBSERVING PLAY ACTIVITY 29

Non-Play Activity
Non-play activity includes all behaviors outside pre-play and play activity:
eating, reading, doing homework, conversing with the therapist. He may
be talking about doing something, recounting an event, or planning an
activity, all with a serious demeanor. In all of these activities, whether the
child is compliant or negativistic, he is involved in routine duties or work
defined by an outside agent. Absent are the qualities of investment of self
for the sake of doing the activity, pursuing a task simply for the delight of
trying, asking a question primarily in the search for self-expression and
personal meaning.
Non-play is the realm of daily events, the ongoing everyday processing
of information and the performance of necessary tasks, “fitting in” or not
“fitting in.” In the therapy session, many non-play activities lead effort-
lessly to play activities, and the reverse is true as well. What is bridged is a
space between two realms, at times obvious, at other times hidden by
human subtleties. Essential to the effectiveness of the therapy session is the
awareness of the therapist of when this bridge has been crossed, and
how—precipitously, carefully, with wonder, or with disdain. At these
junctures the therapist is receiving crucial communication about the child
and his subjective experience of how he views himself and his creativity, as
well as his perception of others and how they perceive him. Are they open
to all aspects of his existence, or is there a rigid line drawn between what
may be experienced—what may be recognized and shared—and what
must remain hidden without awareness?

Interruptions
Interruptions occur within the session whenever a child leaves the room
and cannot continue his activity within the session. Interruptions can occur
during play or non-play activity, for example when the child needs to go to
the bathroom or must reconnoiter with his caregiver in the waiting room.
These behaviors usually reflect some mounting tension within the session
that cannot be tolerated by the child, so that he seeks release by leaving the
room. Often an apprehensive child toward the end of a session will need to
check on his parents’ whereabouts. At times it is a particular content within
the session that is contributing to mounting tensions and causes the child to
30 PROFILES OF PLAY

flee. The therapist needs to heed these interrupting behaviors as a signal of

subjective distress.

Descriptive Analysis of Play Activity

Once the therapy session has been segmented, the segments identified as
play activity can be studied in detail. When the Child Play Therapy Instru-
ment (CPTI, Kernberg, Chazan, & Normandin 1997) is applied, the longest
segment of play activity is usually selected for study, but the method of
analysis can be applied to any segment of the play activity.
The analysis begins with a description of the overt behavior in the play
activity—the type of play activity entered into, who initiates the play, how it
progresses (or fails to progress), how it ends, and the sphere in which it takes
place.

Categories of Play Activity

The Children’s Play Therapy Instrument classifies types of play activity into
several categories. These categories may overlap; they are not necessarily
mutually exclusive. Generally play activity is assigned to the most advanced
category.

Sensory Activity
The activity is based on the sensory quality of the object, such as texture. For
example, the child caresses the binding on the edge of a pillow.

Gross Motor Activity

These activities involve large muscles of the body and include jumping,
climbing, and throwing a ball.

Exploratory Activity
The child becomes familiar with the various features of a play object. For
example, the child explores the contents of a box.
 OBSERVING PLAY ACTIVITY 31

Manipulative Activity
The child manipulates toys, often with the motive of achieving mastery.
Examples include putting pegs in holes, stacking blocks, and completing a
simple form board.

Sorting-Aligning Activity
Toy objects are sorted or aligned with no further elaboration of symbolic
meaning. For example, the child lines up a row of cars.

Cause-Effect Activity
The child produces a specific effect using play materials and makes a con-
nection between two events. For example, the child rolls a ball down a
ramp, varying the level of incline of the ramp.

Problem-Solving Activity
In this more advanced level of manipulation, the child might put together
train tracks to make a pattern, alternating shapes and sizes of pieces to
achieve the desired result.

Construction Activity
The child builds a whole or part of an identifiable object, such as a house or
a tower.
Exploring, manipulating, sorting, and aligning objects can be observed
as independent categories of play activity or as preparation for more elabo-
rated play. When these activities are preliminary to later elaborated play
activity, they are segmented as pre-play activity. An example would be
setting up the doll furniture used later in a scene of family interaction. If the
activity had ended with the child putting the furniture in different piles, it
would be classified as sorting-aligning play activity. Another example
would be sorting out blocks of different sizes and shapes. If the activity
ends at that point, it would be classified as sorting-aligning play activity. If
the blocks are used to construct a house the activity would be classified as
construction play activity (the play activity is classified in the highest
category). If the block sorting was preliminary to fantasy play (or subse-
quent fantasy play was implicit to the arrangement), the activity would be
segmented as pre-play (preparation for play).
32 PROFILES OF PLAY

Imitation (Literal) Activity

The child imitates a complete, realistic role, using objects as they are used in
the real world. For example, the child says to the therapist, “Here comes the
nurse to take the temperature.”

Traumatic Activity
The child persists in playing out a specific theme in a repetitive manner. The
feelings expressed contain a component of pressure, anxiety, or outright
despair and sadness. The play either does not move towards resolution or, if
it does, has a bad ending. The play activity may involve the insertion of
incongruous activity (for example, eating with daddy on the toilet) or
transient accusations at the therapist (“you made me play this,” “you want to
hurt me”).

Fantasy Activity
Objects or persons undergo a transformation and perform activities and
functions that are imaginary, confabulated, magical, animistic, or grossly
exaggerated. The child requires the use of pretense in order for the play
activity to proceed, for example, by assuming the role of Superman.

Game Play Activity

The child plays a structured game with mutually shared rules, such as
checkers, Connect Four, Candyland, or Monopoly.

Art Activity
The child engages in drawing, painting, or other art activity for expressive
purposes.

A given segment of play activity may combine several categories. For

instance, a child may be constructing a castle for a beautiful princess. As
much interest is being invested in the activity of construction as in the
fantasy attribution of the building. In this case, the child would be demon-
strating both construction and fantasy play activity.
In other instances there may be a progression from one category of play
activity to another and subsequent return. For example, the child begins to
play with blocks, leaves the blocks, and begins fantasy play with some toy
 OBSERVING PLAY ACTIVITY 33

figures. He then leaves the toy figures and returns to block play. The
sequence of play activities may be meaningful, as may the pattern of pro-
gression and regression in the categories of play activity. Thus, one child
may be initially interested in the texture and sensory aspects of clay and
then suddenly independently animate a clay family, while another child
remains fully absorbed in the sensory qualities of the clay for the entire
session. Clearly, it is crucial for the therapist to note both the selection of
types of play activity and the sequencing of these selections.
A review of these categories of play activity reveals a progression in
complexity of play behaviors. It is important to note whether or not the
child is using symbolic thought in pursuit of his play activity. Several of
these categories, such as fantasy play and game play, lend themselves to
symbolic representation, but others, such as imitation play, construction
play, and cause-effect play may also have symbolic components. It is
important to note these distinctions, which indicate the child’s progress
from sensory to perceptual to more abstract modes of thought.

Script Description of the Play Activity

After identifying the category or categories of play activity, the therapist
examines how the play activity segment progresses from beginning to end.
A writer might consider the play activity in terms of the basic questions
who? what? when? where? how? Hence, this step is called script description.
The CPTI analyzes the script of the play activity segment in terms of four
formal aspects: initiation, facilitation, inhibition, and ending. Included under
these headings is an analysis of the child’s intentions in the play and his
contributions to the unfolding of the play activity, as well as the kinds of
interactions that occur between therapist and child.

Initiation
Either the child or the adult may initiate the play activity. Is it a spontaneous
beginning, or is it marked by delay and hesitation? Do therapist and patient
collaborate in beginning the activity, or is one partner active and the other
passive?
34 PROFILES OF PLAY

Facilitation
Is the play activity maintained because of the primary interest of the
therapist, of the child, or of both participants? Is there a change in level of
participation as the play unfolds? Facilitation may include the following
behaviors: giving instructions, telling how the play should continue, giving
suggestions, pointing to objects, and suggesting new scenes or themes for
the play narrative.

Inhibition
Does interference with the play activity originate with the child, with the
adult, or as the result of the combined interaction of the two partners? Inhi-
bition occurs when either the child or the therapist is reluctant to use play
materials spontaneously, makes comments that detract from the flow of the
play, or expresses a negative attitude.

Ending
The play activity may come to an end because the child is satiated and does
not need to continue playing. Whether the ending is abrupt or gradual, the
child communicates that he is “satisfied” with his play activity and has had
“enough.” For example, the child hands the paintbrush to the therapist,
saying “All done.” Such an ending reflects the child’s capacity to regulate his
own experience and conceptualize a play event with a beginning, middle,
and end. The child can begin to differentiate himself from the play activity
and express his sense of completeness.
At the other extreme, the child may disrupt the play with expressions of
intense anxiety, anger, or sexualized excitement that end the play. For
example, a child may lose control of his aggressive impulses and begin to
attack the therapist or destroy toys. The activity and associated feelings are
no longer contained within the safety of a play framework.
Alternatively, the child may also indicate his ending of the play indi-
rectly, in a number of ways. He may change the focus of his play to non-play
or become distracted by unrelated activities outside the playroom. Many
times children do not anticipate an ending to play activity; the ending
becomes obvious only after the shift away from play activity has occurred.
To identify it, the observer must retrace the child’s activity to identify the
juncture at which the play activity ended. The child may end the play
 OBSERVING PLAY ACTIVITY 35

activity without turning to another organized activity. Rising tensions

within himself or within the interaction with the therapist may cause him
to interrupt the play by leaving the room, using avoidance to lessen his
distress. Or he might shift from play activity to non-play activity such as
eating or talking to the therapist.
The play activity may also be ended by the adult in several ways. The
therapist may indicate withdrawal by showing a lack of response, interest,
or empathy. The therapist may set limits on behavior (“We cannot throw the
ball here”) or indicate that the session is about to end. The therapist may
also interrupt the play activity—by taking a telephone call, for example.

The Spheres of Play Activity

D. W. Winnicott (1971) described the transitional space within which play
takes place as a middle realm between the polarities of the real world and
fantasy. Within this realm, Erik Erikson (1972) defined three spheres of
play activity. In the autosphere the child plays with reference to his own
body. For instance, the child wriggles his fingers or plays with the beads of
his necklace. In the microsphere the child plays in a miniature toy world,
usually using miniature replicas or substitutes for real objects. In the
macrosphere the child plays with full-size objects from the real world; he
goes beyond the small area delineated for small toys and uses the entire
room, or the person of the therapist, such as by examining desk drawers
and pockets.
Each of these spheres indicates a different level of relationship to the
external world and the degree to which the child needs to control his world
in order to engage in play activity. Each sphere differs in the amount of
autonomy available to the child. In the autosphere, he is restricted to bodily
sensations and needs. The microsphere offers him maximal opportunities
for exploration within a small world. In the macrosphere he engages the
world as it is and is confronted with his relative smallness and dependence
on others. How the child copes and adapts to each of these spheres reflects
his individual development and his perspective on himself and his world.
36 PROFILES OF PLAY

Revisiting Johnny, Jane, and Tom: Descriptive Analysis

The procedures of segmentation and descriptive analysis can be clarified by
applying them to the pairs of observations of the three children described
earlier in the chapter. The discussion that follows analyzes the two versions
of each child’s behavior, highlighting the occurrence of play activity,
patterns of interaction between players, and the sphere within which play
activity takes place. This analysis produces distinctive and sharply contrast-
ing profiles of the child’s activity.

Revisiting Johnny
In the initial presentation of Johnny’s play activity, Johnny’s script has two
characters, himself and a fantasy friend. His mother is a watchful observer.
He is taking full initiative in beginning the play and facilitating the play.
There is no inhibition of the play. We do not know how the play will end.
Johnny might reach play satiation, might have enough of the activity and
walk away, with mother a silent observer of the play and never intervening.
Another scenario might have mother becoming part of the play by taking
on the role of the entering friend. Alternatively, she might end the play by
setting a limit and asking Johnny to come away from the doorway. Johnny
might choose to continue the play away from the doorway, asking his friend
to come inside and play. In this last instance there might be some inhibition
in the play caused by mother’s intervention, but not a complete cessation. In
this play activity Johnny has been playing in the macrosphere, with
full-sized objects and spaces, a doorway and hallway. If he invites his friend
indoors, they might settle down to play with trains, in which case they
would be playing in the microsphere. Playing with small toys, Johnny
would be choosing to step out of the everyday world into an imaginary
world he can more fully control. While his mother felt some consternation
at witnessing the fantasy friend possibly taking tangible form in the shape of
a shadow, she might feel less concerned about his fantasy play with toys. If
Johnny were perceiving the shadow as a reflection of his own body, moving
as he moved, then he would be playing in the autosphere, which is centered
upon the sensory self. By using language to greet his “visitor,” Johnny gives
us a clue that this is dyadic play. His partner is not autonomous, however,
and depends upon Johnny for all of his actions.
 OBSERVING PLAY ACTIVITY 37

The observer might suppose from these formal features of Johnny’s

play activity that he is an outgoing child, willing to take initiative to
interact with others. In fact, Johnny does not like to be alone, and he creates
a twin to follow along and be with him in his play. His mother demon-
strates a capacity to “wait and see,” a tolerance for her son’s choice of
activity. She seems bemused, not alarmed by his resourcefulness and
curious to follow along as passive observer, ensuring his safety without
intruding. All these formal aspects revealed in the play situation are indica-
tions of a secure relationship between mother and child.
In the clinical presentation of Johnny as a “door slammer,” engaged in
the repetitive activity of opening and closing doors, the formal aspects of
the play activity are vastly different. In this scenario Johnny is the solo
player. There is no interaction with others in his play. Rather, Johnny
initiates and maintains his play activity without regard to the actions of
others. His mother experiences this absorption in his own activity as
rejection, and she then becomes less available to her child. He remains
isolated in his play, an activity that continues to absorb his full attention.
Johnny seems to be playing entirely within the macrosphere, without
regard to the effects of his actions on the object, the door he is slamming.
The effects of his play resonate throughout the house, since they are not
contained within the safe microsphere of small objects. What is most
worrisome is that Johnny has little sense of the potential risk to himself or
others as a result of his activity.
The formal aspects of Johnny’s play have clear implications for the
formation of a therapeutic alliance. Johnny is not used to playing with
others, and he feels no need to relate to others in his play. Johnny would not
perceive a need to change his behavior; to the contrary, he experiences a
need to persist in his behavior at all costs. An alliance with Johnny would
need to focus on gaining more understanding about the meaning of this
play activity, rather than immediately eliminating it from his repertoire of
play activities. It is impossible to consider a therapeutic alliance with
Johnny without considering the nature of the therapeutic alliance with his
parents. In fact, it is the dyad that seems to be in trouble here, a child who is
out of bounds and a mother who is experiencing increasing alienation from
him. The roles of the father and other siblings in the family, although
absent in the brief description of Johnny’s problem, are also important.
38 PROFILES OF PLAY

Decentering Johnny from the role of the “problem child” is clearly an

important therapeutic task. Johnny’s play activity might best be understood
within the larger context of family patterns of communication, broadening
the foundation for a beginning understanding for therapeutic work.

Revisiting Jane
Jane sets the scene for her play activity in the presence of another. Although
the other does not interact in any way, the presence of another person is an
important frame of reference for Jane’s play activity. Jane carefully arranges
her toys before beginning to play. This pre-play activity indicates a prepara-
tion of structure within which the play activity will take place. It is more
than just the “setting of a scene.” Jane’s pre-play activity is also an assign-
ment of place for certain objects: a place for doll play, a place for listening to
stories, a place for construction, a place for “show and tell.” We comprehend
Jane’s understanding of sequencing and different types of play activity. Not
everything happens at once; for each play activity there is a time and place.
Jane seems to be the master of her miniature world. Although she plays
alone, she is supported by the watchful presence of another and can evoke a
variety of potential interactions for play. What activity does she choose to
enact? Will she initiate interaction between her players?
Jane uses fantasy to play out the day in her imaginary school. She can
enliven several characters, speaking for each one. This is an active, detailed
microsphere that parallels Jane’s own daily experience. Several children are
playing house, taking the roles of different family members. While one
child builds, another intrudes upon him aggressively and upsets his
building. The teacher quells this disruption. Then, however, a mother
brings her crying child to school, but the child does not want to stay and
continues to cry. The crying becomes contagious with the other children
and Jane interrupts her play activity. The protective boundary of the
microsphere has been breached, and the play activity is ended. Jane goes to
search for her mother, who is elsewhere in the house, as a point of reference.
The script for Jane’s play activity is diverse and well articulated. It
reflects her subjective experience of daily events, as well as her adaptive
capacities in play. In Jane’s case, these adaptive capacities for play clearly
parallel her emotional development. She readily interacts with others and
 OBSERVING PLAY ACTIVITY 39

can function independently, but her autonomy can be compromised by

moments of separation anxiety. Her relationships are secure and she is able
to reference a caregiver to allay her anxiety. She is capable of referencing
despite physical distance and can actively search for comfort. At these
junctures, however, she must abandon her ongoing play activity. An
alliance with Jane could easily be constructed around her capacity to play.
She can initiate and facilitate play activity, used for fantasy play and for
problem-solving. Jane feels secure and trusting in relationships with care-
givers, a positive indication for her further development.
In the case of Jane as a clinic patient, the profile of play activity is very
different. Instead of sustained play activity, there are short segments of play
activity alternating with non-play activity. Each time Jane references her
mother, she ends her play activity. The setting of the play activity remains
within the microsphere, and the complex interactions between play charac-
ters reflect a developed level of social understanding. Each transition back
into play activity requires a reorganization, however, and detracts from the
overall flow of fantasy. Mother is unable to intervene effectively to allay her
daughter’s anxiety while she is playing. Instead, the locus of control
remains solely with the child. When mother tries to intervene to be one of
the characters, the child resists her participation.
The therapeutic alliance will be difficult to form with Jane, as she will
probably perceive the therapist as a threatening stranger. It may be
necessary for mother to remain in the room for some time before Jane feels
sufficient comfort to be alone in the room with the therapist. Although Jane
is spontaneous in beginning the play activity, she is inhibited in bringing
the play to the level of satiation because of her anxiety. She is never com-
pletely absorbed in the play activity but is continuously surveying her sur-
roundings to reference her mother. This play behavior suggests some
conflict surrounding autonomous functioning and the resolution of tasks.
Jane’s strength is in her use of the microsphere and fantasy to organize her
play activity.

Revisiting Tom
Tom is fully engrossed in his efforts to be successful in shooting baskets. He
is playing alone, but it is easy to imagine his being involved with several
40 PROFILES OF PLAY

other boys, shooting baskets together. Tom initiates and facilitates his play.
There is no evidence of play inhibition. Tom’s play is both gross motor play
and fantasy play. Tom is not by himself; he is playing in view of a whole
group of encouraging spectators. The ball play occurs within the
macrosphere, assuring Tom’s competence in the everyday world. His game
has its own intrinsic motivation, yet Tom is able to respond to limits and
ends his play in time for supper.
In the more problematic presentation of Tom, he initiates his play but is
unable to facilitate or sustain it. His father seems to inhibit the play, as do his
peers. Once the initial interest in playing diminishes, Tom ends the play by
shifting to non-play. His isolated, negativistic stance leaves his parents
troubled, and they are unable to talk as a family about the issues involved.
What began as an exciting enterprise ends with disappointment and
estrangement. The cessation of play seems indicative of avoidance of
conflict that requires further exploration. The issues take place within the
macrosphere, where Tom is unable to resolve his difficulties.

This chapter has considered the uniqueness and value of play activity for the
developing child. Procedures were described for the segmentation of a
child’s activity in a therapy session, highlighting the category of play
activity. Descriptive analysis of play activity segments was outlined,
including the classification of types of play activity, the script (stage
directions) for the play activity, and the spheres of play activity. Finally,
these categories were used to analyze the play activity of three children
whose play introduced the chapter.
Chapter 1 introduces structural analysis, a detailed enumeration of the
separate processes that contribute to the formation of play activity. To illus-
trate these processes an entire therapeutic session of Ben, age three and one
half years, is described. The play session is segmented, and then the descrip-
tive categories outlined in the present chapter are used to get an overall per-
spective on the unfolding of Ben’s play. Then, the new categories of affect,
cognition, narrative, and developmental level are applied with an analysis of
the structural components underlying Ben’s play activity.
 chapter 1

Structural Analysis of Play Activity

Unimpaired playfulness not only endows events categorized as play; it is so

much a part of being active and alive that it soon tends to elude any
definition except, perhaps, one that can include this elusive quality. (Erikson
1977, p.42)

The focus of this book is on play activity, specifically play activity in the
therapy session: the forms it takes, its underlying structure, and the various
functions it serves for the child. In the last chapter, play activity was
described analytically and distinguished from other forms of the child’s
activity in the session. In this chapter, the structure of the play activity is
analyzed into several components: affective components, cognitive compo-
nents, narrative components, and developmental components. Chapters 3 to 6
then elaborate the functional analysis of play behavior, the coping–defensive
strategies that can be seen in a child’s play activity.
The affective, cognitive, narrative, and developmental components of
the structure of play activity are separate aspects that work in unison. They
can be considered dimensions of play activity to be measured individually,
but they always act together to produce play activity. In later sections of this
chapter, each of these components will be described in detail, with respect
to both its theoretical relationship to the development of a child’s play and
its observation in the play activity. First, to illustrate how each of these com-
ponents can be seen to contribute to the overall play activity, a summary of
a session from the therapy of a three-and-a-half-year-old boy is given.

41
42 PROFILES OF PLAY

Ben’s Therapy Session

The session described is the second session of Ben’s therapy. He has been
referred for consultation because of aggressive behavior at home and in
daycare. His parents have recently divorced and share custody of their child.
He comes to the session in the company of his nanny. The segmentation of
the session is described below.

Segmentation of the Session

Session Segment One: Non-Play Activity #1
Ben lingers outside the door, clinging to his nanny’s hand. The therapist
goes out to greet him. Ben smiles a small smile and slowly follows her into
the office. He instructs his nanny to wait for him in the waiting room.

Session Segment Two: Pre-Play Activity #1

Ben begins to examine plastic animal models he had been playing with in
the previous session. He takes the animals out of the box and lines one up
next to the other.
Ben: (To therapist) Do you remember these?

He grins and talks in a loud excited voice. He arranges the animals in family
groupings. He labels them “mommy,” “daddy,” “sister,” “brother,” “baby.”

Session Segment Three: Play Activity #1

Ben runs, grabs plastic knights and throws them to the ground. He recreates
a fight scene from the previous session. Ben animates the soldiers with loud
“fighting” noises. Ben forcefully smashes the figures into each other and
then throws the animals onto the pile. He is breathing heavily and
grimacing, making powerful movements with the figures as they smash into
each other.
Suddenly, Ben jumps up and grabs a plastic hammer. He announces “the
house is broken” and runs to the wall and bangs with the hammer. Given his
high level of energy and affect, he is somewhat restrained in his hammering.
Therapist: Oh, dear…the house is broken!
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 43

Ben: (Yelling, with fear, anxiety, and anger in his tone of voice) Oh
dear, the house is broken!

Ben is very agitated. Therapist moves closer to Ben.

Therapist: I bet the people in the house are upset!
Ben: Yes!

Ben rushes to the toy tool box and grabs a drill used in the last session as a
gun. Ben jumps around the room in different positions, aiming the gun and
yelling. Then he drops the gun and runs to the doll house.

Session Segment Four: Pre-Play Activity #2

Ben arranges the doll figures. He puts mommy, daddy, boy, and girl dolls in
their own beds. Then he puts the baby doll in the daddy’s bed. Ben
describes his actions in a loud voice.

Session Segment Five: Play Activity #2

Suddenly, Ben grabs the doll figures and the furniture by the fistful and
throws them out of the house into a heap on the floor. Ben backs away from
the characters he is setting up and wanders around the room breathing
heavily.
Therapist: (Animating boy doll) Oh, oh, we’ve fallen out of our
house! Help! Help!

Ben tries to toss the father figure back into the house through the doll
house window and then tosses him out again several times.
Ben: (Yelling) He’s trying to fly into the house!
Therapist: Is daddy trying to get back home?

Ben drops the dolls, stomps on them, kicks the doll furniture and figures.

Session Segment Six: Non-Play Activity #2

Ben leaves the play space and wanders aimlessly around the room.
44 PROFILES OF PLAY

Session Segment Seven: Play Activity #3

Ben takes the bucket of Legos to the middle of the room. The therapist
moves closer to him. Ben engages in five minutes of focused effort trying to
construct a car he saw pictured on the bucket. Occasionally he asks the
therapist to help put pieces together. He is much calmer, and the therapist
admires his work.
Ben sees a propeller piece and turns the car into an airplane. He becomes
frustrated as the pieces do not fit together. He pulls the dump truck over and
piles it high with doll figures, furniture, and Lego pieces and then dumps
them out. He does this several more times, becoming agitated and louder.
Ben jumps up and goes to a table with paper, crayons, and pencils. He grabs a
red pencil and begins stabbing the paper, yelling that it is a picture of all the
shooting that is going on. Ben attacks the paper with the pencil, making
slashes and jabs and yelling “Shoot! Shoot!”

Session Segment Eight: Interruption #1

Ben suddenly grabs the paper, says he is going to show it to his nanny, and
runs out the door. The therapist follows and explains to the astonished
woman that Ben wanted her to see his picture, as he pushes it in the nanny’s
face and runs back into the room. Ben is now very agitated and angry.

Session Segment Nine: Play Activity #4

Ben runs around the room. He jumps into different positions yelling “Shoot
the Beast!” aiming first at the Lego construction, then at the wall, then at the
door. After each yell, Ben races back to the table, grabs a different pencil,
and makes slash marks and jabs at a piece of paper.
Ben: (To therapist) Are you scared of the Beast?
Therapist: (Picks up boy doll) That’s a big, scary beast! Can someone
help me?

Ben races over and knocks boy doll out of therapist’s hand.
Ben: (Yelling) Kill the Beast!
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 45

Ben grabs the toy drill and shoots at the boy doll. He lunges towards the
couch, where he falls onto his stomach. He lies there quietly for a few
moments as his breathing slows.
Therapist: (Goes to the chair next to the couch and sits for a few moments)
We have five minutes left in the session. Would you like
to build more cars?
Ben: ( Jumping up) No.

Ben runs to retrieve a nerf ball, which he tries to toss into the basketball
hoop. Most of his tosses are unsuccessful, but he is very proud of his
successes. Therapist praises him. Ben opens the door with a few minutes
remaining in the session.

Session Segment Ten: Non-Play Activity #3

Ben greets his nanny, and they prepare to leave. Good-byes are said. The
therapist returns to office and hears Ben arguing with his nanny that he
wants to stay. After a few minutes, she succeeds in coaxing him out into the
hall. They leave the building together.

This session is a very revealing one. Although therapist and child patient
have met only once before, the child has a lot to share and his therapist is
ready to listen. The sequence of segments consists of play activity inter-
spersed with pre-play and non-play. There are two pre-play segments, four
play activity segments, and three non-play activity segments. An interrup-
tion reflects mounting tension within the child that cannot be contained
within the session.
Ben usually initiates the play activity and ends the play activity
segments. The therapist’s main role is facilitative. One exception to this
allocation of roles occurs in play activity segment #4, when the therapist
animates the boy doll. Although Ben does briefly respond to her initiative,
rather than rescuing the boy doll he shoots at him! This last play activity
segment then shifts to throwing baskets and is ended by the therapist
because the session is ending. Ben cannot depend upon her for closure and
leaves a few minutes before the session is to end, only to complain to his
nanny that he wants to stay longer.
46 PROFILES OF PLAY

Most of the play activity of this session takes place within the
microsphere, as Ben plays with the doll house, animals, and family figures.
When the small toy pieces cannot remain intact, he enters the macrosphere,
using paper and pencil as props. Threatening fantasy play then invades his
everyday world, and Ben seems mortally wounded as he takes refuge on the
couch.

Therapist’s Process Notes of the Therapy Session

The source for the description of Ben’s therapeutic hour was the therapist’s
process notes of the entire therapeutic session. These process notes form a
data base for segmentation and for deriving ratings of the structure of the
child’s play activity.1 Capturing the content of a therapeutic hour is a
challenge to all therapists. The therapist must include in the description of
the therapeutic process the sequences of events, the child’s behaviors and
affects, the themes expressed, and specific dialogues. The therapist’s
detailed summary of a therapy session contains many levels of subjectivity.
It conveys her experience of the session and her efforts to bring order and
coherence to these events. The therapist’s narrative of the therapeutic hour
resonates with her own subjective experience as well as with ongoing inter-
actions within the session. It is the therapist’s perspective on how the child
strives to bring meaning to his internal world.
Review of the process notes of Ben’s therapeutic hour reveals a clear
subplot to all the events occurring in the play activity. Ben communicates
clearly his wish to be in charge. He walks into the room, sets the stage
carefully for play, and begins to narrate the events of his story. He is unable
to stay in control, however, as tensions escalate following his announcement
that “ The house is broken!” At this juncture, the content of the child’s
narrative punctures the continuity of the play activity. His upset cannot be

1 The reader is reminded most of the subscales use a 5-point Likert scale. In
rating an attribute the key to each of these 5 points is as follows: 1 = no
evidence; 2 = minimal evidence; 3 = moderate evidence; 4 =
considerable evidence; 5 = most characteristic. Note: The affective
component has its own unique descriptors. A few scales are rated on a
2-point scale; 0 = attribute absent; 1 = attribute present. (Kernberg,
Chazan, & Normandin 1997).
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 47

contained, and the therapist is activated to bring him back to the business
of playing. Again, tensions mount, this time around the daddy doll and his
whereabouts. The play activity is broken off again. Ben tries to reinstate
both his role as leader and his own equilibrium. He chooses to do a quiet
construction play activity that brings him into partnership with the
therapist. This balance is upset soon again, with Ben being overwhelmed
by his own fears and anxieties. The appearance of the Beast causes an inter-
ruption to the session as Ben runs to his nanny for solace. He reenters,
shoots at the little boy doll, and reasserts his role as initiator by choosing to
aim at a basketball hoop. The therapist supports his successes but must
caution Ben of the impending end of the session. Ben cannot bear to wait
and hastens the end by adhering to his own self-imposed time limit. Upon
separating from the therapist, however, Ben’s conflict about separating is
not resolved. He quickly laments having to leave, enacting his ambivalent
feelings with his nanny.
In this instance, the interpersonal saga is reflected in Ben’s story of
destruction and mounting violence. The Beast cannot be contained and
must be killed. The therapist must be kept passive or negated. The danger
of aggression is very great, and these aggressive impulses threaten to
destroy Ben’s creative efforts at construction and ball play. The therapist’s
role as facilitator and protector cannot be maintained when these
dangerous impulses are aroused. Ben flees his surroundings to escape the
danger, but then he loses the companionship of his partner in play, the
therapist.
Ben’s struggle to play reflects his struggle in life. His play narrative is his
attempt to assign meaning to the bits and pieces of his life that will not fit
together. Coherence is lost when the house is “broken.” Dad’s flight
through the air reveals Ben’s anxieties concerning his father’s whereabouts
and his sense of desperation as he runs and stomps around the room. His
agitated breathing, stomping movements, and loud voice clearly convey the
urgency of the moment.
The therapist’s narrative of Ben’s activity provides a subjective envelope
containing the drama and interaction of the session. It is the running record
of what occurs and the meaning ascribed to these behaviors and events by
the therapist. As was noted earlier, these process notes formed the basis for
48 PROFILES OF PLAY

sorting Ben’s activity during the session into segments of pre-play activity,
play activity, non-play activity, and interruptions.
Often the longest play activity segment in a therapeutic session is the
one selected for further structural analysis. In other instances, more than one
play activity segment from the same therapeutic session is studied. In the
case of three-and-a-half-year-old Ben, all the play activity segments are
analyzed together to yield one global rating of the structure of his play
activity. The rationale for doing a combined analysis is that no single play
activity segment is representative of his general level of functioning. In
Ben’s case, analysis of the entire sequence of intermittent play activity
segments renders a better assessment of his current play activity status.

Affective Components
Affect and the Development of Play
Affective components of the play activity are central to the communication
of the child’s subjective experience. Feelings expressed by the child are the
earliest signals to the caregiver initiating interaction with him. Smiling and
crying are the first signs of feelings conveyed by the infant. The parent
responds to her child’s signals, amplifying his feeling states. This early
resonance between parent and child has been termed “primary
intersubjectivity.” Trevarthen (1980) has described the motivated search by
the young infant for these target experiences contained in the expression of
their mental states to others. These dyadic mirroring transactions trigger the
attachment motivational system (Lichtenberg 1989), and the dyad enters
into a “reciprocal reward system” (Emde 1989).
Findings from psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and infant research
emphasize the role that positive feelings play in the organization of devel-
opmental progress (Emde 1992; Izard 1991; Lipsett 1976; Stern 1990).
Attachment theory and object relations theory stress that it is pleasure and
joy, rather than the diminution of tension, that are sought by the child and
motivate his activities. Regulation of feeling states to optimal levels of stim-
ulation occurs within the dyad, fostering development of the self and social
ties. The caregiver acts as an auxiliary ego facilitating the infant’s informa-
tion processing by adjusting the mode, amount, and timing of information
to the infant’s integrative capacities (Papousek & Papousek 1987). An
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 49

essential function of the parent is to permit the child to bear increasingly

intense affective stimulation and then to step in and comfort the child
before his feelings overwhelm him (Krystal 1978).
As the child grows, he communicates with his caregiver using
distal-visual receptors, rather than proximal-tactile receptors. He is able to
“social reference” his parent from a greater distance, process information
more rapidly, and return for refueling (Mahler, Pine, & Bergman 1975)
when necessary. These refueling activities represent highly condensed
symbiotic merger experiences that enrich the physical environment and
expand the orbit of play activity (Rose 1972). Later, as the child expands
his world of play and encounters expected disorganization and displeasure,
it is the reattunement of the attachment bond that enables the child to
repair and develop a sense of himself as effective.
Reattunement takes place in the arena of play activity where the child
reengages with that part of his world that is joyful and reliable. This is the
parental function referred to by Winnicott (1971, p.10) as “good-enough
holding.” What the child internalizes is the relationship—his role and
aspects of the caregiver’s role in the caregiving relationship. In play activity
these relationships can be observed “in situ.” It is not only the other actual
person with whom the child interacts; by the second year the child
develops symbolic dynamic interactive representations. The child then
interacts with a symbolic as well as an actual other (Greenberg & Mitchell
1983). Negative emotions, including shame, protest, aggression, humilia-
tion, and rage, emerge when the caregiver is unable to facilitate an optimum
resolution of very high levels of emotional arousal. These negative
emotions when uncontained can lead to interruptions in play activity, dis-
organization of affect state, and failure of coping responses.
In sum, affective development is the source and continuing essence of
play activity. The child’s feelings are heavily contingent upon his relation-
ships to his caregivers. These attachment bonds extend the safe arena of
play and the child’s repertoire of play activities. Play interruptions are
experienced when affective regulation is impaired and cannot be rein-
stated. The optimum balance in affective regulation is sought by both
caregiver and child, to enable the expansion of the joyful, enhancing arena
of play.
50 PROFILES OF PLAY

Affective Components Observed in Play Activity

Table 1.1 Affective Components

Observed in Play Activity

1. Overall Hedonic Tone

• Obvious Pleasure
• Pleasurable Interest
• Natural Interest
• Sober
• Overt Distress
2. Spectrum of Affects
• Very Wide
• Wide
• Medium
• Narrow
• Constricted
3. Regulation and Modulation of Affects
• Very Flexible
• Somewhat Flexible
• Medium
• Somewhat Rigid
• Very Rigid
4. Transitions between Affective States
• Always Abrupt
• Usually Abrupt
• Fluctuates
• Usually Smooth
• Always Smooth
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 51

5. Appropriateness of Affect to Content

• Always
• Usually
• Sometimes
• Rarely
• Never
6. Child’s Affective Tone towards Therapist
• Very Positive
• Somewhat Positive
• Neutral
• Somewhat Negative
• Very Negative
7. Therapist’s Affective Tone towards Child
• Very Positive
• Somewhat Positive
• Neutral
• Somewhat Negative
• Very Negative

Table 1.1 outlines the affective components of the child’s play activity that
can be observed in the therapy session. The therapist first assesses the
child’s overall hedonic tone, the sum of the types and range of emotions in a
child’s play. Play that is satisfying and fulfilling is experienced by the child
as pleasurable and affords him the opportunity to express a variety of
affects. At the other extreme, overt distress, like fear or crying, may result in
play ending in disruption or lead to a segment of interruption.
In our clinical example of three-and-a-half-year-old Ben, the overall
hedonic tone is one of overt distress. Ben cannot sustain pleasurable
feelings, as the house is “broken.” He creates chaos, throwing the toys
around the room. His efforts to restore affective equilibrium are ineffective.
Even when resorting to more neutral toys (Legos) he is unable to attain an
affective balance and repeatedly becomes agitated and distressed. Only by
“killing the Beast” can he feel mastery and enjoy shooting baskets. There is
considerable evidence for a wide spectrum of affects as he swings from
52 PROFILES OF PLAY

pleasure to fear and overwhelming anxiety. His regulation and modulation of

feelings is moderately rigid as he attempts to cope with the mounting
intensity of his feelings. He knocks the boy doll out of the therapist’s hand
and grabs the toy drill to shoot the boy doll. It is only then that he is able to
gradually recover. There is considerable evidence of abrupt transitions
between affective states as the feelings appear to be almost leaping out of his
control. In the play activity Ben expresses feelings of excitement, aggres-
sion, anger, anxiety, fear, and finally pleasure, feelings that are characteristi-
cally appropriate to the content of his play. Ben is usually positive in his
feelings for his therapist; similarly, the feelings the therapist expresses
towards Ben are usually positive.

Cognitive Components
Cognitive Components and the Development of Play
Early consistent perceptual-action patterns and consistency of affective
experience give coherence to the infant’s emerging sense of core self (Beebe
& Stern 1977; Lichtenberg 1989; Stern 1985). The infant ties together his
experiences through the use of perceptual memory. Louis Sander (1975)
introduced the concept that otherness and self-regulation are always inter-
connected. Thus, the quality and experience of care received in earliest rela-
tionships becomes inextricably bound up with the child’s experience of
himself. As the child grows, his social interactions multiply and become
more complex. These experiences with his surroundings are stored in
memory and assume an independent status as representations. The child
represents animate persons, living creatures, and plants differently from
inanimate objects. Sandler and Rosenblatt (1962) referred to this emergent
subjective surround as the representational world of the child.
Piaget (1954) termed this differential in the development of cognitive
representations “horizontal decalage”; in the usual course of development, a
sense of permanence is constructed around persons earlier than around
things. In research involving the child’s search for the hidden object (hide
and go seek), the appearance of this sequence of decalage depended upon
the sensitivity of the mother, demonstrating the close attunement between
the development of attachment and cognitive systems (Chazan 1981). The
most contingent, attuned stimulus was the one that took dominance and
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 53

developed earlier. Selma Fraiberg (1969) described the emergence of

emotional, or libidinal, object constancy several months subsequent to
object constancy. Libidinal object constancy implies constancy in
emotional bond despite variation in experience. Thus, the child is able to
conserve a positive emotional bond across diverse situations, because the
symbolic representation of the caregiver remains stable, allowing for the
formation of basic trust (Erikson 1950).
These cognitive and cognitive-affective structures bring about the
child’s enhanced sense of competence and self-efficacy. Lichtenberg
(1989) described an exploratory–assertive system accounting for the
child’s motivation to problem-solve. When neither physiological nor
attachment needs took precedence, the child found himself a niche of
“open space” (Sander 1983) where exploration became actualized. At these
moments, the infant could experience a relative disengagement from the
caregiver and entertain himself. D. W. Winnicott (1958) called this state
“the capacity to be alone in the presence of the other.” In this space, the
child discovers his own initiative and personal life, rather than remaining
confined to a life reactive to external stimuli.
Play activity develops within this “open space,” promoting assertive-
ness and independence. Early childhood games reflect the child’s initiative
at finding the lost, or hidden, object. Thus, Freud (1920) observed his
grandson (who we are told was very attached to his mother) at age one and
a half years invent a game of throwing away and searching for small objects.
The infant expressed his interest and satisfaction by vocalizing a loud,
long-drawn-out “oo-oo.” A child’s play during these moments retains the
sense of still being in the presence of the caregiver. The child at play is
contained by a “holding environment” (Winnnicott 1958). This metaphor
suggests the child is playing within an extension of the caregiver’s lap, a
“background of safety” (Sandler 1960). Efficacy pleasure (White 1959;
Lichtenberg 1989) occurs as the child experiences increasing levels of
competence and branches out to explore further novel social and physical
aspects of his environment. New cognitive activities are accompanied by a
variety of contemplative affects and feelings of pleasure in mastery.
When solving a problem or telling a story, a child may invent private
symbols—designating a table as a house, for instance—or use an object in a
consensual way, such as using a small cup for setting a table for tea. The
54 PROFILES OF PLAY

child himself determines the use of objects in the play activity, assigning
meaning to evoke given affects. With this freedom the child can reinvent
the problem and express his own personal way of pursuing possible
solutions. With the introduction of symbolic thought (at about eighteen
months of age), the universe becomes truly infinite, as the child strives to
extend and reinvent the pleasure of assertion and exploration by himself
and with others (Lichtenberg 1989).

Cognitive Components Observed in Play Activity

Table 1.2 Cognitive Components

Observed in Play Activity

1. Role Representation
• Complex – Dyadic
• Solitary
• Precursor
2. Stability of Representation (Persons and Objects)
• Fluid/Stable
• Voluntary/Involuntary
3. Use of the Play Object
• Realistic
• Substitution
• Miming
• Source of Activity
4. Style of Representation (Persons and Objects)
• Realistic
• Fantasy
• Bizarre

Cognitive components of the play activity include the types of representa-

tions, or mental images, of persons and objects used by the child while
playing, the use of these representations, and their style of representation
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 55

(see Table 1.2). Each of these cognitive components will be considered

separately.
While the child is playing he may choose to take on a role, or to be a
certain character. Role representation can occur at different levels of elabora-
tion: complex, dyadic, solitary, and precursor (Bretherton 1984).
Complex role-play is the highest level of role-play. It can take one of
three forms: collaborative play, directorial play, or narrator play.
In collaborative play the child interacts with another person or uses
dolls or miniature figures to enact several different roles. The child may
utilize a variety of family roles (mother, father, baby), occupational roles
(doctor, teacher, farmer), or fictional roles to tell his story. While playing the
child coordinates his perspective with that of his co-player or co-players,
who may be toys animated by the parent or therapist as well as by the child
(Dunn & Dale 1984; Bretherton 1984).
In directorial play the child himself does not engage in the play activity
but directs the play action, directing the other person, dolls, or miniature
toys how to talk or act. The child is in charge of all the aspects of the play.
In narrator play the child becomes the narrator of his play, commenting
on play events.
Dyadic role-play involves the representation of two roles. The child
plays at being an active partner to another person or activated doll or toy.
Solitary role-play occurs when the child completely transforms himself
into being someone else or activates a toy or doll and talks for the character
(Piaget 1962).
Precursors to role-play are snatches or fragments, bits of a role that are
not yet consolidated into a cohesive identity. There are four forms of pre-
cursors to role-play:
1. A child represents or imitates an aspect of his own behavior,
indicating by gesture or intonation that he is pretending (Piaget
1962).
2. A child represents or imitates an aspect of another’s behavior,
indicating by gesture or intonation that he is pretending (Piaget
1962).
3. A child relates to others (persons, objects, toy animals) in his
pretend play as if they were extensions of his own ideas,
56 PROFILES OF PLAY

without independent or reciprocal input. The other pretend

person is not viewed as a partner; the child is not playing he is a
different person but portraying what is done to himself (Piaget
1962; Nicholich 1977).
Fein and Apfel (1979) found that at 12 months 80 percent of the infants in
their sample engaged in self-directed pretend feeding, 32 percent fed the
mother or the experimenter, and only 19 percent fed a doll (forms of pre-
tending were not mutually exclusive, so they add up to more than 100
percent). Further, since infants use a person as recipient of a symbolic
scheme before they use a doll in the same fashion, there are grounds for
assuming that the infant is using the doll as a human figure when
doll-directed play does emerge. Inge Bretherton (1984) agreed with Greta
Fein (1978, 1987) that gradually behaviors directed toward persons take a
slightly different form from behaviors directed towards dolls. For example,
infants expect adults and peers to cooperate when sipping tea from toy cups.
4. The child plays in a parallel fashion with another doll or person.
The child and the other are engaged in the same or similar
activity without interacting with each other (Nicholich 1977).
When Ben begins his play with the toy animals he lines them up and assigns
each a family role: “mommy, daddy, baby.” These are followed by the
animation of multiple knights and soldiers in battle. Both of these play
segments characteristically contain examples of complex role-play,
including narrator play and collaborative role-play.
Ben then animates each of the family members, placing them in their
positions in the house and acting as narrator of what is happening. Later,
after the therapist facilitates the play by activating the boy figure, Ben
activates the father doll, who tries to “fly” back into the house. These play
activities are considerable evidence of complex role-play.
Ben abandons his characters to engage in construction with Lego
blocks. Following outbursts of aggression, Ben creates a new character, “the
Beast.” The encounter with this scary character is brief. The therapist facili-
tates dyadic role-play by again speaking for the boy doll: “That’s a big, scary
beast! Can anybody help me?” Ben responds by grabbing the toy drill and
shooting at the boy doll. This confabulation of victim/attacker is confusing.
Ben identifies the boy doll as the source of his terror and the target to be
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 57

killed. Both the dangerous impulses and the need for rescue have been
products of Ben’s imagination, enacted in the form of dyadic roles. In the
first instance, Ben is the little boy terrified by the Beast. Then a role reversal
occurs; when the little boy doll calls out for help (in the voice of the
therapist), Ben attacks him as the dangerous Beast. These play activities are
all considerable evidence of dyadic role-play. In this session there are no
examples of solitary role-play or precursors to role-play.
The representations of persons or toys depicted by the child may or
may not undergo transformation. In the case of voluntary transformation the
changes that occur in character or theme occur under the creative control of
the child. These changes may be fluid, where several changes take place, or
stable, where only one change takes place, as occurs in role reversal. Involun-
tary transformation occurs when the variation in play themes or roles occurs
outside the child’s control. He begins playing one theme or role and
appears surprised, shocked, or frightened by the change.
In the case of Ben, representations in the play gradually progress from
stable with no transformations to stable voluntary transformation to invol-
untary transformation. There is moderate evidence for each category. At
first Ben aligns his toy animals and family dolls; these dolls retain their
stable representation. The battling soldiers and knights also remain stable
characters. The doll house remains a house but is damaged. The Lego car
undergoes a transformation to a plane, under Ben’s voluntary control.
Suddenly, in a frightening way, the boy doll becomes a destructive Beast
and must be killed. This menacing character, boy transformed to Beast,
reflects Ben’s mounting conflict surrounding discharge of his own fright-
ening aggressive feelings.
The play objects (toys) may be used realistically, where a toy replica is
used as it is used in real life. Alternatively, in symbolic play, substitution may
occur. One play object is substituted for another, severing the meaning of
the object from the real object. In some instances, the play objects are
created through gesture, or mime. In more primitive play activity, the toy
may be used only for its sensory qualities (Tustin 1990, 1972).
In Ben’s play, there is considerable evidence of objects being repre-
sented realistically and minimal evidence of the substitution of one object
for another. Ben used a pencil to represent a gun and shoot. In the case of
58 PROFILES OF PLAY

the “Beast,” the boy doll became larger than life and was used to symboli-
cally represent a scary creature.
Finally, the representations of persons and objects can be realistic, magical
(fantasy), or bizarre. In Ben’s case, the characters and objects are most charac-
teristically represented as having realistic attributes; for instance, a car is a
car, a house is a house. The father can fly through the air, however, and the
beast is menacing and terrifying, with inhuman qualities. Similarly, Ben
himself assumes superhuman strength to kill the beast. In these instances
there is moderate evidence of attributes of representations that are fantastic
or magical. There is no evidence of bizarre attributes in the characters or
objects portrayed.

Narrative Components
Narrative Components and the Development of Play
The cognitive and affective configurations of a child’s play activity come
together in telling a story. The story to be told involves events and concerns
significant to the child. Sometimes the story unfolds in interaction as a
social game between therapist and child. At other times, the story is told
symbolically through characters invented for the purpose of communicat-
ing the child’s imaginary experience. At still other times, telling the story
involves constructing and/or manipulating agreed-upon rules. In each case,
the story sequences events across time. Thus, the story of the play activity is
a framework for integrating disparate events that become organized, with a
beginning, a middle, and an end. This organization of the narrative of the
play activity is an integrative act containing the imprint of both child and
therapist.
Even as a passive participant the therapist contributes toward the formu-
lation of a narrative. Minimally, she provides a context of a background of
safety. As has been noted, in other instances the therapist may become more
active as initiator or co-author. The role of the therapist is determined by the
child’s level of competence and personal needs. Most importantly, it is to
support and facilitate the child’s capacity to play. The therapist then elabo-
rates the play activity and encourages the development of the child’s play
narrative.
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 59

Jerome Bruner (1990) has noted the importance of stories in helping a

child to organize his experience. He traces the young child’s sensitivity to
human interaction in acts of giving and receiving and actions towards goals
and their achievement. Thus, young children are profoundly aware of the
“unexpected’ in phrases such as “all gone’ for completion and “uh oh’ for
incompletion. The earliest requirement of narrative is a focus on people and
their actions, which dominate the child’s interest and attention. The second
requirement is the concentration of attention and information processing
on the unusual; children most often gesture toward, vocalize at, and finally
talk about what is different. The third requirement of narrative is the
sequencing of subject-verb-object (“somebody does something’).
Sequences are bound by the use of temporals (“then,’ “later’) and eventually
by the use of causals. The fourth requirement of narrative is “voice’ or per-
spective, which can be detected early in a child’s development as varied
vocal intonations (Stern 1977).
Jerome Bruner (1990) contended that the four prerequisites for
narrative precede logical, rational thought and account for the child’s early
interest in and understanding of stories. Culture intervenes later to
elaborate these protonarratives to include traditional ways of telling and
interpreting. Bruner cites the example of Emily, whose narratives were
recorded between ages 18 months and three years (Nelson 1989). In her
autobiographical narratives about what she has been doing or what she
anticipates doing the next day, Bruner discerns a constitutive function.
Emily is not simply reporting; she is trying to make sense of her everyday
life. “She seemed to be in search of an integral structure that could
encompass what she had done with what she felt with what she believed’
(p.89). To Bruner’s ears, Emily’s leaps forward in speech were spurred by a
need to construct meaning, narrative meaning.
Involved in a similar endeavor, the therapist functions as the child’s col-
laborator in working toward the formation of narrative meaning expressed
in his play activity. The therapist facilitates narrative development by
drawing attention to significant play happenings, elaborating the details of
characters or events, ordering happenings into sequence by making associ-
ations between events, clarifying confusions or conflicts, and giving voice
to the child’s perspective. Finally, when appropriate, the therapist offers
60 PROFILES OF PLAY

interpretations of the meaning of events of which the child may be unaware.

Through the medium of shared narrative the child gains an awareness
not only of himself but also of the shared dimensions of human behavior
(Engel 1999). Children as early as two years of age adopt formats such as
games and conversations in order to share meanings and plans with others
(Garvey 1977). Between the ages of three and four years, children’s
accounts of familiar events presume that their listeners share the same basic
scripts for human routines (Schank & Abelson 1977). Understanding
human behavior involves a sensitivity not only to how one is a separate
being, but also to how one is similar to others.
Dennis Wolf, Jayne Rayne, and Jennifer Altshuler (1984) have
presented data emphasizing the importance of symbolic play between the
ages of two and three years for the development of social understanding.
Using gesture and language the child is able to make explicit in play activity
his understanding of how people think, feel, and act. Gender differences
appear as early as four years in giving prominence to a sense of agency
versus experience in understanding others. Girls were observed to
emphasize what characters experience, while boys focused on what charac-
ters did and said. Thus, gender interacts with social knowledge (scripts) to
produce different styles of social perception. The therapist works within
different play styles to enhance the adaptation of her child patient.
The capacity for make-believe, a cognitive achievement, and the
capacity to make meaning through storytelling derive from parent and child
playing together, inventing games involving role-playing, with reference to
nonpresent events, and focusing on unexpected outcomes (surprise).
Likewise, peers, siblings, and therapist interact with the child in scripts that
are expected and then revised in accordance with the story that unfolds.
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 61

NARRATIVE COMPONENTS OBSERVED IN PLAY ACTIVITY

Table 1.3 Narrative Components Observed

in Play Activity

1. Topic of the Play Activity

2. Theme of the Play Activity

3. Level of Relationship Portrayed within the Narrative

• Self
• Dyadic
• Triadic
• Oedipal
4. Quality of Relationship Portrayed within the Narrative
• Autonomous
• Parallel
• Dependent
• Turning
• Malevolent
• Destructive
• Annihilating
5. Use of Language by the Child/by the Therapist
• Silence
• Imitation
• Pun/Rhyme
• Single Role
• Multiple Roles
• Metaphor
• Meaning
• Something Other
• Describing
62 PROFILES OF PLAY

Table 1.3 summarizes the narrative components that the therapist observes
in the play activity. The topic of the play activity is chosen by the child to
convey the content used in the construction of his story. The theme of the
play activity involves the dynamics of the relationships and activities
integral to the unfolding of the story. At times topic and theme can become
enmeshed and are difficult to untangle. The story unfolding through the
child’s play activity has its own unique dynamics. Examining the types of
relationships portrayed by the child in the play narrative reveals the rela-
tionships that interest him and that are animated by his imagination and
curiosity.
The relationship portrayed within the play narrative may depict a single
character, reflecting preoccupation with the self. When two characters are
depicted, the dyadic level may involve themes of sameness/ differentness,
coercion/submission, nurturance/dependency, or being paired. At the
triadic level of relationship, interactions occur between several characters,
each of which relates to the others in some way. On the oedipal level, the
triadic relationships involve awareness of differences in generation, gender
differences, or the exclusion of a third party from a mutual relationship.
Ben’s play includes two generations, child and parents. He is clearly
aware of gender differences, with greater focus on the father doll, the boy
doll, and the villain beast, who is also clearly masculine. Although the
female doll and children are background figures, the female therapist
excluded from the main action is turned to at times for assistance. There is
considerable evidence for dyadic level relationships in Ben’s play activity
and minimal evidence of triadic and oedipal relationships.
The quality of relationship portrayed within the play narrative can vary
along a continuum from mutuality to destructiveness. Relationships
depicted may be autonomous (independent relationships), parallel (relation-
ships are similar and concurrent), dependent (one partner is dependent, or
leaning, on the other partner), or twinning (both partners in the relationship
are identical). Alternatively, they may reveal dynamics of malevolent control
(one partner attempts to control the other partner with cruelty), destruction
(an identifiable person, or force, destroys the other), or annihilation
(complete destruction by an unidentifiable enveloping force) (Urist 1977).
Ben’s play reveals considerable evidence of fear of malevolent control
and moderate evidence of destruction and annihilation. The source of the
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 63

danger is muddled; at times it seems to emerge from external sources, and at

other times from Ben himself. This confusion is expressed in Ben’s
selection of the boy doll both to represent the Beast and to be attacked. Ben
has experienced his own anger and aggressive impulses as threatening as
the external danger, and the danger from within must then be destroyed
via an external toy object.
The child’s use of language to explicate his play can range from no com-
munication to imitation of sounds to word play—puns and rhymes—and
verbalization of a single or multiple roles. Talking during the play may
occur within a metaphor or in indirect reference to the meaning of the play.
The talk may describe the play or concern something other than the play.
The therapist’s use of language may be described using these same catego-
ries.
Ben combines narrative elements (topic, theme, language, relation-
ships) to tell his story. A segment by segment analysis of the narrative com-
ponents gives a sense of how the story unfolds.
In Play Activity Segment #1, the topic is war and battle; the theme is
destruction. Ben depicts a battle scene between warring knights (dyadic)
and then proceeds to “break” the house with all the family members in it
(triadic) and ends by shooting a gun around the room. The relationships
depicted in this narrative are destructive. Language is used by both Ben and
therapist to describe the play events.
In Play Activity Segment #2, the topic is family life; themes include
rescue, dispersal, falling, and separation. Ben depicts relationships between
father and other family members, clearly aware of generational differences
(oedipal). The play is characterized by an overpowering, enveloping force
causing the children to fall and the father to fly through the air. All are
being tossed about by a force completely out of their control. As Ben drops
the figures and stomps on them, the play segment ends with annihilation.
Ben uses language to describe the play; the therapist speaks for the charac-
ters, speaking within the play metaphor.
In Play Activity Segment #3, topics include construction and destruc-
tion; themes include building, collecting, dumping, shooting, and injury.
There is no cohesive depiction of relationships between characters. Ben
begins by building with Lego blocks and he asks the therapist to help him
with his building. There is an ominous suggestion of destruction to come in
64 PROFILES OF PLAY

Ben’s yelling and mounting aggressive attacks as his sense of frustration

escalates when the pieces do not fit together.
In Play Activity Segment #4, topics include self-defense and ball
playing; themes include killing and mastery. A destructive struggle breaks
out between the Beast/Boy and Ben (dyadic) that ends in the destruction
and death of the villain, while Ben plays at shooting baskets. Ben uses
language to inquire about the meaning of the play for the therapist, asking:
“Are you scared of the Beast?” Both therapist and Ben also use language to
speak within the play metaphor.

Developmental Components

Table 1.4 Developmental Components

Observed in Play Activity

1. Chronological Developmental Level of Play Activity

• Very Immature
• Somewhat Immature
• Age Appropriate
• Somewhat Advanced
• Very Advanced
2. Gender Identity of the Play Activity
• Predom Male
• Predom Female
• No Predom
3. Social Level of the Play Activity (Interaction with Therapist)
• Isolated/Unaware
• Isolated/Aware
• Parallel
• Reciprocal
• Cooperative
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 65

4. Psychosexual Level
• Oral
• Anal
• Phallic
• Oedipal
• Latency
5. Separation – Individuation Level
• Differentiation
• Practicing
• Rapprochement
• Constancy

Developmental Components Observed in Play Activity

A developmental trajectory implies the successive unfolding of stages of
play, one stage following the other in a sequential manner, arranged hierar-
chically with each level building on the prior level and extending beyond
it. From a developmental perspective, play activity is seen to follow a path
of increasing complexity depending on chronological age, social level,
psychosexual stage, and level of individuation. Table 1.4 lists these devel-
opmental components. Gender of the child is a pervasive influence on the
development of play activity. Gender identity interacts with all of the
above-mentioned developmental components to influence patterns of play
activity (Youngblade & Dunn 1995). Because of its multidimensional
influence on development, gender identity is listed as a developmental
component of play.

EXPECTED CHRONOLOGICAL LEVELS OF PLAY ACTIVITY

An important criterion in assessing a child’s development is whether or not
he can play at a level expected for his chronological age. According to Anna
Freud (1965), one indication of an emotional problem is a child’s wish to
be younger than his chronological age. Alternatively, a precocious child
may pursue interests appropriate for an older child. Often, a child shows
variability in his play interests, having some interests at age level and others
at variance with age expectations. Some variability in interests is expected;
66 PROFILES OF PLAY

it is only when a child completely diverges from his age-expected play

activities that there is cause for concern.
Following is a brief outline of the expected chronological progression
in play activity from birth to age nine years (Greenspan 1991; Garner 1998;
Johnson 1998).

Birth to Twelve Months

The child’s activity centers about reciprocal interactions (for example,
reaching out, pointing, dropping object) that become increasingly playful.
Themes of simple games include recognition and reunion (such as
peek-a-boo). The child increasingly seeks out new activities to explore and
to have fun. The child gradually becomes more interested in persons and
things than his own body.
Appropriate materials at this age include toys encouraging reaching,
grasping, seeing, and vocalizing, such as, mobiles, mirrors, bells, bubbles,
water play, balls, rattles, beads, music box.

One to Two Years

The child continues to take delight in his own body movements, such as
walking, climbing, pouring, joining parts of an object and taking them
apart. He expresses his needs via pointing and naming objects, and taking
mother to the shelf to get a toy. Increased initiative is demonstrated in
prolonged sequences of activity; for example, a doll is hugged, spanked, and
then hugged again. The child enjoys games of peek-a-boo and patty cake as
well as simple songs and mirroring games involving copying sounds and
gestures. Dramatic role-playing begins as the child plays at mothering
mother (turning passive into active) and at performing mother’s activities.
Memory is used to recall where objects have been hidden in several places.
The mirror is used to reflect the child’s image pleasurably from different per-
spectives.
Play materials at this age include pull toys, hammer toys, dolls, blocks,
doll house (small), large crayons, and sand and water play. The child enjoys
listening to music and stories, turning the thick pages of a picture book, and
playing with a special cherished furry animal.
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 67

Two to Three Years

The child’s play becomes more symbolic and interactive. The child can play
at being an imaginary creature, imitate an adult role, and project his wishes
onto another. Much of the play centers upon what the child has seen or
heard in his real-life experience. Dramatic play continues to develop in the
context of dyadic relationships, as in the leaving game and the hiding game.
Cross-identification in dyadic play (“you be me and I’ll be you”) indicates
an increased capacity to understand others on the basis of similarity.
Favored materials are dolls, stuffed animals, materials for messes
(sponges, small containers, bubbles), clay, crayons for drawing strokes and
circles, small objects for sorting into categories based on color, shape, and
size.

Three to Six Years

Themes of play are extended and elaborated with the further development
of language. Specifically, multiple characters appear and are coordinated
around a story. The child shows interest in themes of power, superheroes,
space and rocket ships, monsters, witches, and other characters from fairy
tales and comics, although he realizes that his play is “just make-believe.”
Dyadic issues include having a special friend, overcoming a more powerful
figure, and being cared for exclusively. Stories are told with an interest in
new words and exaggeration and in how things happen. Gender differenti-
ation in preferences for toys and play themes begins to emerge. Miniature
worlds become the focus for play, including toy soldiers and small con-
struction toys. Props and costumes are important for pretend play. At this
age children enjoy making potions and endowing them with magical
powers as an antidote to their fears. These fears include bodily injury,
thunder, wind, fire, wild animals, darkness, loss of love. Alphabet and
number facts form the basis for new games. Simple board games are played,
but the child needs to win and does not understand that rules are for
everyone. He often makes up rules of his own, disrupts a game in order to
reverse positions, and is intolerant of defeat. Fine motor tasks include
coloring, collages, clay, and jigsaw puzzles.
Appropriate play materials for this age group include props and
costumes for dramatic play, blackboard, dolls, superheroes, miniature
figures, small animals and vehicles, clay, paints, crayons, pasting materials,
68 PROFILES OF PLAY

and scissors. Simple board games and card games (such as Candyland, Chutes
and Ladders, Junior Uno, Junior Monopoly, and Junior Clue). Other objects that
may interest the child are a calendar, a clock, a telephone, a magnifying
glass, an indoor basketball hoop, musical instruments, rhythm band instru-
ments, trucks, wagons, cars, and trains.

Seven to Nine Years

Entrance into latency is accompanied by a sharp diminution in pretend play,
which becomes more covert in the form of daydreaming. The child plays at
many different roles and narrates long and varied stories, describing
many-faceted characters. He can play at who he will become (parent, sports
hero, president), or at being a member of the opposite gender, or at breaking
rules. Although the child knows that rules exist and wants to respect them,
he sometimes insists on interpreting rules as he understands them. Fairness
is an important issue. In board games, when faced with defeat the child may
give excuses or claim that he was cheated or that the play was unfair. Gender
differentiation is also obvious, with boys tending toward active and com-
petitive sports and girls preferring less competitive and more
group-oriented activities, such as jump rope, jacks, and skating. The child
develops a clear sense of the difference between reality and fantasy and
knows different rules apply. Collections of objects expand, reflecting the
child’s interests. Interest in magic tricks develops, and the child likes to “be
in the know.” Jokes and caricatures including familiar and famous people are
enjoyed. Stories are often accompanied by drawings, depicting fantasy or
battle scenes. Children begin to play musical instruments and to take part in
plays, acrobatics, swimming, and ballet.
Materials used in play include an expanded array of board games (such
as, Monopoly, Clue, dominoes, pick-up-sticks, knock hockey, chess, checkers,
chinese checkers, Othello) and card games. Children collect various objects,
often to use in trading. Art supplies include paints, clay, drawing and collage
materials. Props are used for dramatic presentations, usually with prepared
script. Some popular toys are indoor basketball hoops, jump ropes, balls,
jacks, marbles, manipulatives to measure volume and temperature, a globe,
magnet sets, science kits and simple carpentry tools.
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 69

The child’s play activity is evaluated in relation to the expected chronological

level and gender identity. In a schematic assessment of developmental level,
Ben’s play activity is clearly a bit advanced for his chronological age (three
and one half years), approximating the play of a child between three and six
years of age. He is able to compose a narrative consisting of several inter-
acting roles (family members) and compose a miniature world (the house).
His play theme contains a fear of disaster (broken and falling persons and
things) and an attempt to defend himself against these threatening events.
These fears are expected at three and a half years, but they are intensified by
Ben’s chaotic family situation. Ben’s Lego construction is both adept and
calming. As the character of the Beast emerges, with all its menacing
attributes and self-reference, we have the first sense of deterioration of dif-
ferentiation between reality and fantasy; in his earlier play, Ben seemed to
have this distinction clearly in place. Finally, Ben’s interest in the basketball
hoop and competence in shooting baskets suggest the play of an older
child. The aggressive themes and activity within the narrative are also
consonant with masculine interests.
Selman (1980) outlines five levels in the development of a child’s social
interaction. The levels form a developmental hierarchy. On the first level
(isolated play-unaware) the child is playing by himself and unaware of his
isolation; he may or may not be in the presence of another person. On level
two (playing alone) the child is aware he is playing alone. On level three
(parallel play) children play at similar activities alongside each other without
interacting. On level four (reciprocal play) there is give and take between the
players. At the highest level (cooperative play) mutual cooperation occurs
with joined efforts to reach a common goal.
Ben plays reciprocally with his therapist most of the time. There is give
and take between them as he sets up the family house, builds his Legos
(therapist helps Ben to put the pieces together), and tries to cope with the
Beast (Ben and therapist fight the Beast together). Even the solitary activity
of basketball is marked by appreciation the therapist expresses. The thera-
pist’s participation is crucial to Ben, and he relies upon her facilitation of
the play to keep it ongoing.
The child’s play activity can also be analyzed from the perspective of
psychosexual stage (Peller 1954; Tyson & Tyson 1990). Oral components of
the play activity include the “taking in” of external stimulation through the
70 PROFILES OF PLAY

various senses (visual, auditory, kinesthetic). The child may be the recipient
or the donor of the nurturing activities.
Anal components of the play activity focus around the themes of
“retaining” or “letting go.” The former may be associated with badness,
while the latter may be associated with something valued, treasured, or
good; the reverse can also be true. The main focus of the child in these activ-
ities is control and regulation. Play activities such as splashing, messing, and
gluing derive from the basic body functions of urinary and bowel control,
revealing both the desire to soil and make a mess and then the reaction
against that desire, the striving to clean and organize.
Phallic components of the play activity are characterized by penetration
and thrust into the environment or other person. They are usually repre-
sented by gun play or by entering into an enclosure. This type of play
activity may contain elements of exhibitionism. The child likes to show off
how big he is, how strong he is, or parts of his body.
Oedipal components of play activity have the following three aspects: at
least three characters are involved; two of the characters are a pair, with an
excluded third party who is of a different generation; and an awareness of
differences between the sexes is expressed or implied. Oedipal themes
include issues of competition, rivalry, and exclusion. Characteristic oedipal
feelings include success, jealousy, and envy.
Latency components of play activity are focused on issues of morality
and fairness. Sublimating earlier psychosexual issues, the latency child
focuses on compliance with rules and imitation of societal roles. Latency
play activities are concerned with performing adult tasks such as construc-
tion, drawing, and imitating occupational pursuits. Magic tricks, in which
the child using magical powers reverses roles, thereby bewildering the
adult, are also a latency activity (Sarnoff 1976).
Ben’s play activities are primarily focused around the threat of aggres-
sion and destruction. These play activities are phallic and intense in their
thrusting, powerful stance—the soldiers battle each other, smashing into
each other; Ben bangs the house with a hammer and rushes around the
room aiming a gun. There is some conflict over the hammering; the
therapist notes that Ben is somewhat restrained in his hammering, given his
high degree of energy. The construction activity with Legos is latency play,
counterbalancing the more battling stance of the previous play themes.
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 71

Phallic activities return, with the stabbing of the paper with a red pencil
and the shouts of “Shoot, shoot.” These impulses threaten to disorganize
Ben, and he leaves the room to the security of his nanny. He returns to the
play activity, once again grabbing the drill and shooting before falling
onto his stomach and breathing slowly. Basketball, latency-phase play
activity, restores his equilibrium.
In sum, there is some evidence of anal concerns, as Ben seems to
explode and “let go” of the tension inside him. The dominant components
of the play activity, however, are phallic, aggressive, attacking, expressions
of penetration, dominance and submission. Reparative, restorative feelings
are expressed through latency play activities. These variable levels of
psychosexual development generally reflect play activity that is advanced
for Ben’s chronological age.
Issues of separation—individuation refer to the child’s resolution of his
conflicts surrounding being autonomous from his parent and attaining his
own individual unique characteristics. The levels in this process of develop-
ment include: differentiation—issues of being the same or being different
(for example, the child contrasts big from little, me from you, black skin
from white skin); practicing—issues of being together or being apart (for
example, the child begins to experiment with distance, being near and far,
or the child performs a newly emergent verbal skill, naming an object that
is a distance away); rapprochement—issues of being in control or being con-
trolled by someone else (for example, the child wanders away and wants his
parent to follow, or the child protests having to follow parental expecta-
tions); and object constancy—issues of being dependent or being autono-
mous (for example, the child enjoys playing quietly in his room, insisting
on being “on his own”) (Mahler 1972a, 1972b).
In his play, Ben clearly struggles with issues of sameness and
differentness. He is torn apart by conflict and cannot contain his own
aggressive impulses. As a result, tension is pervasive and at least once inter-
rupts the flow of the narrative. He attempts to portray the practicing issues
of being together versus being apart in the battling soldiers, but that play
segment is quickly followed by the depiction of injury, failure of protec-
tion, and destruction. Ben uses the presence of his therapist as a source of
security, enabling him to portray these upsetting scenes. Conflictual
segments are offset by Ben’s attempts at self-soothing, using the autono-
72 PROFILES OF PLAY

mous activities of construction and ball play. Ben’s concern with earlier
relationship issues (differentiation, practicing) in the play narrative stands in
sharp contrast to his higher capacities for relationship, which can be
observed, for example, in his interactions with the therapist (reciprocal
play).

Structural analysis of the play activity examines component processes that

contribute to the structure of play activity. Play activity includes affective,
cognitive, narrative, and developmental components. None of these
components acts separately in the pragmatics of play activity.
How will the child use his play? What function does the play serve for
the child? Is he master of the play? Or, does the play itself become synony-
mous with his life? Where is the boundary between fantasy and reality? Or,
are there multiple boundaries between multiple realities and fantasies?
These are some of the questions to be explored in the chapters to come.
In chapters 2 to 5 a spectrum of coping–defensive strategies will be
described as they appear in play activity. The four clusters of coping–
defensive strategies are adaptive strategies, conflicted strategies, rigid/
polarized strategies, and extreme anxiety/isolated strategies. It is important to
note that in labeling these clusters of play strategies in this book the
emphasis is on the relationship of the child to himself (intrapsychic) and to
others (interpersonal). This is a diversion from the original CPTI use of the
diagnostic categories normal, neurotic, borderline, psychotic to describe
play activity. The change in designation is meant to clarify that the play
strategies used by the child are not necessarily isomorphic with the overall
mental state of the child. Clinically, play activity cannot be understood as
necessarily diagnostic of the child’s psychological state. The child may be
playing out a dilemma, recalling a memory, trying out different actions or
narratives, without other direct implications. The only way to ascertain the
diagnostic meaning of the play activity would be to conduct a complete
evaluation of the child and his family, play activity being only one
component of that evaluation.
The next four chapters describe play activity profiles in reference to
specific children who present with clinical issues. The question of the
meaning of the play activity profile will be considered separately for each
child. Is it possible to have pathological components within the play profile
 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PLAY ACTIVITY 73

of an adaptive player? Is it possible to have adaptive components within

the play profile of an extremely anxious/isolated child? Chapter 2 begins
to explore these questions by describing the function of adaptive
coping–defensive strategies observed in the child at play.
 chapter 2

The Adaptive Player

Erik Erikson (1977) has described the microcosm block structure con-
structed by a very active 5-year-old black boy, Robert. Invited into the
playroom, Robert immediately constructs a high, symmetrical, and
well-balanced structure in the middle of the table. He distributes toy
vehicles on the floors and ledges of the block construction. He then groups
all the animals together in a scene beside the tower; a snake is the center of
the animals’ attention. Next, he chooses his first human figure, a black boy
whom he places at the very top of the building. Other dolls are put lying
supine on the vehicles, and some authoritative male figures (doctor,
policeman, old man) are put on top of them, facing up. The remaining
human dolls stand in a half circle around the animal figures, arms uplifted in
some excitement. Robert’s narrative is short and concise: “Cars come to the
house. The lion bites the snake, wiggles his tail. The monkey and the kitten
try to kill the snake. People come to watch. Little one (black boy) on the
roof, is where smoke comes out (p. 32).
Erikson comments that the play scene is definitely “boyish” and
advanced for Robert’s chronological age. He points to the unique feature of
the dolls’ outstretched arms and notes that the block structure itself
resembles a standing body with arms outstretched. The black boy doll is at
the very top, or head, of this “body” structure. Robert’s teachers have noted
that he often did an unusual thing in class. With a detached smile, he would
dance a two-step around the room with his arms outstretched sideways.
When commended by the teacher for the gracefulness of his dancing,
Robert would reply, “Yes, but my brain is no good.” Erikson connects
Robert’s words with his actions and sees as the essence of the play his hope

74
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 75

to bring his body and mind together and have them work as one unit.
According to Erikson, in this play activity Robert is observed creating a
drama surrounding his block structure in which he works through conflict
regarding his deficient self-confidence and strivings for efficacy. He
performs a new beginning, confesses, engages in joyful self-expression,
exercises newly mastered skills, and transforms affective representation
from anger to hopefulness. Maybe, as Erikson suggests, there is a chance of
his growing up to be loved and lovable.
By constructing a story about his block structure, Robert is able to
understand affectively (to understand with feelings) the drama of his own
existence. This story is constructed by Robert himself, along with the
structure of blocks. He interacts with other people, toys, and blocks to make
his statement. The story incorporates painful feelings of despair (smoke) in
a strong assertive effort to resolve differences within the self and become an
integrated person. Activity within the microcosm, the small world
developed with the child’s imagination, encompasses the play activity that
makes this forward movement possible.
Adaptation, then, is synonymous with playfulness. It is the uninter-
rupted, forward-moving, joyful effort towards mastery referred to by
Robert White (1959) as competence motivation and by J. McV. Hunt
(1965) as intrinsic motivation. From a similar perspective, Joseph
Lichtenberg (1989) considered symbolic play to be an attempt at
problem-solving, a derivative of the exploratory–assertive motivational
system. While playing, the child explores adaptational possibilities that will
lead to change, eventuating in increased feelings of confidence and compe-
tence. The concept of coping includes those efforts to deal with the chal-
lenges of life. Lois Barclay Murphy (1962) and her associates studied the
characteristics of children who cope with difficulty successfully. They
examined the quality of resilience among children who could actively
engage their surroundings, accepting good and bad experiences as part of
everyday reality and striving towards maintaining optimal integration,
security, and comfort. From their studies they obtained a profile of “good
copers,” who could tolerate frustration, handle anxiety, and ask for help
when they needed it. Their work has been extended by others, such as
Anthony & Cohler (1987), who have studied the “invulnerable child.”
76 PROFILES OF PLAY

In play activity, adaptive strategies form a cluster of related activities that

share the propensity to lead towards adaptation. This cluster of adaptive
strategies is closely linked to efforts by the child to cope constructively with
the challenges of his environment, and to respond to these challenges with
resilience. The adaptive strategies are future-oriented, problem-solving, and
directed towards the transformation of toxic anxiety into hope. Traumatic
anxiety that can be paralyzing and overwhelming is harnessed in the pursuit
of constructive goals. It is the counter-toxic signaling function of anxiety
that prepares the child so he can anticipate the upsetting event. Anticipation
has the potential function of inoculating the child against trauma. Prepara-
tion and foresight enable the child to plan and maximize his potential for
flexibility and self-regulation.
Adaptive strategies rarely exist independently of other more defensive
strategies. As Lois Murphy and her colleagues suggested, coping is a combi-
nation of adaptation and defense. The child may use defense mechanisms as
part of the overall coping effort. Thus, if change happens too quickly, or
conflict is too much to bear, a defense mechanism may assist the child’s
efforts to cope, by dividing a complex situation into manageable parts or
repressing the excessive threat and focusing on what can be mastered. The
child at play presents an amalgam of adaptive and defensive strategies.
Attributes of some children can potentially contribute to adaptive outcomes.
These characteristics include a deep capacity for sensuous delight and grati-
fication, a capacity for nonverbal interpersonal communication that can
contribute to a genuine interpersonal relationship, a capacity for resourceful
manipulation and problem-solving leading to play activity, and a capacity
for representation and symbolization of disturbing experiences and
fantasies (Murphy & Moriarty 1976).
Selma Fraiberg (1959) described a little boy, Tony, with generalized
fears of the strange, the unfamiliar, and the unknown. His approach to
coping with these feelings was to investigate the problem. If he could
somehow find how something worked, he could understand the causes for
events and feel in control of his fear. At age two, his favorite toy was a
pocket-sized screwdriver he carried with him everywhere. He used this tool
to unhinge doors and disassemble tables and chairs. When his parents put a
stop to this research, he became furious. Warnings only seemed to increase
his need to locate the source of danger and to find out “why.” As he grew
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 77

older, not only did he want to take dangerous things apart, he also wanted
to make them work again. At age four years, he had an emergency appen-
dectomy. Relatives wanted to bring him toys, but he asked for an old alarm
clock that did not work and set about repairing it, just as the doctors had
taken him apart and then put him together again. Thus, Tony used a
well-established sublimation, including mechanical exploration and con-
struction, to overcome a frightening experience. As he matured, Tony
continued his scientific interests and eventually became a physicist. The
interests expressed in play activity enabled Tony to cope with trauma and
to exceed performance of children of his chronological age. Tony’s style of
coping while playing later became generalized to a style of coping with
life. In these later life sequelae, adaptation continued to predominate over
defense in leading to a “path towards mastery” (Murphy 1962).

Adaptive Strategies Used By the Child at Play

The Children’s Play Therapy Instrument (Kernberg, Chazan, &
Normandin 1997) enumerates and defines nine adaptive strategies that can
be observed in a child’s play. Each of these adaptive strategies is conceptu-
alized as belonging to a larger cluster of adaptive play behaviors. In what
follows, these adaptive strategies are first defined individually, each with its
implied narrative expression (Kernberg 1994, 1989). Two clinical cases are
then analyzed, showing how children employ selected strategies in a pre-
dominantly adaptive stance while playing.

Adaptation
The play activity expresses an effective accommodation to given circum-
stances; that is, it has a reality component.
“Let’s make the best best use of what we have.”

Anticipation
The play activity reflects planning for the future. Attention is focused on
what will happen next and may involve preparation, expectation, appre-
hension, or a combination of these feelings and attitudes.
“I’ll think it over ahead of time and be better prepared.”
78 PROFILES OF PLAY

Problem-Solving
The play activity includes a trial-and-error component or a planned, sys-
tematic effort to clarify something that is unclear.
“If I take my time and think carefully, there must be a solution to this
problem.”

Suppression
In the play activity, conflicts or stress are dealt with by intentionally
avoiding thinking or talking about them.
“I’ll try my best not to think about it, and come back to it later.”

Sublimation
An activity gratifying an impulse or wish is transformed into socially
acceptable and creative activity.
“I’d like to make a mess, but instead I’ll work with the clay to make a
work of art.”

Altruism
The play activity involves concern for fulfilling the needs of others instead
of the child’s own needs in a socially acceptable way; it may be considered a
form of sublimation.
“I would be happy if you would take what I have.”

Affiliation
The child plays that he belongs to a group of people by sharing activities,
attributes, or a common goal (including asking for help).
“I want to be doing what the others are doing, or they can join with
me.”

Identification
The child plays at being similar or identical to another person or character,
in one or more attributes, roles, feelings, or behaviors.
“I am like him and he is like me.”
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 79

Humor
The play activity is perceived as funny because of incongruity, exaggera-
tion, or unexpected events, seen as amusing and pleasurable. It is accompa-
nied by or results in laughter.
“I can see what is going on from different points of view. This is fun!”

Clinical Case: Carla and the “Evoked Companion”

Play activity develops within the context of relationship. It may emerge
from a child’s relationship with himself, with others, and/or with objects,
fantasized or real. When a needed object or person is not immediately
present, the child may use a substitute for the thing that is missing. Alterna-
tively, the child may use his imagination to evoke the unavailable other. The
presence of these “evoked” fantasy objects is often indicated by a nonverbal
signal, changed attitude, or gesture of recognition. These evoked represen-
tations provide a basis for expanded recognition of the self by the self, of
the self by others, and of others by the self. They provide an extended
vocabulary for interaction and conjuring up possible worlds. In the case of
Carla, recognition of the child’s subjective experience by the therapist
provides a basis for the integration of negative feelings into a common
bond of trust. The security of being understood provides a context for the
development of adaptive play.
Carla, four and a half years old, was referred by a foster care agency for
mental health intervention because of oppositionalism evidenced in temper
tantrums and non-compliance with her adoptive mother’s requests. In
addition, the adopting mother needed assistance in limit-setting. Carla had
been adopted at one year and six months of age by a 52-year-old woman
with two older children of her own, who were no longer living in the home.
Carla’s DSM IV diagnosis at the time of referral was Reactive Attachment
Disorder of Early Childhood, as evidenced in a lack of selectivity in choice
of attachment figures and a highly ambivalent attitude towards caregivers.
Little of Carla’s early history was available. Carla had been neglected by
her natural mother, who was profoundly deaf and mute. She weighed 5
pounds 8 ounces at birth. When she was placed in foster care at 11 months
of age, she was undernourished and underweight. There was no evidence
of drug exposure in the birth parent or child. According to the adoptive
80 PROFILES OF PLAY

mother’s report, Carla had no speech at 13 months. She said “Mama” at 18

months, put two words together at two years, and at two and a half years
was speaking sentences. Tested on the Stanford-Binet at four years of age,
Carla achieved an intelligence quotient of 110. There was some discrep-
ancy between verbal and nonverbal skills: verbal skills were in the low
average range, while visual-motor skills were in the high average range.
The vignette to be described is excerpted from the 15th session of
ongoing treatment, which included weekly play sessions for Carla and
weekly counseling sessions for the adoptive mother. Difficulties in the
treatment alliance were finally ameliorating at the time of this session. Carla
and her mother were initially negative to the current therapist. They missed
their previous therapist, though they had both known before beginning
treatment that the therapists were in training and would rotate out of the
clinic at the end of the school year. All patients were apprised of the limita-
tions imposed by the training schedule before beginning treatment. The
adoptive mother gave various reasons to account for her own uneven
pattern of attendance.

Following is a verbatim transcript from videotape.

(Therapist is holding doll that contains a music box in it; the music is playing.)
Therapist: You didn’t say hello to her today! She was waiting for
you!
Therapist: (For doll) Wah…waah!
Carla: Hello, hello. (Blows whistle in a large pink plastic hammer at
the doll)
Therapist: She’s scared. She’s shaking. (Therapist shakes doll)
Carla: (Laughs in excited, shrill, high-pitched laughter and repeats the
loud noise directed at the doll, then continues shrill bursts of
laughter)
Therapist: She’s scared. She’s shaking. She’s scared of loud noises.
(Shakes doll)
Carla: (Continues to laugh in guttural staccato bursts and gets ready to
blow at doll again)
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 81

Therapist: You want to scare her, she’s hiding. She’s going to hide
because she is scared of loud noises.
Carla: (Continues to lean forward and make loud whistling noise at
doll)
Therapist: You like scaring her. I guess you want to make her very
scared.
Carla: (Staccato laughter)
Therapist: Does Carla ever get scared? I guess it’s very scary to be
scared. (Therapist sits up doll and positions it toward Carla)
Carla: (Approaches doll, leans forward and regards intently)
Therapist: (As Carla approaches doll) What are you looking at?… at
her eyes?
Carla: No.

(C. picks up glass paperweight, shakes it, turns it upside down and regards the snow
falling inside the glass globe. The doll is situated behind the paperweight. C. lifts the
paperweight above her head and gazes upwards at the falling snow, spellbound, a smile
lighting up her face. There is a long, protracted moment of direct gaze up at the
glass paperweight and the falling snow. This moment seems to evoke for C.
shared feelings of goodness and beauty. Her upward gaze suggests the posture of an
infant looking up adoringly at her caregiver.)
Therapist: (Speaking for doll) Can I watch? I want to see the snow.
Carla: (Shows paperweight to doll)
Therapist: (Speaking for doll) Oh, isn’t that pretty?
Carla: Yeah.
Therapist: (Therapist maneuvers doll to follow path of paperweight as
Carla lowers it. Therapist is speaking for doll) All the glitter!

(Music continues. Doll and Carla regard paperweight together.)

Carla: (Winds up the music box. Excitedly) I turned it on! (meaning
the music)
Therapist: (Lies doll down) She’s falling asleep. (Carla approaches with
whistle) You want to wake her up again.
82 PROFILES OF PLAY

Therapist: (Speaking for doll) You keep waking me up and scaring me

Ms. Carla.
Carla: (Makes loud whistling noise and hits doll with hammer several
times)
Therapist: (Speaking for doll) That hurt! That hurt a lot!
Carla: I want you to sleep.
Therapist: (Speaking for doll) I don’t want to sleep! I want to stay up!
Carla: (Continues to blow whistle and hit doll)
Therapist: OK (Takes whistle, setting limit. Doll goes to sleep again, then
wakes up)
Carla: (Gleefully laughing, picks up cymbals and bangs)
Therapist: (Speaking for doll) I don’t want to sleep with all of this
banging. (Makes doll dance) It doesn’t sound like music. It
sounds like banging!
Carla: (Begins making rhythmic beats) I’ll dance with her.

(Carla gives cymbals to Therapist. Therapist plays cymbals, watches C. dance with
doll. Carla winds up music box in doll.)
Therapist: Are you teaching her to dance? What is that? (Carla is
showing the crystal globe to the doll)

The play activity segment ends as Carla turns her attention to searching for a
different doll and setting up a new scene. This new scene will be around
toilet training where the doll performs successfully.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Carla’s play activity was categorized as fantasy play. The play activity
occurred entirely within the microsphere, the sphere of toys and small
replicas of real objects. Carla repeatedly frightened and hit her doll. The
repetitive nature of the hitting suggested it might depict in part traumatic
punishment Carla has experienced. On the other hand, the subsequent
evocation of good feelings suggested the experience of coming together
with a loving person. It was unclear what elicited this change in feelings.
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 83

Perhaps it was triggered by feelings of warmth and acceptance conveyed

by the therapist, or perhaps her affectionate feelings occurred in response
to the soothing auditory stimulus of the melody or the visible image of
softly falling snow. As her play continued, Carla’s negative resistant
feelings for her therapist and toys were certainly giving way to more
positive feelings of confident expectations.
We can only speculate as to the meaning of our observations. The doll,
formerly the recipient of punishment, was invited to join Carla in her
dance. The movement of the dance was Carla’s expressive response to the
evoked good object, the glass globe containing the softly falling snow.
These good feelings were, in turn, shared with the doll/child. Then the doll
was transformed from a bad child to a companion who could join in and
enjoy the fun of dancing.
All of this play took place under the watchful eye of the therapist.
Although the therapist initiated the play activity by inviting Carla’s
attention to the doll, Carla quickly responded with her own repetitive
theme of punishing the doll. The therapist repeatedly facilitated the play,
particularly by verbalizing a running account of the play activity and its
consequences. It was Carla, however, who found the good moment. These
good feelings seem to emanate from deep within Carla. As she looked
upward with a shining countenance at the sight of the falling snow, the
therapist echoed and resonated to “all of the glitter,” and the music
continued to play in the background. Carla eagerly reflected on her own
sense of agency, saying “I turned it on,” referring to the music box inside the
doll. All three protagonists (Carla, the therapist, and the doll) were able to
bask together in the warmth of this shared moment.
When she first turned to the paperweight, Carla left the shared focus
with doll and therapist to evoke a separate subjective reality. She was then
able to share her discovery with the therapist and doll. She emerged from
enmeshment with the terror of punitive attack to literally turn aside and
move away, allowing her glance to turn upward to a pleasurable encounter.
This shift in relatedness progressed from shared interaction to the
evocation of a new presence and a return to shared interaction. The middle
step was also an interaction, but with an evoked companion. In this way, the
pleasurable moment became integrated into experience with the originally
bad doll.
84 PROFILES OF PLAY

The emergence of this evoked experience occurred as a solitary event of

playing alone while in the presence of the therapist and doll. The integra-
tion of these two experiences, shared and solitary/aware, within the play
sequence was a marker of therapeutic progress. The therapist’s facilitation of
this integration occurred first with her attunement and compliance with
Carla’s insistence that the doll go to sleep and then with her suggestion that
the doll did not like the loud banging of the cymbals. Carla reciprocated by
modifying her banging into a soft rhythmic beat. Regulation between the
players shifted from defiance to cooperation and compliance. Carla gave the
therapist the cymbals to continue the soft rhythmic beat, so that she was free
to dance with the doll.
The play activity was ended by Carla, who turned her attention to a
different doll. Carla began a pre-play segment by setting the stage for play
activity around the theme of toilet training.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
Feelings expressed by Carla while playing fluctuated between obvious
pleasure and overt distress. While the spectrum of affects was wide in its
variation between these two discrete points, it was also constricted, as the
emotional tone did not fluctuate widely but remained organized around
these two emotional states. Carla proceeded abruptly from expressing anger
to expressing awe and delight. She did not modulate her feelings, and the
transition between emotional states was always abrupt. Feelings expressed
by Carla as she played included aggression, anger, anxiety, curiosity, awe,
and pleasure, and they were always appropriate to the content of her play.
She was somewhat positive in her feelings for the therapist, although at
times she was shrill and oppositional and at other moments gentle and
loving. Her therapist was usually warm and at times firm and directive.

Cognitive Components
Carla represented several roles in her play, including the doll, herself as
partner to the doll and the evoked companion, and the therapist as playmate
and musicmaker. Most of the play activity was simple collaborative play,
with the doll as her partner, but the last moments of the play were complex
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 85

collaborative play, that included herself and the doll dancing, with the
therapist as musicmaker. Both Carla and the doll underwent voluntary
transformations: the doll was transformed from bad to good, and Carla
from aggressor to playmate. The doll and the evoked companion were rep-
resented in a magical/fantasy style, while Carla represented herself in a
realistic style.

Narrative Components
The theme of Carla’s play revolved around caregiving; topics of the play
including punishment and beauty. The quality of relationships within the
play narrative fluctuated between malevolent control and dependence.
Carla was primarily silent during her play; she depended upon actions and
gestures to communicate. One exception was an intense, pivotal moment
when she recognized her own ability to make the music box work. The
therapist’s language included verbalization of the role of the doll and
talking during the play describing the play.
It was particularly poignant that for Carla auditory channels played
such an important role in her play (the music box). As a very young child
she was probably often startled by her deaf and mute parents who were not
attuned to her auditory needs. Resolution of the abusive relationship in the
play took place through visual channels (the falling snow), which in Carla’s
earliest years probably offered opportunities for comforting merger experi-
ences.

Developmental Components
The developmental level of the play activity was somewhat immature for
Carla’s chronological age. Particularly notable was the sparse use of
language. The gender identity of the play activity was predominantly
feminine, as she played at caregiving to her doll. Separation–individuation
issues represented in the play were predominantly the ambivalence of the
rapprochement phase and some beginning suggestion of constancy in the
resolution of the play theme. At first Carla teased, hurt, and startled the
doll, yet at the same time she allowed the therapist to comfort the doll.
Then, as the play ended, Carla invited the doll to dance and shared with her
the crystal globe (paperweight). Carla’s interaction with her therapist mani-
86 PROFILES OF PLAY

fested several levels of social development, including solitary (aware), recip-

rocal, and cooperative interactions.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

MOST CHARACTERISTIC 5

CONSIDERABLE 4

MODERATE 3

MINIMAL 2

NO EVIDENCE 1
Adaptive Conflicted Rigid/Polarized Extreme Anxiety/
Strategies Strategies Strategies Isolated Strategies

Figure 2.1 Carla’s Coping–Defensive Strategies

Carla’s coping–defensive strategies throughout her course of treatment are

shown graphically in Figure 2.1. Adaptive coping strategies were most
characteristic of her play activity. In her doll play and in interaction with her
therapist Carla was observed to use the coping strategies of affiliation, identi-
fication and sublimation. Affiliation occurred in Carla’s relatedness to the
therapist and her connection (although initially abusive) to the doll. Identi-
fication was evident in her following the lead taken by the therapist in the
play and in her affection for the doll at the end of the play. Carla consented
to having the doll be comforted and watch the falling snow, and finally
taught the doll how to dance. In the last activity she was enacting the caring
role previously enacted by the therapist. Carla was not only identifying with
the beneficent attitude of the therapist; by inference she was also identifying
with the abused doll, who was rehabilitated. Sublimation occurred when
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 87

instead of teasing the doll Carla taught her. In both instances Carla took
the more powerful role, but as teacher she formed a bond with the doll
through caring. This change in play enactment suggested Carla no longer
experiences an overwhelming need to tease the doll in order to feel related
to her. Carla was unaware her enjoyment of the dancing was in any way
related to her earlier feelings. At these moments Carla’s play activity
emerged spontaneously and joyfully, with an independence of its own.
While there was no evidence of conflict in this segment of Carla’s play,
there was considerable evidence of rigid/polarized defensive strategies.
These strategies included idealization, devaluation, and identification with the
aggressor; these strategies will be discussed in detail in Chapter 4. Observa-
tion revealed that Carla’s play behaviors and affective states were organized
in two very different patterns, one loving, the other attacking. This division
into polarized patterns was pervasive in Carla’s narrative and reflected her
subjective experience. No isolated defense strategies were observed in
Carla’s play; Carla was always aware of herself as playing.
The organization of Carla’s coping/defense strategies into two distinc-
tive affective states—aggressive and loving—suggested that transient
dissociative states were reflected in Carla’s play activity. In the context of
Carla’s play, the dissociative response was communicated without the
added toxic effects of real-life trauma. This organization within the play
functioned as communication to the observer of a reenactment of the
traumatic event, as well as an attempt to gain mastery over the frightening
experience. In this instance, Carla was enabled to repair the injured parties
(herself and the doll) through shared movement and love. As L. B. Murphy
(1962) observed, adaptive play is never free of elements of conflict and
defense. It was the completed reparation that categorizes this play activity
segment as adaptive.

Clinical Case: Kate and the “Land of the Unwanted”

Kate was a nine-year-old girl in the fourth grade. She was described by her
mother as a loner with no friends and very stubborn. One of her teachers
felt that Kate was “trying to escape” by always keeping her nose in a book.
Kate’s mother and father divorced when Kate was two years old. Kate’s
mother remarried and had two additional children. She commented that
88 PROFILES OF PLAY

adding to the family had had a negative effect on Kate, who for the first six
years of her life had had her mother’s exclusive attention. Her mother could
not resolve her feelings of guilt and alternately blamed herself, her husband,
and her ex-husband and then blamed Kate for not being able to care for
herself.
Kate, a bright, lively, creative, diminutive young girl, often came to
sessions dressed sloppily in the same paint-stained leggings, sneakers, and
long top. She was usually happy, cooperative, and assertive. Kate could focus
easily and made good eye contact. Using humor, she was able to laugh often
and easily. Over the course of the first year of treatment, it became clear that
Kate had tremendous difficulty expressing any negative feelings. She
always wanted to be perceived as sweet and compliant, and she valued per-
fection highly. A reflection of the two sides of this conflict was seen in a
drawing of a man whom she described as “really nice. He’s never mean and
never gets mad.” The man was holding a report card with all As on it. The
therapist commented that the man must be imaginary, “because everybody
gets mad and is mean sometimes.” Kate responded, “Well, you haven’t met
his friend yet.” She then drew a man who she said was mean all of the time
and failed all of his classes. She used a tissue to erase both men and
commented that they live together in the tissue.
Kate was frequently disappointed by the adults in her life, who would
tell her one thing and do another. She was very conflicted about coming to
treatment and insecure about the therapist’s dependability and trustworthi-
ness. Blending her worst fears with her fondest hopes, Kate made up a game
called the Magic Box. A character, designated by Kate as the therapist, finds
a Magic Box. The Magic Box holds three containers, each one filled with
transformation powders. Kate posed questions to the therapist: Would she
use the powder immediately? Or would she find out everything she could
about the Magic Box—who used it, how it works, whether it is good or evil,
or, would she not want to do anything with the box and throw it away?
Scarcely concealed are Kate’s concerns about what kind of person the
therapist is, whether she can be trusted, and what it is the therapist might
transform her into.
Perhaps reflecting this uncertainty, Kate did not engage in fantasy play
during the first six months of treatment, despite her obvious gift for creativ-
ity. Instead, even the smallest disclosure was followed by withdrawal and
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 89

her choosing to play a board game appropriate for her age, such as Clue or
Monopoly. Some of Kate’s expressiveness emerged as spontaneous poetry.
In other instances, her longings appeared in the guise of playfulness,
during the dialogue of non-play.

An Excerpt From the Seventh Treatment Session

Kate was brought to the session by her father. There was considerable dis-
cussion about conflicting activities and the difficulty of arranging appoint-
ment times. Kate willingly relinquished swimming (a favorite activity) in
order to keep her appointments.
Upon entering the playroom, Kate volunteered that she had composed
a poem and asked if the therapist would like to hear it. The therapist replied
she would like that very much.
Kate: Sleep
I lie in my little bed, a small pillow beneath my head
It is hard to say when sleep will come my way.
Therapist: That’s great. What made you think of it?
Kate: I guess because Johnny [her stepfather] got a new
computer and he went to the Disney site. We are on the
Internet now.
Therapist: Cool. (Pause) Do you ever have trouble falling asleep?
Kate: No, not really—I like to stay awake and read. But once
I’m asleep, I sleep like a log. I read until my mom makes
me go to sleep.
Therapist: Do you have your own room?
Kate: No, I have a bunk bed with Emmy on the bottom, and
Ben is in the crib.
Therapist: So, you wouldn’t be able to stay up reading because of
them?
Kate: Well, no, because I have a little reading light.
Therapist: What do you like to read?
90 PROFILES OF PLAY

Kate: Science fiction mostly. A Wrinkle in Time is my favorite

book.
Therapist: What did you like about it?
Kate: That they travel to other dimensions. In one of them
Meg goes to this other world to save her dad and bring
him back home. In another one she says, “I love you.” It
breaks the spell. She’s young in the book. Yeah, about
twelve.
Therapist: So, you really like to read.
Kate: Sometimes it distracts me, though, when I’m in school, I
can’t concentrate on math because it’s like I sometimes
feel like the characters in the books.
Therapist: In what ways?
Kate: Well, if the character has an English accent, I start to
think in an English accent.
Therapist: Ah, so—it’s how they talk, not what they say.
Kate: Well, sometimes what they say.
Therapist: Like what?
Kate: Like I start to think—well, once I had a dream that I had
a magic dress, and when I wore it, it made this train go
anywhere I wanted to.
Therapist: When did you dream that?
Kate: Oh, about a year ago.
Therapist: Well, what do you think about it?
Kate: Well—I never wear dresses, so it was weird. But maybe
because I had a nightdress on in my sleep. Do you ever
have dreams you remember?
Therapist: Yes.
Kate: Could you tell me one?
Therapist: Sure. I had a dream when I was little about a camp and I
didn’t like it.
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 91

Kate: Oh, I had this dream the other night that my mom was a
dodo bird and I was a bird. And all the birds were flying,
and I couldn’t fly—I thought, my mom is a dodo bird,
so, why can’t I fly?
Therapist: Could your mom fly?
Kate: I don’t think so.
Therapist: Both dreams had to do with going somewhere—either
flying, or taking the magic train. Where would you go,
if you could?
Kate: Antarctica.
Therapist: How come?
Kate: I like the cold and I’d see penguins.
Therapist: I don’t think anyone would be there. What would you
do?
Kate: Probably build a igloo. But, I could always come back!

The session ended with a game of Monopoly. The therapist and Kate
decided to maintain a tally sheet, so they could keep playing from session
to session.
The opening poem barely concealed Kate’s deep longings. She was
longing to let go, to relax and to sleep—to let her imagination wander. But
first she had to feel secure enough to relinquish wakefulness. Uncertainty
imperiled her ever being able to reach this desired state as she lacked a
reliable nurturing relationship. This dialogue between Kate and her
therapist was non-play, although it contained imaginary elements.
Kate liked to read about travel to faraway places. It was a dress, an outer
garment with magical powers, that enabled her to go wherever she wanted
to. She dreamt that both she and her mom were dodo birds. They shared a
common trait: although they were both birds, neither of them could fly.
Was this an allusion to feeling stuck and unable to let go?
Kate wished that she were someone else. When she read about a
character, she almost became the character. She twinned with her mother,
the immovable dodo bird. If she could fly, she would go to a very cold and
isolated place, perhaps to flee from her feelings of discomfort and to search
92 PROFILES OF PLAY

for the company of other birds who could not fly, the penguins. Most
important of all, Kate asserted that although she took off to a cold climate,
she could always return. This notion of the safety in return promoted the
promise of secure reunion. The session ended with a play activity segment
of game play. Kate and her therapist tallied up the results to assure the conti-
nuity of their relationship, expressed through the continuity in play activity
and the return to future sessions.

Session at the End of the Sixth Month of Therapy

About mid-session, following a game of catch, Kate initiated a game of
guessing words that were disguised in drawings. The therapist was sitting
with her back to the board, and Kate gave her two dolls to hold. The
therapist turned to face the board while she cradled and cooed to the dolls;
she asked the dolls if they wanted to take a nap. Kate wrote the word “dolly.”
After the therapist guessed the word, Kate wrote in the corner of the board
“You good mama.”
Therapist: She’s a good mama?
Kate: No, you’re a good mama.

(The therapist writes the word “cuddle,” and Kate writes the word “rest.” The therapist
writes the word “food,” and Kate writes the word “happy.”)
Kate: OK, I’m tired. I’m going to go lie down. (She lies down)
Therapist: We need a blanket, but we don’t have one, so I’ll cover
you with animals. (Kate giggles) (Therapist proceeds to clean
up room) Are you asleep yet?
Kate: (No answer)
Therapist: You must have been so tired, you didn’t even need me to
read one of your books to you.
Kate: Oh, will you?
Therapist: We don’t have time today.
Kate: Just a quick version of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast.

The therapist complies with a two-minute synopsis, and the session ends.
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 93

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

In this session Kate introduced a creative form of communication in which
she replicated the paradigm of a game of catch in a new word game.
Therapist and Kate took turns challenging each other to guess a word
concealed in a visual image. The meaning communicated by the image was
more than the image itself; there was something else concealed within it
that contained another meaning. It followed that the therapist was not just
playing at being a “mama”; the play concealed the shared reality for the
child that at that moment the therapist has become the “good” mama.
Therapist and child continued with reciprocal associations to the themes of
nurturance and caregiving. Kate’s wishes were barely concealed as she
became “sleepy” and entered the longed-for state of being securely held.
The therapist responded by tidying up, and Kate responded by “letting go”
into silence. They ended with words, in shared familiar stories evoking a
magical realm, and Kate departed.
This play activity segment was categorized as organized game play
(catch) that developed into an original word game. Kate initiated the play
activity, and it was consistently facilitated by the give and take of associa-
tions between therapist and child. There was no inhibition of the play
activity. The play was ended by the therapist, because the session ended.
Clearly, Kate would have liked to continue. The play took place primarily
in the macrosphere (space of everyday objects), but there was some intro-
duction of stuffed animals, items from the microsphere (space of toys and
small objects).

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
The overall hedonic tone of this play activity segment was obvious
pleasure. As Kate wrote the word “happy” and lay down to rest, her feelings
of fulfillment in the relationship seemed to come bursting through. Kate’s
spectrum of expressed feelings was narrow, with medium regulation and
modification of affects. Her transitions between affective states were
usually smooth; her affective tone was always appropriate to the content of
the play. Feelings expressed by Kate while playing included pleasure and
94 PROFILES OF PLAY

curiosity. The feelings expressed between therapist and child were consis-
tently very positive.

Cognitive Components
Dyadic roles were represented; the therapist is the “good” mama, and Kate
played at being her child. The two dolls did not take on specific identities,
but they may have represented Kate’s two half-siblings, whom she perceived
to be getting the love and attention she wanted; when the therapist used the
dolls as her children, Kate took the role as the therapist’s child to be her own
and set the dolls aside. The dyadic roles of mother and child remained
stable, with no transformations in role occurring. Kate went along with the
therapist’s suggestion of using the stuffed animals as a blanket, which repre-
sented the substitution of one object for another. In accepting this substitu-
tion, Kate was also accepting the understanding that something else, or
someone else, could be placed in the role of another through imagining.
The implication for the therapist–patient relationship (transference) was
implicit: “using our imagination (which Kate was reluctant to do initially)
we can enact together your wishes for a caring relationship.” In this
symbolic play the animals (Kate’s fantasy creatures) became a source of pro-
tection and the therapist became the “good” mama. The style of representa-
tion of objects and persons was consistently realistic.

Narrative Components
The topic of the play activity was game play and the “One Who Cares.” The
theme of the play activity was caregiving. The level of relationship
portrayed in the narrative was dyadic; the quality of relationship portrayed
in the narrative was dependent. Language was used by both Kate and her
therapist to play with words and to verbalize their roles.

Developmental Components
Kate’s choice of doll play and the unelaborated theme of the play were
somewhat immature for her age. There was no development of characters. It
was the evoked atmosphere of nurturance and caregiving that suffused the
play with a warm glow. This affective expression alone was sufficient to
complete the play activity, that expanded subsequently through the use of a
word game. Kate hid her words within objects, just as she experienced in
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 95

play that objects could hold hidden feelings. In our culture, the caregiving
roles enacted by Kate and her therapist are traditionally associated with
women. Receiving warmth and nurturance within the context of play, Kate
was representing the oral receptive level of psychosexual development.
Separation–individuation issues portrayed in the play activity included dif-
ferentiation of little Kate from her mama, formation of a healthy symbiosis,
and the beginning of practicing separation, as Kate played at going to
sleep. The social level of interaction between Kate and her therapist was
reciprocal and cooperative.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Adaptive strategies were most characteristic of this play activity. These
strategies included affiliation, identification and sublimation. Kate was clearly
related to her therapist and identified with her Mama’s good caregiving,
thus sublimating her need for a secure attachment by playing out a gratify-
ing parent–child relationship. There was moderate use of conflictual strate-
gies in the play activity, as Kate projected her needs into the role of being a
younger and dependent child, thus employing both projection and regression
within the role-play. No rigid/polarized strategies or strategies involving
extreme anxiety/isolation were observed in the play activity.
This play activity segment was a transitional step on the way to fantasy
play. The shared associations of therapist and child led to an enactment
within the mother–child transference, where Kate seemed to be realizing
her fondest wishes. In this session we observed Kate relax and begin to play
at being the small child she longed to be. The regressive yearnings
appeared within the safe confines of the play activity, diminishing fears that
when the session ended she might not be able to return to everyday life
with her family.

Second Session Following Return From Summer Interval: Eighth Month

of Treatment
The session begins with a baseball game in semi-darkness initiated by Kate.
Kate then turns on the lights and draws a picture of Fluffy the cat, which
she then erases.
96 PROFILES OF PLAY

Kate: Where do you think things go when they’re erased? Do

they go into the eraser, or stay on the board in some tiny
form?
Therapist: Hm-mm. What do you think?
Kate: Hm-mm. They go to the Land of the Unwanted.
Therapist: What’s it like in the Land of the Unwanted?
Kate: Well, it’s nice because they can come alive again. And,
because everyone there is unwanted, they feel good.
Therapist: Because they have that in common?
Kate: Yeah.
Therapist: So, they are not lonely?
Kate: No, not there. They were in the land of the real but they
were unwanted—and there were too many people.
Some were younger and crowded them out.
Therapist: The younger ones came along and they, then, became
unwanted?
Kate: Yeah. So, in the Land of the Unwanted they have
roommates they like—and there’s a basketball hoop and
a couch to sleep on and pictures on the wall and a
garbage can. (These are all objects actually in the therapy
room)
Therapist: But nothing is unwanted, so what do they use it (the
garbage can) for?
Kate: …a hat at parties. And they are respected there and they
get to play games—that game we play, Therapy. And
there’s a big sport called “Slaughter the Clock” and they
have a competition to see who can kill the clock, because
they hate the noisy clock. But I guess they need to tell
time.
Therapist: That clock sure is annoying. It’s even unwanted in the
Land of the Unwanted.
Kate: (Laughs) And they have a box filled up with news stories
and they get passes. Sometimes they go to the Land of
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 97

the Real, but there are no people, just trees and animals
and ocean…and it’s like a vacation for them. (Draws
picture of the Land of the Unwanted)
Therapist: Looks a lot like this room.
Kate: Yeah, it does.
Therapist: It’s time to leave.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Kate began the session by initiating a game of baseball. Interestingly, she
altered the perceptual state by lowering the lights, a suggestion that further
modifications of external reality might follow. Kate then drew a picture of
Fluffy the cat. Kate posed a question: “Where do things go when they are
erased?” She was initiating a leap from concrete representation to the
symbolic use of metaphor. She was concerned with the whereabouts of a
visual image when it could no longer be seen. The question seemed clearly
to refer to the loss of contact during the summer break. Was there any con-
tinuity of relationship during this time? Did relationships become frag-
mented into tiny bits, or absorbed into relationships with other people?
What, if any, was the relationship between the remembered and the
observed? Kate inferred that the reason for separation was rejection; repara-
tion was when they become alive again in therapy, “the Land of the
Unwanted.” The common bond in this domain was the experience of
having been rejected, thrown away like refuse that was no longer needed.
Again, this was a barely concealed reference to Kate’s own experience of
rejection following the remarriage of her mother and the birth of two
younger siblings. Even the garbage could be useful, as a hat. The dreaded
object was the relentless clock, telling time and tying fantasy to reality in an
inevitable way. When Kate returned to the Land of the Real, she found no
people to hurt her or retaliate, only the restful scenes of nature. Kate left her
fantasy world in a drawing as the session came to a close. Clearly, Kate was
beginning to absorb the pattern of therapy sessions as she enacted the
coming and going aspects of separation and reunion, and the coming and
going to and from the realm of shared play activity.
The therapist and Kate both facilitated the emergence and continuity of
this play activity, in which there was no inhibition. Play was ended by the
98 PROFILES OF PLAY

therapist, because the session was ending. The play activity took place
within a fantasy microsphere constructed by Kate.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
As in earlier therapy sessions, the overall hedonic tone was obviously plea-
surable for both therapist and child. Here, however, the spectrum of affects
expressed was wide, including expressions of pleasure, curiosity, anger,
sadness, and aloofness. Kate regulated expression of her feelings well; the
transitions between her feeling states were consistently smooth. Kate’s
affective tone was always appropriate to the content of the play. The feelings
between therapist and child were consistently positive.

Cognitive Components
The level of role-play represented in the play was complex, as Kate took a
leap to become the narrator of her story. There was also minimal evidence of
beginning role-play, when Kate drew a picture of her main character, Fluffy
the cat. Roles represented (the people who go to the Land of the Unwanted)
underwent voluntary transformation as persons who were first rejected are
then valued. This change may have been more apparent than real. The
people were the same people, but they appeared vastly different depending
upon how they were valued by others. Although the transformation may
not have been complete, the drastic change in valuation (with change in
place) resonated with the trauma encountered by Kate with the birth of her
half-siblings. Visual representation of playthings, animals, and persons
remained consistent, as all of them appeared the same in both locations. Play
objects were used realistically in the play (an eraser was used to erase, a clock
to tell time). The style of representation of the characters in the play was pre-
dominantly magical, as they existed in both realms of fantasy and the real
world.

Narrative Components
The topic of Kate’s playing was travel. The themes of her play activity were
belonging and exclusion, separation and reunion. The play activity
portrayed two groups, each group functioning as a collective unit, resulting
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 99

in the dynamic of an accepted versus a rejected group. Relationships

portrayed within the play narrative were manifestly autonomous, with an
undercurrent of dependency. How the people felt about themselves
depended upon the domain in which they resided. However, the
movement of coming and going suggested a veneer of autonomy. Both
child and therapist used language to express themselves within the
metaphor of play.

Developmental Components
Kate’s play activity, given the level of its abstraction, was somewhat
advanced for her age. The metaphor was not only abstract but also had an
ironic edge in barely concealing its intent. There was no predominance in
the gender identity of the play. Kate’s play used masked symbols for
self-expression, a clear latency-age achievement (Sarnoff 1976). Separa-
tion–individuation issues in the play reflected concerns of the practicing
phase, as the characters came and went between lands and between states of
being alive and being erased. Social interaction between Kate and her
therapist while she was playing was consistently reciprocal.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Adaptive strategies were most characteristic in Kate’s play. These adaptive
strategies included sublimation, affiliation, identification, and humor. Kate’s
identification with her therapist was seen in her choice of an “elsewhere”
that was curiously isomorphic with clinic surroundings. Affiliation was
reflected in her association of this magical land as a place where people are
accepted for who they are. Kate’s choice of metaphor gave her freedom to
explore negative affects, not observed previously. This resolution of
conflict through fantasy play was a good example of the use of sublimation
and humor.
Kate was clearly aware that she was playing. The relationship between
the two lands was abstract, yet they retained concrete elements of Kate’s
everyday experience. The Real Land sounded curiously like the vacation
spot from which she had returned, with “no people, just trees, animals, and
ocean.” Kate seemed to have missed her therapist, while enjoying the sur-
roundings of the beach. The clock and other objects, although part of the
Land of the Unwanted, remind us of the playroom and the therapist’s
100 PROFILES OF PLAY

ending of the session when time runs out. Kate preserved for herself a repre-
sentation of the therapy room and its objects, a depiction of her own inner
life and how much of the therapy she has taken in. She has been given a
chance to feel alive again, no longer “crowded out” by younger people.
Kate’s story only thinly veiled her feelings of rejection following the birth
of her two younger half-siblings.
Conflictual strategies were also moderately evident in Kate’s play
activity. These conflictual strategies included avoidance, reaction formation,
projection, and intellectualization. Kate chose to avoid relationships in the
everyday world and to create a magical world that reversed the pain of
living. She created an imaginary world that was the diametric opposite of
her family experience. Although this conflict was successfully contained
within play activity, it represented a solution using inversion in fantasy. By
representing the opposite, Kate gave us an understanding of what she was
striving to avoid. She projected her wishes onto a world of her own
creation, using her intellect to imagine how this world might come true.
In this session, there was no evidence of rigid/polarized or extreme
anxiety/isolated strategies in Kate’s play activity.

Next Session, Later That Same Week

Kate: (Offers therapist a gummy bear) Most grown-ups think
these are too sweet. Do you want one?
Therapist: Do you think I’ll like it?
Kate: I don’t know. Do you like sweets?
Therapist: Yeah.
Kate: Here’s a piece.
Therapist: Mmm—good!
Kate: You want more?
Therapist: No, thanks.
Kate: I got these at lunch with my friends. (To stuffed animals)
Fluffy, Fluffy, how are you? Hi, Mr. Bunny! (Acting as Mr.
Bunny) I’m hungry. (As Kate) You’re hungry. Do you want
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 101

some food? (As Mr. Bunny) Yes, please. I’d like some
carrots.

(The therapist gets three orange markers and gives them to Mr. Bunny)
Kate: (As Mr. Bunny) Chomp, chomp, chomp. I want some
more.
Therapist: How come bunny’s so hungry?
Kate: (As Mr. Bunny) I haven’t eaten in a while.
Therapist: How come?
Kate: (As Mr. Bunny) Because I wasn’t hungry.

(Therapist and Kate switch roles, with Kate playing Fluffy the Cat and the therapist
being Mr. Bunny)
Kate: Fluffy is hungry, too, but he’s going to get his sardines
and caviar. He gets to have a little piece of caviar every
so often.
Therapist: He can’t have as much as he wants?
Kate: No, because then he’d run out.
Therapist: It must be hard. Don’t you want to eat all the caviar,
sometimes?
Kate: (As Fluffy) No. It’s okay, I have lots of sardines.
Therapist: (As Mr. Bunny) Fluffy, do you have to go out and get your
own food?
Kate: (As Fluffy) Oh, no. I have lots of friends, like Mr.
Raccoon and Bear who bring me scraps they find.
Therapist: (As Mr. Bunny) I remember when I was little my mother
would feed me. Now I feed myself.
Kate: (As Fluffy) Ohhh, how come, Bunny? Where’s your
mommy?
Therapist: (As Mr. Bunny) She’s not always around. I was looking
for her the other day, and I found her talking to Squirrel,
but she didn’t see me.
102 PROFILES OF PLAY

Kate: (As Fluffy) Why didn’t you tell her you were hungry?
Therapist: (As Mr. Bunny) I don’t know.
Kate: (As Kate) Okay, let’s bring Mommy Bunny in as this
pillow.
Kate: (As Mommy Bunny) Hi, Bunny. I’m here. Here are some
carrots for you. And if you ever need me, I’ll be in Bunker
38.
Therapist: (As Mr. Bunny) Okay.
Therapist: (As Panda) I’m hungry.
Kate: (As Fluffy) Okay, Panda, I’ll get you some food. Here are
some bamboo shoots.
Therapist: Gee, Fluffy, you are taking care of everyone. And who
takes care of you?
Kate: (As Fluffy) My friends. And I take care of myself.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Once again, as in previous play activity, Kate used fantasy play as a vehicle
for expressing her wishes. She initiated the play activity by talking with the
stuffed animals; both therapist and Kate facilitate the play activity by
fostering a continuous, ongoing dialogue between the characters. There was
no inhibition of this lively conversation by either therapist or child. The
entire play activity segment took place within the microsphere, the realm of
toy animals.
Kate began the play by offering the therapist a sweet. Her offer was
accepted once but not overextended to repeated feedings. Kate was turning
passive into active by becoming the one who feeds, thereby vicariously
enjoying the act of being fed. The roles were then switched as the therapist
fed Mr. Bunny (Kate), using markers as symbolic food. Therapist and child
talked about self-regulation as Mr. Bunny (Kate) responded that he hadn’t
eaten in a while because he “wasn’t hungry.” Kate also introduced the
concept of not eating too much of a good thing in response to the therapist’s
suggestion of a very avaricious appetite. Kate responded (this time as Fluffy)
about the risks of running out of the best supplies and therefore settling for
something less as a regular diet (sardines in lieu of caviar). Also new in this
 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 103

segment was the concept of friends who nurtured and fed, as well as
mother (Mommy Bunny). Kate ended the play activity segment with
satiation. As a climax to the play interaction she informed the therapist (as
Fluffy) that she not only received care from and gave care to others but (the
caveat) could also take care of herself.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
The overall hedonic tone in this play activity segment was obvious
pleasure. The spectrum of affects expressed was medium, including
curiosity, pleasure, concern, and mild passive aggression (the Mommy
Bunny who ignores Mr. Bunny). The transition between affective states of
hunger and satiation was always smooth; regulation and modulation of
feelings was flexible. Expression of feelings was usually appropriate to
content, one exception being the absence of directed aggression against the
negligent Mommy Bunny. Feelings expressed by Kate toward her therapist
and by the therapist toward Kate were consistently positive.

Cognitive Components
Considerable complex role-play was observed in this play activity segment
as Kate directed the play and became the central character for several inter-
acting parts (Mr. Bunny, Mommy Bunny, and Fluffy, interacting with Panda
and Mr. Bunny who were played by the therapist). There was also consider-
able evidence of dyadic role-play, particularly between Mr. Bunny and
Fluffy. One instance of voluntary role transformation occurred, when the
therapist and Kate switched roles. Kate became Fluffy (the maternal role)
having started out as Mr. Bunny, and Mr. Bunny (the hungry one) was then
played by the therapist. Kate then also became the Mommy Bunny, thereby
extending her maternal, nurturing role. Representation of objects remained
consistently the same. There were two occasions of change in the use of an
object, where one object was used for another (crayons for carrots at the
suggestion of the therapist, and a pillow for Mommy Bunny at Kate’s sug-
gestion), both examples of symbolic substitution. Throughout this play
activity segment the style of representation of persons and objects was
fantasy.
104 PROFILES OF PLAY

Narrative Components
Kate’s play was all about caregiving and feeding. The characters included a
family, parents and children, placing relationships portrayed within the play
narrative at the oedipal level. Relationships portrayed within the narrative
were both dependent and autonomous. The language used by both the
therapist and Kate included talking within the metaphor, verbalization of
multiple roles, and Kate’s imitation of some animal sounds.

Developmental Components
Kate’s play was somewhat immature for her chronological age. The gender
identity of her play activity was predominantly feminine, dealing with
caregiving and feeding. The oral phase was predominant in the play
(caregiving and food), with some minimal evidence of latency characteris-
tics (emphasis on autonomy and peer group). There was moderate evidence
for practicing issues (being the nurturing one) and minimal evidence of
object constancy issues (availability of mother). In the interactions between
Kate and her therapist there was considerable evidence of reciprocity and
cooperation.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

MOST CHARACTERISTIC 5

CONSIDERABLE 4

MODERATE 3

MINIMAL 2

NO EVIDENCE 1
Adaptive Conflicted Rigid/Polarized Extreme Anxiety/
Strategies Strategies Strategies Isolated Strategies

6th Month: 8th Month: 8th Month:

Eighth Session Second Session Third Session

Figure 2.2 Kate’s Coping–Defensive Strategies in the Course of Treatment

 THE ADAPTIVE PLAYER 105

Play strategies observed in this last vignette were most characteristically

adaptive. This play activity segment had several significant features. First, it
was preceded by a non-play segment (an offer of candy to the therapist),
and the theme of the non-play segment was then repeated in the play
activity segment, namely feeding and the support to one’s autonomy given
by friends. This almost isomorphic duplication between non-play and play
activity had been noted in the prior session with the creation of the Land of
the Unwanted which contained objects identical with those of the
playroom. This symbolic elaboration of duplication (making a duplicate of
the experience) is the hallmark of sublimation. Using sublimation the child
creates a meaningful metaphor for self-expression. Metaphor serves as a
vehicle for subjective duplication. Kate’s emphasis on peer relationships
illustrates the use of affiliation and identification. Sharing of supplies reflects
the use of anticipation, altruism, and problem-solving.
Second, the content of this play activity segment dealt with self-regula-
tion and the acceptance of limits. Kate did not permit Fluffy an abundance
of caviar, as supplies would run out. Kate’s concept of object constancy
(separation–individuation phase) seemed to be connected to an appropriate
allotment of supplies. As Mommy Bunny, Kate was firm in her resolve to be
available whenever needed. The regression that did occur in the play was
certainly in the service of exploring her new capacities for constancy and
friendship. In the first instance, she could be depended upon; in the second
instance, she could depend upon others.
There was minimal evidence of conflictual strategies in this play
activity segment, specifically the just-mentioned regression in the service of
expressing early needs for nurturing and projection of early wishes onto the
toy animals. There was no evidence of rigid/polarized strategies or
extreme anxiety/isolated strategies in this play activity segment.
Kate’s representation of emotional constancy and supportive friend-
ships in her play activity reflected her growing competence to care for
herself in the everyday world and to enter peer relationships without
fearing rejection. This case illustrated a child’s capacity to use love and
warmth within the transference relationship adaptively as a secure base
from which to build solid social relationships.
106 PROFILES OF PLAY

The next chapter will highlight the play activity of conflicted players. These
children use play strategies to portray a struggle between opposing
tendencies originating from within themselves or from the surroundings in
which they live. These struggles create the tensions that find expression
through the child’s play activity.
 chapter 3

The Conflicted Player

The conflicted player is playing out issues he cannot resolve. These are
issues of great concern to the child, issues that alternately fascinate him,
trouble him, and intrigue him and that continually preoccupy him. They
may include power struggles, stories that repeat and never end, desires that
are unattainable, and dangers that intrigue yet can potentially devour and
destroy. The conflicted player also manifests play activity strategies charac-
teristic of the other play clusters, including adaptive strategies, but
observing the conflicted player one gets the predominant impression of
play activity reflecting opposing tendencies, rather than a smooth flow of
creativity. The disjuncture or opposition may occur within the narrative,
within interaction with the therapist, within or between the dimensions of
play structure, or within the capacity of the child to sustain play activity
segments. The therapist engages the child in play activity around these
conflicts and becomes a participant in the child’s emotional world.
Anna Freud (1963) described the case of a six-year-old child suffering
from a compulsion neurosis. The child explains to Freud why she comes to
see her: “I have a devil in me. Can it be taken out?” The conflict for her is
between her wishes to be dirty, selfish, bad, and disgusting and her need to
conform to her parents’ rigid expectations of good behavior. Gradually the
devil becomes known and accepted, with a reduction in associated
tensions. The child uses daydreams to give voice to the feelings of being
rejected and unwanted. With Freud as advisor to both child and parents, the
symptoms diminish. For this group of conflicted patients, the child’s wishes
clash with cultural demands, resulting in inhibition of the forbidden wishes
and associated symptomatology.

107
108 PROFILES OF PLAY

More recently, Edward Corrigan and Pearl-Ellen Gordon (1995) have

described a different group of child patients who present with
symptomatology resulting from conflict. For these child patients, the mind
has become their source of security following a breakdown of early
parent–child relationship. One such child is Sabrina, an eight-year-old girl
who announces, much to her mother’s upset, that she is not going to attend a
birthday party. It is the birthday of one of her best friends, but she has lost
the invitation, so she cannot go. She stubbornly insists on her decision,
despite the therapist’s pointing out that others are not punishing her; it is
she who is tenaciously punishing herself. She replies, “Exactly right. Now
you know why I can’t go!” No alien introject, no devil is punishing her;
rather her own rigid sense of right and wrong is keeping her from pleasure.
Kerry Kelly (1970) described 5-year-old Emma, similarly precocious, who
while playing at being a baby begins to crawl down the stairs very quickly.
Her analyst warns, “Be careful, babies need help sometimes.” Emma
answers, “But it is not always there, so I manage by myself.” Managing “by
themselves” results in premature closure regarding moral issues; the child
becomes his own parent.
These are children in conflict with their bodily and emotional needs,
who have received inadequate parental regulation and care. In an attempt to
adapt to this poverty of care, they come to rely very early upon the compe-
tence of their own minds. In place of loving and protective care is a preco-
cious self-reliance on their “thinking heads” and intellectual prowess. These
precocious children are exemplary of today’s conflicted players. Corrigan
and Gordon quote six-year-old Lilly playing a multitalented Cinderella
who can do everything and anything, saying “I was born sixteen. I never
had diapers, never had a bottle, no pacifier, no thumb, no baby food.”

Conflicted Strategies Used By the Child at Play

The manual of the Children’s Play Therapy Instrument (Kernberg, Chazan,
& Normandin 1997) defines thirteen conflicted strategies that can be
observed while a child is playing. These separate strategies are conceptual-
ized as belonging to a larger cluster of conflicted play behaviors.
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 109

Intellectualization
The play activity deals with the emotional implications of the play in a
neutral, factual, objective way.
“I am changing my experience into one of thoughts.”

Rationalization
The child explains the play activity to the therapist using acceptable but
false reasons.
“I will give myself a different reason to avoid worry.”

Isolation
In the play activity ideas are separated from their threatening affects. The
result is often an apparent indifference.
“I can think about it and not feel it.”

Doing and Undoing

The play activity is carried out and then reversed or neutralized. There is an
underlying representation of equal, opposing wishes. The cyclical quality
of these play events may cause them to appear magical.
“I am placing it and then taking it away.”

Negation
The child dismisses the value, meaning, or significance of the threatening
feeling or behavior observed in the play activity.
“I know it could be great, but I don’t care.”

Reaction Formation
A warded-off idea and feeling are replaced by an expression of its opposite.
Reaction formation keeps the painful idea and affect in mind; only the
value is reversed.
“I will experience only the pleasant part of what happened.”
110 PROFILES OF PLAY

Repression
The child successfully plays out a theme of which he is unaware. (The
inference is made by the observer.) Repression is inferred when there is plea-
surable play.
“I’m not looking. I’m not seeing and I am not aware of it.”

Projection
Qualities, feelings, wishes, and thoughts of a person or object representa-
tion that the child refuses to recognize in himself or in one of the play char-
acters are expelled and located in another person or thing.
“I am putting this outside of me into someone/something else.”

Introjection
One character in the play activity transposes objects and their inherent
qualities from the outside to inside his own self. The emphasis is on being
the recipient of the interaction.
“I am swallowing, taking this into myself.”

Regression
The child or one of the characters in the play activity reverts to modes of
activity and expression characteristic of a younger child.
“I am going backwards in time.”

Somatization
The child or one of the characters in the play activity is preoccupied with
physical symptoms.
“My body is speaking for me.”

Turning Aggression Against the Self

An unacceptable impulse is redirected by the child or one of the play charac-
ters against himself, often to protect someone else from being hurt.
“I am hitting myself.”
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 111

Avoidance
The child turns away from a feared object or character; the avoidance may
be only fleeting or momentary. The child has experienced the feared object
or person as a threat to his functioning and withdraws from the situation in
a phobic way.
“I turn away from the danger and won’t even notice it.”

Clinical Case: George, the Mad Scientist, and the

Camera
George, five years and eleven months old, was referred to the outpatient
clinic because of suicidal behavior that followed an episode when he took
an inexpensive toy from a store without his mother’s knowledge. When
they arrived home and she discovered what he had done, his mother repri-
manded him sternly, insisting they return to the store so he could confess
his misdeed to the storeowner. During this discussion, George became very
distraught, suddenly ran into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and held it to his
chest, threatening to stab himself. The following week George was
extremely dysphoric and commented several times that his parents did not
need him and he would be better off dead.
George’s parents described him as a precocious, intellectually curious
child, who seemed to have no emotional problems prior to the stealing. He
could be defiant at home, particularly when it came time to clean up his toys
or when he was expected to cooperate with efforts to get out of the house to
be on time for appointments. He resorted to temper tantrums when frus-
trated by limits. In kindergarten, he was doing well academically and
socially. The entire episode was still very shocking to them, as they recalled
how violently George reacted in the days after he had stolen the toy.
Family history revealed that George’s father was employed by the
armed services at the time of his birth; the family was stationed outside of
the United States. George’s mother was alone with him a good deal during
his first year of life. His infancy was marked by severe colic. The family had
no outside supports to assist with child care, and his mother reported being
overwhelmed by the baby’s crying and her own inability to soothe him.
She would sometimes close herself in the bathroom for hours to shut out
the sound of the crying. During George’s second year, the colic eased and
112 PROFILES OF PLAY

the quality of their lives improved. His parents began to take delight in
George’s bright and inquisitive nature. When George was two years old,
the family relocated to the United States. His mother was able to make
social contacts beyond the family and felt less isolated. His father’s new
work schedule allowed him to spend more time with his family, and father
and son spent enjoyable hours together. His father remembered that his
favorite activity was reading scientific books to George.
When George was four years old, his younger sister was born. He was
jealous of the new arrival and aggressive toward her. Shortly after her birth,
the family moved again, this time to a large urban center. George had made
close friends, and it was difficult for him to say good-bye. His parents
noticed more oppositional behavior at this time. They attributed it to per-
sonality factors and sibling rivalry. Parent–child tension sometimes became
marked during confrontations. The parents seemed to add to George’s pro-
vocativeness, rather than to provide him with calm and comfort. His mother
described an incident on a snowy day when George was thwarting their
efforts to return home. She was feeling pressured by the demands of her
schedule. At one point, he leaned over to scoop up some snow, and she,
feeling exasperated, pushed him over with her foot, so that he landed head
first in the snow. Mother and father laughed as she shared her fantasy of
rubbing his face in the cold snow, as she watched him lying there.
Malaise, tension, and suppressed parental hostility were palpable at
George’s first interview, when his mother was present. George denied any
suicidal ideation and volunteered to describe the stealing incident. He said
he was afraid he would have to go to jail for what he did. He glanced
uncomfortably at his mother at this juncture, referencing her reaction. Then
he buried his head in her lap. With the therapist’s support, George’s mother
was able to stroke his hair and reassure him that no further punishment was
needed.
In the following pages, therapy sessions from the beginning, middle,
and end of George’s treatment are excerpted and analyzed to highlight both
verbal and nonverbal aspects of the play and the unfolding process of
treatment.
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 113

SEGMENTATION OF THREE THERAPY SESSIONS

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
SESSION 1 SESSION 2 SESSION 3

Figure 3.1 Percentage of Time in Play in the Course of George’s Treatment

Since George presented as an inhibited, intellectualized, precocious child,
it was anticipated that he would resist free, spontaneous play. Because of an
inability to sustain play activity, early therapy sessions were expected to
have individual play segments of short duration, with the child going in
and out of play activity frequently. The proportion of total time spent in
play during the session was expected to be low, and the time spent in
non-play to be high. It was anticipated that as treatment progressed, play
activity segments would increase in duration and that sessions would flow
more smoothly, with fewer moves in and out of play and more time spent in
play activity.
All the expectations based on George’s presentation at the beginning of
therapy were fulfilled. As therapy progressed, play activity segments
accounted for increasing amounts of the time in his sessions, and play
activity segments became longer, with fewer shifts in and out of play
activity. By the third session described, from the ending phase of treatment,
play activity occupied 74 percent of the session (see Figure 3.1), a clear shift
from George’s predominant choice of non-play activities at the beginning
of treatment.
114 PROFILES OF PLAY

Excerpt From a Session at the Beginning of Treatment

George begins to build a tower out of markers. With eyes averted and
turning partly away from the therapist, he says in an earnest voice, “You
know what?” He describes how his grandma had a precious antique bureau
that had belonged to his father and now belongs to him. Talking in a serious
manner, he continues to connect markers together. As he describes how they
had to throw out some toys to make space for the furniture, he disconnects
one of the markers and begins to draw.
Therapist: Do you miss those toys?
George: One tiny thing, a clock. I threw it at my mom and it
broke. I didn’t want to clean up my room.
Therapist: What will your parents do with the toys?
George: They will throw them in the garbage. They (the toys) are
like my friends. (Looks sad, begins to draw) I’m making a
real weird animal. See—it’s a flying animal and it can
slide. (Demonstrates sliding movement)
Therapist: Is this an animal you have seen before?
George: I made it up. It’s on my planet—Za!
Therapist: Who lives on this planet?
George: I used to. Of course (goes back to connecting markers and con-
structing a large tower), the planet blew up. But I got into a
spaceship. It was a heavy-duty spaceship. I blasted it.
(Uses connected markers as a space ship)
Therapist: You got out in time. Is the planet still there?
George: No. (Scatters markers all around) It exploded.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

George began his play activity by building a tower of markers. Then he took
one of the markers and began to draw. His drawing depicted a weird animal
who lived on a planet from which, George tells us, the animal escaped before
the planet exploded. A sense of agency as well as destructive force was com-
municated through his accompanying actions. Although George’s words
told a story, his feelings were not fully contained by the words. His intense
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 115

affective expression preceded his story, and through movements he

conveyed a sense of what would happen next.
Precocious verbal skills, problem-solving abilities, and a strong
capacity for affiliation were positive prognostic indicators for a good
outcome for George’s treatment. Therapeutic issues included regulating
George’s aggressive impulses and freeing him from his entrenched,
defensive stance. George seriously rationalized his need to be rid of the
thrown-out toys, but at the same time he lamented and missed his toy
“friends.” The desire to act grown-up and comply with his parents’ expecta-
tions undermined his true feelings. He felt sad and lonely with his friends
gone. Suddenly, George shared with his therapist his secret, private
universe. The story ended in disaster and rescue, barely masking George’s
explosive feelings. Although part of himself had escaped, part of himself,
the planet where he once resided, had exploded.
George told his story through the media of art activity, construction
play, and fantasy. As has been noted, his verbal themes were continually
augmented by nonverbal movement. Play activity took place in the
macrosphere, using everyday-sized objects in the room. George initiated
the play activity on his own, and both therapist and George facilitated the
unfolding of the play. George ended his play story with a bang, clearly fully
satisfied with what he had created.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
Although the content of George’s story was intense and explosive, his
overall emotional tone was sober. Emotions he expressed fell in a somewhat
narrow range and included aggression, anxiety, fear, sadness, and relief.
Transitions between affect states were always abrupt, but George’s affective
tone was usually appropriate to the content. His attitude towards the
therapist was neutral; the therapist was consistently positive in his attitude
towards George.

Cognitive Components
In this play activity segment George related events that had occurred on the
planet Za. In narrating and describing these events as an observer, he dem-
116 PROFILES OF PLAY

onstrated a capacity for complex role-play. Neither the animal he described

nor the planet underwent transformation. Although the planet disappeared
(or fragmented) and became a nonentity, it did not become something else;
the characters in this story retained their stable identities until the planet
was destroyed. The “weird animal” was definitely a fantasy, as was the
planet Za. Although magical, George’s characters were not bizarre.

Narrative Components
In this story George was both the “One Who Was Caught” and the “One
Who Leaves” (in a hurry). George associated themes of construction (the
markers) with destruction (the planet) and escape (his own). Connecting
these three themes was the terrifying underlying relationship described
metaphorically in the story as annihilation by a diffuse force. George was
very verbal. His use of metaphor resulted in his using language in two ways:
talking during the play describing the play and talking during the play
about something other than the play (his associations). Language used by
the therapist during the play was mostly to inquire about ongoing events
(description) and to inquire about the play (making connections between
events and gaining clarifications about events).

Developmental Components
George’s play was appropriate for his developmental level. There was no
dominance of gender expressed in the play. The “real weird animal” was
clearly different from others and reflected George’s concern in perceiving
himself as different from others on the planet, a differentiation issue. A
practicing issue was observed in George’s attempts at successfully portray-
ing the different creature and blasting away from the exploding planet.
George’s blast-off on the space rocket was definitely a phallic expression of
destructive separation. This forceful move outward and away from the
home that could no longer protect him took place within a “heavy-duty
spaceship” that could assure his survival. George played both alone in the
presence of the therapist and together in cooperation with the therapist.
This interaction could be translated as an expression of George’s develop-
ing trust in his therapist, who provided a safe sphere within which play
could develop (the “heavy-duty spaceship”). This background of safety
could allow George’s aggression to emerge with playfulness and without
fear of retaliation.
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 117

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

George was consistently aware he was playing, but he was not fully aware of
the expressive role of his nonverbal actions. As he attempted to relate to the
therapist through words, he also constructed a parallel connection between
markers. When his planet Za exploded, the markers were thrown
helter-skelter around the room. Thus, words did not fully represent
George’s emotional experience, and actions were needed to expand on the
emotional impact of the planet’s fate. In this verbal and precocious child,
early conflicts remained around the control and expression of aggression.
These early conflicts needed to be “played out” in activity (regression). In the
service of playing, George relied heavily upon a relationship with the
therapist (affiliation) and his creative imagination to design alternative
fantasy solutions to his real-life dilemma (problem-solving).
The verbal narrative unfolded in counterpoint to nonverbal play
activity, one complemented the other. George gave a full, continuous verbal
account of the fantasy and real-life events over which he had no control,
such as the throwing of one tiny clock (an angry projection when asked to
pick up his toys), or the explosion of the planet Za. Through nonverbal play
activity (construction of a tower and drawing of a creature) and the
abundant use of projection, George was able to maintain some sense of
control and agency over events narrated in the dialogue. Loss of control was
expressed through activity as well as fantasy, for example when the erect
tower of markers toppled and scattered. The exploding planet had been his
secure haven; this former protective container for the self was forcefully
shattered (aggression against the self ). George used strategies of avoidance and
reaction formation to disguise and deny these threatening impulses. Instead,
our hero rescued himself by blasting away from the threat of annihilation. In
order to accomplish this feat, George needed to use more potent defensive
strategies, strategies characteristic of rigid/polarized players (discussed in
Chapter 4) and even of extremely anxious/isolated players (discussed in
Chapter 5). Omnipotent control and idealization of his own creative abilities
enabled him to achieve the powers he needed. The tower of markers that
had previously tumbled was transformed into a magically empowered
vehicle. In scattering and disorganizing his play materials (dispersal) George
depicted his greatest terror (disintegration of the self ); separation from
planet Za assured his survival. As his therapist reflected, “You got out in
time.”
118 PROFILES OF PLAY

Excerpt From a Session Midway in Treatment

Play activity began to open with nonverbal expression as George increas-
ingly made more direct efforts to approach and interact with his therapist
(note the creeping, crawling creatures). As their relationship deepened,
George was often taken by surprise as unanticipated new fantasy characters
appeared alongside familiar ones.
George: (Brings his eye to the video camera)
Therapist: Good shot. I can see your eye real close.
George: (Covers camera lens with his hand)
Therapist: Where did the movie go?
George: (Smiling, dangles fingers in front of lens)
Therapist: More of those creepy, crawly things…
George: (Brings small toys—spiders, small dinosaurs and triceratops)
Therapist: (Cautions George not to touch lens of camera)
George: (Brings a toy car to the camera, then shoots a toy gun at the
camera. Approaching the blackboard, George appears to be in a
pensive mood) Oh! (He draws a turtle with stripes on its back)
Therapist: Interesting picture. (George goes to erase it) Can I guess
what it is? A turtle. A turtle is now in our movie.
George: Guess. (He takes paper, draws a picture and holds the picture
next to the camera lens and moves it around)
Therapist: Can you say what is happening? What does it look like?
George: Maybe a weird scientist…going into the black hole.
Therapist: Will he come out of it?
George: No. No one comes out of the black hole. (He continues to
draw)
Therapist: He would be scared, wouldn’t he? Did you ever go into a
black hole?
George: No.
Therapist: Were you ever scared it might happen?
George: (While drawing) No—only—(repeats with stutter), know
what? There is this one constellation where there is
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 119

something really special about it. (George places black

hole on the camera)
Therapist: Hold it back further so that we can see.
George: (Holds up a sign that says “George,” then takes a dinosaur and
dangles it before the camera. He then takes a knife and wields it
before the camera)
Therapist: That’s knife-wielding George, “Samurai George.”
George: (Shoots gun at camera. Next he makes a Lego plane that zooms
into camera. Then he gestures making binoculars and looking
intensely into the lens)
Therapist: Hey, out there! Hello, out there!
George: (Ends fantasy play activity by suggesting they play chess)

Therapist and child proceed to prepare for the next game encounter. The
playful interaction with the therapist via the camera lens is discontinued;
the confrontation is continued in a more structured play form.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

In the play activity, George continued to adapt play materials in a creative
way. He made contact with the threatening observing other (the camera)
and fought against it, in an effort to ward off the threat posed by regressed
and depressive feelings inherent in the image of the black hole. George’s
sense of self was under siege by these strong aversive feelings that he could
no longer ignore.
The therapist’s mirroring, empathic stance enabled George to continue
his construction of a safe arena in which to explore these overwhelming
feelings. The emergence of a sense of self (as a very special constellation), an
active, assertive (at times scary) self, could be represented, given the sup-
portive presence of the therapist. Many of these images were enacted
through mime rather than described, an indication of George’s vulnerabil-
ity to regression. The therapist’s attunement to George’s nonverbal commu-
nication led to the appearance of the “mad scientist” who could receive and
understand his alien messages, a clear reference to emerging scary feelings
of intimacy within the transference relationship and a distant reference to
his scientific father.
120 PROFILES OF PLAY

George’s play was fantasy and used drawings (art activity) to gain full
expression. It was initiated nonverbally by George when he engaged the
camera in eye-to-eye contact. The play activity was facilitated by both
therapist and child; the therapist continued his inquiries into fantasy events,
and George maintained an active repartee in response. There was no
evidence of inhibition in the play activity, which took place in both the
realm of toys (microsphere) and the real world (macrosphere). The ending of
the play segment was initiated by George, who aggressively approached the
camera (with a knife and a zooming plane) and then introduced eye-to-eye
contact from a new perspective with the use of binoculars. He seemed
satisfied with this fantasy play and chose to continue the therapeutic
encounter in the form of a more structured game. The dyad made a transi-
tion through a period of pre-play to playing chess.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
George was having fun during this playful segment; his overall hedonic
tone was pleasurable interest. The spectrum of affects was wide, from
delight to fear. Although George was clearly delighted with his new
escapades and discoveries (for example, the creepy crawly things), he
appeared to be surprised and a bit frightened by their unexpected appear-
ance. Feelings expressed by George included aggression, anxiety, curiosity,
delight, fear, sadness, and wariness. This widening of the spectrum of
feelings expressed is an indication that George’s defenses are loosening as
he becomes aware of feelings previously hidden and protected from
awareness. As would be expected given George’s heightened level of
anxiety, the regulation of his feeling states was not smooth, despite the
increased range of his affective responsiveness. The modulation of his
feelings was somewhat rigid, and the transition between his affective states
was usually abrupt. George was very connected to the unfolding of the play
encounters, and his affective tone was consistently appropriate to the
content of the play. The therapist’s affective tone toward George was very
positive; he clearly enjoyed his interactions with him. George’s affective
tone toward his therapist was somewhat positive but also tinged by appre-
hension.
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 121

Cognitive Components
In this play activity midway in treatment, George again used complex role
representations to describe and direct many different characters. It was sig-
nificant, however, that none of these creatures interacted with each other.
Rather, they appeared before the camera, in mime and pictures, and were
designated by name; no plot emerged between them. In fact, George
seemed surprised by the appearance of some of his characters, such as the
turtle, while he was clearly fearful of others (squirmy, crawly creatures and
the large dinosaurs). The therapist attempted to elicit action between the
characters. In a parallel role it was he, the brave “mad scientist” (a personifi-
cation of aspects of the transference relationship), who ventured into the
black hole. Then, George diverted attention from the scary black hole to
the creation of a very special constellation named “George.” “George”
appeared in the place of former nothingness. By inference, it seemed to
require the “weird scientist’s” spunk and courage to explore and thereby
facilitate George’s act of self-discovery. In contrast to the previous play
activity segment, in which survival depended upon omnipotent powers,
this emergence of self occurred through the combined efforts of a partner-
ship—the explorer and the artist.
The camera was an important participant in this dialogue, a silent
partner who contained all the images projected into it. The camera did not
react to aggression and was able to absorb these feelings without retaliat-
ing. George was able to interact in this way with the observing, nonverbal
camera. He gained courage at the end of the play segment, approached the
camera closely, and carefully peered inside the lens. The camera functioned
as a benevolent other (another aspect of the transference relationship
between therapist and patient), inviting curiosity and intimacy.
In this play activity toys were used predominantly for realistic purposes
(for example, a gun to shoot) and did not transform. Under George’s
control, however, the black hole did undergo change. It was not trans-
formed totally but receded and became a background for the emergence of
a special constellation named “George.” As noted above, many of the char-
acters were represented through actions and the use of mime. The charac-
ters described were mostly real, but some characters also presented with a
blend of realistic and fantasy features (for example, the “weird scientist” and
the turtle, which had stripes on its back).
122 PROFILES OF PLAY

Narrative Components
George’s play included diverse topics including doctor, natural forces,
fighting, attacking, the “One Who Might Be Caught,” and the “One Who Is
Resurrected.” The diverse topics cue us in to the nature of the conflict that
George experienced as a need to fight off powerful forces that might lead to
his destruction. This inclusion of possibility is a departure from the absolute
power of certainty. George was depending upon the resources, energy, and
support of his doctor to become the “One Who Is Reborn.” The idealization
and grandiose scale of this conflict suggested the threat of underlying
feelings of helplessness. The theme of the play activity, a struggle between
life and death, reflected the ultimate terms in which George understood his
conflict. Relationships within the play narrative were pervasively influenced
by the threat of destruction emanating from identifiable sources (the black
hole, killer, “Samurai George”).
George’s use of language was limited in this play activity segment to
talking during the play to describe the play. The therapist’s use of language
was quantitatively more abundant and diverse. He used language to describe
the play, to speak within the metaphor of the play, and to talk about the
meaning of the play.

Developmental Components
In this play segment George’s play was developmentally appropriate for his
chronological age. The aggressive, assertive actions (fighting, shooting)
evident in the play are associated in our culture with predominantly phallic,
masculine activities. In this play, George was focused upon practicing his
strengths, going back for new weapons and then returning to the struggle.
His sadistic assertions and subsequent fearful retreats to security suggested
issues dominant during the rapprochement subphase of separation–individ-
uation. George’s bravado also suggested the expression of some concern
about prowess (practicing subphase). In interaction with his therapist,
George combined cooperative play with a few moments of retreat to solitary
(aware) play.
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 123

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

In this session, the tendency to disperse and scatter toy objects (dispersal) as
a response to stress was markedly absent. Instead of disorganization, attack
by an identifiable aggressor and the need for protection became the focus of
play activity. Using these strategies George was able to demonstrate an
emergent capacity for trust in his therapist. The growing resilience of their
relationship (affiliation, identification) was reflected in the considerable use
of adaptive coping strategies. George was able to use play materials cre-
atively and began to appreciate his therapist’s sense of humor and to use
humor himself (for example, in exaggerated gestures, the “weird scientist”).
The humor was based on attunement to his own anxieties, as well as
attunement to how these anxieties appeared from the perspective of a
different “lens” (diminished and incongruous). Humor acted to counteract
and defuse the constrictions imposed upon his play by fearfulness. Feeling
less constrained, George was freer to experiment with modifications in his
play and even to experiment with closeness, as he peered into the eye of the
beholding camera. Finally, George demonstrated the use of positive expec-
tation (anticipation) when he began to respond to the therapist’s queries as
to what might happen next in the emerging narrative.
Coping strategies indicating the presence of conflict between wishes
and actions, between conscious thoughts and thoughts of which he was not
aware, were also a strong focus in the play. George made considerable use of
projection to give voice to his ideas through the medium of play characters.
Regression was observed in his advances to the camera’s lens, conveying his
hunger for early visual attunement and recognition.
George used avoidance in an attempt to regulate his level of arousal
when he covered the lens with his hand (akin to playing peek-a-boo with
the camera lens) and the therapist inquired, “Where did the movie go?”
There was clear conflict over giving expression to these early tactile (creepy,
crawling things) and visual longings for contact. George countered by
using intellectualization to transform these play interactions into scientific
forays. His efforts to shoot and attack the camera were reaction formations
against these threatening needs for closeness. Being assertive and threaten-
ing himself seemed to reassure George, and he was then able to reconnoiter
the camera once again (from a distance, using binoculars). What George
124 PROFILES OF PLAY

was searching for through his actions was the best distance (perspective)
from which to view and connect with this desired/threatening object.
George’s capacity for identification with the aggressor served him well in
this play activity. Being strong and taking the offensive, George could relin-
quish almost completely his efforts to have omnipotent control. His presen-
tation as strong and phallic warded off his feelings of being tiny and unpro-
tected. These polarized defensive strategies were becoming less rigidly
organized as George allowed himself to play about the flow and regulation
of his feelings. One reminder of George’s loneliness and isolation occurred
in the use of dedifferentiation to represent the black hole. In the emptiness of
the black hole the dread of nonrecognition was fully represented. In the
nothingness of blackness, all parts were the same and everything was
reduced to nothing. In using this representation George was alluding to
early experiences of disconnection from caregivers and the persistence of
despair and depression in his emotional life. There was poignancy in the
potential for rebirth that occurred once his worst fears had been repre-
sented, reflected upon, and shared. It was, after all, the “weird
(anxiety-arousing/strange/fascinating) scientist” (intellectual) who had the
courage to venture forth and made the discovery of a new constellation
called “George.”

Excerpt From a Session During Ending Phase of Treatment

George initiates a storytelling game with the therapist, and they begin to
select picture cards. At first George is subdued, then he laughs mischie-
vously and joins in sorting paper characters.
George: This is the doctor who takes them home and cooks them
for dinner!
Therapist: Mean doctor!
George: Not a doctor, a scientist. (He tosses the doctor figure into the
air) Everyone gets cooked for dinner (George throws the
characters in the air) Ga-ga. This is a doctor, too (chooses
character). They fight!
Therapist: Looks like the people are very angry at each other. Is that
the end of the story?
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 125

George: (Challenging) Don’t I get a chip (reward for story)? (Stands

on his head)
Therapist: What does this mean?
George: Not go to the doctor. Not the mad scientist doctor.
Therapist: Doctors can’t be trusted.

(Long silence. George continues to sort out the characters, therapist’s gaze is averted.
While grimacing mischievously, George grabs several chips)
George: I win. Nine to ten. I tricked you. (Laughs)
Therapist: There’s Mr Tricky. (George laughs) Mr Tricky is so rich.

(Therapist looks away)

George: (Steals chips)
Therapist: Where are the chips? Where did they go?
George: I ate them. (He is on his knees and he falls forward onto the
floor with the upper part of his body curled in fetal position)
Therapist: Where are the chips?
George: (Giggles, bends over in laughter. Raises himself up on his knees
and falls forward again)
Therapist: You ate my chips!
George: (Laughs. Falls forward. Raises self up on haunches and points)
There’s a tree behind you!
Therapist: (Turns to look)
George: (Takes more chips and doubles over in laughter) Look out the
window!
Therapist: I’m afraid to look! (Turns to look)
George: (Giggles. Steals)
Therapist: What did you do?
George: I didn’t take anything. (Long giggles. Distracts therapist and
steals) I tricked you again! Want to play a game? Want to
see how they clean up at school? (George messes all the
pieces) “Clean Up.”
126 PROFILES OF PLAY

Therapist: What does the teacher say?

George: (George screams in laughter with jeering tone. He continues to
make a mess)
Therapist: Is that when the baby comes out?
George: Where’s the baby? There’s no baby. I’m not a baby. I’m a
big boy.
Therapist: We all have a baby side.
George: I don’t have a baby side.
Therapist: Sure, we all have a baby side. I see your baby side. Show
the camera your baby side.
George: (George turns towards the camera, sucking thumb, while smiling.
The infant expression transforms into a cruel monster face. The
monster has a threatening, angry expression, with open mouth
and bared teeth. George turns to therapist and laughs with his
head back. George turns to face the camera again with exagger-
ated monster face. He turns back again to the therapist and raises
his arms in a menacing gesture. With this expression he returns to
face the camera and then back to the therapist)
Therapist: Oh, that’s the monster side. Show the camera your angry
side.
George: (Angry grimace to camera)
Therapist: What is that side?
George: My big-big tooth side. (Giggles and then attacks therapist, all
the while giggling) Show me your scary face!
Therapist: (Does his imitation of George)
George: ( Jumps away and onto couch, hiding his head in the pillows,
immersed in giggles)
Therapist: Is it scary?
George: Show me again! (Shrieks in laughter, jumps on couch,
burrowing his head)

The therapist suggests they pick up the pieces of the game. George goes to
the shelf and takes out a game of checkers. He picks up a few characters and
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 127

quickly sets up the board. The board game follows, with George following
the rules. First the therapist is winning; the tables are turned when George
executes a double jump. The therapist playfully tries to distract George and
steal some of his pieces back. They engage in a repeat of the stealing game,
this time with the therapist as culprit. The therapist agrees to stop his
stealing and the game of checkers continues uneventfully for another ten
minutes, with George eventually winning. George helps to put the board
game away and inquires if he can come to see the therapist for another year.
The therapist says he will need to discuss his request with his parents,
however, they still have eight planned sessions before they end. George
begins to playfully box with the therapist. The therapist allows George to
play at fighting him. He comments that George seems upset and angry at
the thought of ending. Upon leaving they agree to talk more about ending
next time they meet.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

In this session, direct interaction appeared between George and his
therapist. Forbidden impulses were enacted through pantomime, along
with associated affects. High-pitched, tremulous, intense laughter accom-
panied provocative, assertive “in your face” movements. These provocations
were balanced by slow, stealthy movements, attempting to hide secretive,
forbidden activities. Playful falling from sight (collapsing) and hidden
movements shielded the protagonists (therapist and child) from dangerous
angry and messy wishes. The challenge to the observer was to untangle
George and his therapist from among the quickly transforming roles.
George initiated the fantasy play by selecting the picture cards for a
game. Both therapist and child participated actively in the game, facilitat-
ing direct interactions and confrontation with George’s infantile feelings.
There was no evidence of inhibition of play activity by either therapist or
child. The playing gained momentum and was ended by the therapist
because the session was ending. George agreed to end the play; he reluc-
tantly made the transition to non-play as he joined in cleaning up and
expressed the desire to extend the number of planned therapy sessions. The
play took place entirely within the realm of everyday surroundings
(macrosphere); there were no small toys used in the play (microsphere).
128 PROFILES OF PLAY

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
George’s affective response to playfulness changed dramatically during the
course of treatment. This last play activity segment was obviously pleasur-
able for George. He felt very positive feelings for his therapist; his therapist
felt very positive feelings for him. George felt comfortable in expressing a
wide spectrum of feelings, including aggression, anger, anxiety, curiosity,
fear, pleasure, wariness, and feigned indifference. George was flexible in his
modulation of feelings. The transitions between affective states (fear to fun
to anger) fluctuated: at times they were smooth and at other times they were
abrupt. This more fluent, fluid affective responsiveness was one of the
markers of George’s therapeutic progress.

Cognitive Components
In this play activity segment George relinquished his controlling style and
played interactively with his therapist. The play activity was predominantly
dyadic role-play, with the therapist and George as partners. Minimal
evidence of complex role-play occurred at the beginning of the session,
when George directed the play describing themes of cannibalism between
characters. George’s play definitely became more spontaneous and less
intellectualized. The roles of therapist and George underwent voluntary
transformations as they reversed “cat and mouse” positions. Play activity
ended with the revelation of two important characters, the needy baby and
the threatening monster. These two representations gave expression to
George’s underlying conflict in a graphic and dramatic manner. The
therapist was not threatened by the outburst of aggression and encouraged
George to share these feelings with the camera. George complied and then
asked the therapist to do his scary face. The therapist’s imitation of George’s
expression triggered squeals of delight as George recognized this replica-
tion of his expression. In this session it was the players, the people, that
changed roles, while play objects did not transform. Similarly, play objects
were portrayed realistically (for example, the game chips), while the play
characters (doctor, robber) were fantasy.
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 129

Narrative Components
The play narrative was rich, detailed, and revealing. The doctor–scientist
was a combination of barely concealed paternal traits. This was the adult
man who could not be trusted. Out of his greediness the mean doctor took
his patients home and cooked them for dinner. George’s wishes to go home
with his doctor were warded off by the unacceptable and scary thought
that he might be devoured. Also being expressed (although projected onto
the doctor) were George’s own greediness and wishes to devour the doctor.
This was the killing aspect of the mean doctor and of George himself. His
mischievous laughter was a clue to his recognition of aspects of himself as
projected into the other. The story ended in chaos as all the characters got
mixed up and fought with each other.
The question of rules and boundaries was explored further as George’s
hunger (he wanted to eat the chips) led him to try to trick his therapist by
stealing and hiding the chips. Again and again the thief appeared to divert
his victim’s attention and trick him. The character of the thief represented
George’s rebellion against compliance with the demands of an untrustwor-
thy (yet desired) doctor/scientist (father) who left him hungry, greedy, and
without provisions. This blended character combined attributes of
caregiving, “weirdness,” and intellectual curiosity. The baby/monster was
another combination character blending two conflicting aspects of George.
This unfulfilled infantile neediness and resultant aggression appeared in
combination to undermine socialization. “Trickiness” was a strategy
targeted to deal with these unresolved feelings, as nothing could be relin-
quished to the untrustworthy caregiver. George successfully turned passive
into active by playing at being the thief who took his revenge against the
greedy, mean adult. Messiness and breaking the rules assured the
baby/monster of victory. In this way the baby/monster would always win
and triumph over competition.
Within the play narrative relationships depicted included dependence
(patient on doctor, child on parent), malevolent control (doctor of patient,
parent of child), and destruction by an identifiable agent (the rage of the
parent, the retaliation of the child). George used language minimally in his
play, but he verbalized in many different ways. He used babbling (“Ga-ga”)
when he enacted the role of baby, and he used language to describe the play
and to talk about the meaning of the play (mainly to negate the therapist’s
130 PROFILES OF PLAY

interpretations). In contrast, the therapist made considerable use of

language to verbalize multiple roles, to talk about the meaning of the play,
and to a lesser extent to describe the play.

Developmental Components
The developmental level of the play activity ran the gamut from very
immature to age appropriate. Gender roles observed in the play activity were
both masculine (scientist, doctor) and feminine (baby, teacher); there was no
predominance in gender role expression. Separation–individuation phases
represented in the play also ran the gamut from differentiation (“How am I
different from you?”) to practicing (playing at trickery) to rapprochement
issues (“good versus bad”). Unique to this session was the direct interaction
between the players and George’s increased variability and flexibility in
social response. The social level of the play (interaction with the therapist)
was completely reciprocal.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

The safe confines of therapy enabled George to express and explore early
wishes and needs without fearing retaliation or loss of relationship (affilia-
tion). Thus, in an apparent paradox, his growing self-efficacy was reflected
in a growing playful tolerance for the unacceptable and an expression of the
charming and spontaneous aspects of his infantile self. Regression when it
occurred was in the service of the ego. This backward glance enabled
George to explore his earliest feelings of oral craving for supplies and anal
messiness. Growing up, George had prematurely surrendered these basic
needs to rules imposed by others and the dictates of intellect.
Adaptive strategies used by George included considerable use of humor,
anticipation, sublimation, and identification. By establishing a connection
between the robber and the doctor, the constellation and the black hole, the
observing camera and all of his creatures, George gained the capacity to
form cross-identifications. Only by communicating with the therapist using
nonverbal signs and symbols could George reveal the hidden, feared part of
himself. Once these intense longings were revealed and shared in playful
activity, George felt recognized and understood by himself and his
therapist.
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 131

Indications of conflict were still center stage at this point in the

treatment. George’s laughter was tinged at times by mania, a kind of
overarousal and excitement. This excited laughter was an example of
reaction formation, when George made scary things appear funny so that his
intense feelings could be tolerated. For example, the therapist did his
imitation of George’s “big tooth” side, and George jumped away, hiding his
head in the pillows. When the therapist inquired “Is it scary?” George
shrieked “Show me again!” as he jumped on the couch burrowing his head
in the pillows. At this point in his play, George was right on the cusp
between play and terror. It is the therapist–patient relationship that tipped
the balance to the side of safety and play. Doing and undoing was another
strategy used in the play to forestall fear. For example, George would negate
his baby side in interaction with the therapist and then reveal it to the
camera. Other conflictual strategies observed included the continued use of
considerable projection and regression.
Rigid/polarized play strategies were not present in this play activity
segment. Dispersal, an extreme anxiety/isolated defense, occurred
minimally at a point of disorganization. In George’s story, the adult doctor
took all the characters home and ate them for dinner. This oral cannibalism
was accompanied by a regressive “Ga-ga” from George, and the characters
got thrown into the air. It was followed by George’s statement that he did
not want to go to the doctor, not the “mad scientist” doctor. The therapist
responded, “Doctors can’t be trusted.” A long silence followed. The next
play events led to George’s acting out his tricks and stealing reward chips.
Like the doctor who could not be trusted, George consumed his prey
(played at eating the chips).
132 PROFILES OF PLAY

George’s CPTI Profile Over Eight Months of Treatment

MOST CHARACTERISTIC 5

CONSIDERABLE 4

MODERATE 3

MINIMAL 2

NO EVIDENCE 1
Adaptive Conflicted Rigid/Polarized Extreme Anxiety/
Strategies Strategies Strategies Isolated Strategies

Beginning Middle Ending

Phase Phase Phase

Figure 3.2 George’s Coping–Defensive Strategies in the Course of Treatment

In a review of the shifts in George’s coping/defensive strategies over the

course of treatment, the largest change is seen in the elimination of observa-
tions in Cluster 3 (Rigid/Polarized strategies). Cluster 2 (Conflicted strate-
gies) remained most characteristic throughout the treatment, coexisting at
the end of treatment with increased Cluster 1 (Adaptive) strategies. Cluster
4 (Extreme Anxiety/Isolated) defenses remained minimally present
throughout. What can we learn from the progression of coping/defensive
strategies observed in play activity during this brief (eight-month) thera-
peutic intervention? George continued to confront early infantile needs
and at moments to lose control. These ideas and wishes became counterbal-
anced, however, so they appeared in more adaptive, sublimated, playful
ways. The feelings of helplessness could be shared as frustrations at the end
of a session; the black hole no longer beckoned as an intimidating, lonely
place. Indeed, George encountered a new best friend, an expanded constel-
lation of feelings he could now identify as his own. The CPTI profile
documents this shift away from impulsivity to addressing conflicts in a
more metaphorical way capable of modulation and symbolic expression
(see Figure 3.2).
 THE CONFLICTED PLAYER 133

Analyzing George’s play activity with the CPTI, we observed how

George used identifications and cross-identifications to compensate for
deficits in parental attunement and referencing in early childhood.
George’s black hole represented the absence of an available attachment
figure. Following the venturing of the “scientist” into the hole, George gave
birth to his own self. This emergence of self suggested George’s yearning
for a male identification figure, his disillusionment with mother, and his
need to depend on his own independent creative resources.
The roles enacted sequentially included the “mean doctor” who can’t be
trusted, the “robber” who steals, and the cruel “monster–baby.” George
played at being the monster–baby and asked the therapist to enact the same
role. As he initiated cross-identification, we recalled D. W. Winnicott’s
(1971) description of “you be me and I’ll be you” as the basis for the
wholesome, creative aspects of introjective/projective processes. George
challenged his therapist to put himself in his place. George was testing: Did
the therapist have a basic understanding of others? More specifically, did he
have a sense of what it felt like to be George, especially the demanding,
regressive, troublesome George? Only if the therapist could play his role
(and he did, to George’s delight) could George grasp the experience that
someone else could understand what he felt. Only then could he proceed to
consolidate the capacity to understand intuitively the commonalties of
experience, the capacity to see himself in others and others in himself.
As described by Elsa First (1994), by using cross-identifications George
experienced first-hand how his experience of being George could become
more fluid and imaginatively more exchangeable. It was precisely this
newly expanded imaginative capacity that actively diminished the effects
of rigid/polarized defenses in his play activity. George’s capacity to
observe himself (his observing ego) was reflected in his consistent
awareness of himself as a player, and in his strong directorial abilities to
represent diverse roles. George could now play at having and sharing
affective experiences without experiencing the fear of turning into the
other person. He could more truly be himself and at the same time more
truly share in the experiences of others. It was failure of this reciprocal
to-and-fro understanding to develop that mired George in intellectual
defenses and conflict surrounding recognition of his own human feelings.
134 PROFILES OF PLAY

In the last play activity segment, George played at pretending, hiding

and being found. His actions resonated with peek-a-boo games ubiquitous
to early childhood. Anni Bergman discussed (1999) how this mutually
regulated game of hiding and being discovered can become the vehicle for a
child’s growing capacity for imaginative exchange. In this game, George at
last felt sufficiently safe to reveal himself, secure in the knowledge of his
therapist’s acceptance. He experimented with hiding and transforming into
another menacing character, knowing full well that each time the therapist
would welcome him back into reciprocal interaction. No feeling would be
too adversarial; no experience would be unacceptable.
At the close of treatment, George had fully discovered the realm of play,
where everything was possible and nothing was unpardonable. George dis-
covered this play realm in the presence of another, the therapist, who at this
point was not only a presence but also a partner in pretend. Shifts in the
profile of coping–defensive strategies indicated how reliance on mind alone
had constricted George’s overall development.
In treatment the range of strategies enacted in play activity revealed
roots of conflict from earliest infancy. These markers of early turmoil
remained in the experiences of dispersal and dedifferentiation, compensated in
part by reliance early in treatment on omnipotent control and identification with
the aggressor. As George’s affect became less constricted, the flow of identifica-
tions opened new options for sublimation and modulation of the strict
commands of conscience. George emerged freed of the rigid constraints that
brought him to treatment.

The children in the next chapter struggle with even more sharply defined
archetypes in their play. These children are more restricted in their possibili-
ties for engagement and interaction with others through play activity. We
will follow from process notes the treatment of two cases manifesting a pre-
dominance of rigid/polarized play strategies.
 chapter 4

The Rigid/Polarized Player

Rigid and polarized play lacks the regularity of flow, modulation, and
gradual change usually characteristic of play activity. Change, when it does
occur, happens suddenly. It may be marked by abrupt interruptions, which
may have idiosyncratic meanings. Characterizations may be limited to ste-
reotypes with a narrow focus and not expand to convey a range of possibili-
ties of self-expression. The play activity may appear superficial, or alterna-
tively the fantasy depicted may be remote and encapsulated. In these
instances the player is stuck in his set patterns, losing touch with the plea-
surable, unexpected moment of spontaneous interaction.
Polarized play activity is always rigid, and it is further regimented by
the segregation of opposites. The child may depict sharp contrasts in an
adversarial scenario, or he may depict only one side of the conflict, leaving
the other perspective to the inference of the viewer. Within the transfer-
ence, feelings for the therapist may fluctuate sharply and result in abrupt
changes of affect and behavior.
These two types of play activity—rigid and polarized—have been
grouped together because they both are characterized by restriction. These
restrictions sharply diminish the integrating value of the play activity for
the player. Indeed, these types of play are expressive of a gap or failure that
the player experiences in coping with the stress of threatening circum-
stances. The severe degree of threat may lead the player to shut down or cut
off from the area of disturbance. Alternatively, if the intensification of the
threatening situation in the play activity becomes unbearable, the child may
lose control and “act out” his impulses or interrupt the play activity and
leave the room.

135
136 PROFILES OF PLAY

Rigid/Polarized Defensive Strategies Used by the Child

at Play
At this point along the spectrum of coping/defensive strategies, the child’s
emphasis is primarily on the defensive aspects of play activity. As the child
perceives a greater degree of threat, he becomes increasingly preoccupied
with defense of the self from threatening thoughts, feelings, and interaction.
The child’s focus in play activity reflects this defensive position.

Denial
The child refuses to recognize the reality of a traumatic experience, a painful
affect, or a facet of the external world.
“I am shutting off, closing myself off from that (painful) experience. I
make believe it didn’t happen, or it doesn’t exist.”

Splitting
The child sets apart attributes of himself or the other by showing lack of
concern about or denial of contradictions. The threatening attribute is not
recognized as an aspect of the self or as an aspect of the other person.
“The two contradictory aspects of ‘me’ or the ‘other’ person are
separate and disconnected.”

Projective Identification
Bad/aggressive parts of the self or other persons are externalized into
others who are experienced as dangerous. Fear of retaliation makes the child
defend himself by keeping others under control to prevent them from
attacking.
“The attribute (or experience) is outside of me. ‘I’ am actively holding it
at arm’s length so it does not return to me.”

Primitive Idealization
The person or object is valued above all others because of a characteristic or
characteristics that cannot be duplicated. This attribute casts a magical,
powerful spell, giving power and authority to the self or the other.
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 137

“You are perfect, pure, kind, and powerful. Being with you I can be like
you.”
“I am perfect, pure, kind, and powerful. Being with me you can be like
me.”

Primitive Devaluation
The child devalues himself or the other completely. He is rejected as dis-
gusting and abhorrent, dismissed as having no importance, and may appear
sinister or threatening. The devaluation is complete and focuses on one
characteristic or set of characteristics that causes the self or the other person
to be unacceptable, with no redeeming features.
“You are no good.”

Omnipotent Control
The child attempts to control the external world by being all-powerful and
coercive, expecting to be treated in a special way.
“I must keep everyone under my control.”

Identification With the Aggressor

The child identifies with the “bad person” who intrudes and aggresses upon
the others. By playing the strong man, he quells his anxiety about being
weak and vulnerable.
“I am big and strong and can do as I please.”
Discussion of the two cases that follow will use categories from the CPTI
(Kernberg, Chazan, & Normandin 1997) in summaries of sessions, based
on process notes. Rather than individual session ratings, global ratings are
given to phases of treatment. The phases described (beginning, middle, and
ending of treatment) cover several therapeutic sessions, highlighting the
types of behaviors, feelings, and activities observed in each phase. This
summary adaptation of the CPTI enables the therapist to describe thera-
peutic progress using discrete categories to condense the course of
treatment. Summary use of the parameters of play activity is particularly
helpful in charting progress in treatment when observations have been
recorded as process notes. Global analysis lacks the precision of videotaped
138 PROFILES OF PLAY

observations, but it is a pragmatic clinical application of the scale when vid-

eotaping is not desired.

Clinical Case: Rebecca “The Perfect One” and the

“Witch”
Encountering six-and-a-half-year-old Rebecca provided the opportunity to
observe problems that become manifest when a young girl’s development is
seriously impinged upon by familial collusion with cultural ideals. Working
with Rebecca and her family posed the following questions: Does early
injury to the development of self manifest itself differently in males and
females, reflecting rigid cultural stereotypes? What form is characteristic of
the feminine ideal? How is that form expressed in our culture? How is it
manifested in the young girl? The roots of the young girl’s dilemma may
originate in earliest childhood, but new challenges are presented by the
oedipal period, including issues of triangulation, rivalry, and the increas-
ingly distinctive role of her relationship to father. How can these challenges
be met by the young girl, and how can they be resolved satisfactorily in
order to adapt to the school-age period of latency? What role does play
activity have in the transition from the “little girl” of early childhood to “big
girl” of school age?
Rebecca’s development had been compromised by cultural ideals and
family values. The challenge to therapy was to free her from the influences
inhibiting her growth and prepare her for a transition to increased
autonomy. Play activity would play a major part in her recovery.
Rebecca’s issues touched on some important cultural gender differences
in the development of self-esteem. In our society, male self-esteem develops
as assertiveness and directness. In extreme instances these characteristics
develop into a macho style of bravado, an exaggerated form of male
grandiosity. In the young girl self-absorption is expressed differently. It is
characterized by such adjectives as “beautiful,” “well-behaved,” “adorable,”
“compliant,” “subservient,” “dependent.” Rebecca’s parents associated these
attributes with their daughter as a young child.
In narcissistic pathology, early injury to the self occurs when these char-
acteristics are rigidly organized, replicating expectations of the culture that
are being transmitted through the family. The young girl’s grandiosity,
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 139

unlike masculine bravado, is silent; it is conforming and synchronous with

parental desires. Narcissistic pathology in little girls may be seen as patho-
logical only when these narcissistic defenses for compliance are breached;
the little girl is considered to be problematic only when she is unable to
fulfill the ideals expected of her. Thus, Rebecca’s parents became
concerned because their daughter was not living up to expectations and
was becoming increasingly withdrawn. Prior to the challenges of school
age, compliance provides security for young girls and often parades in
silent collusion with parental and cultural expectations. When Rebecca
entered school, and as she faced new and different demands for initiative,
achievement, and independence, compliance posed problems for her.
On entering therapy, Rebecca was six and a half years old. She
presented with an aloofness and sense of entitlement expressed in a
haughty attitude. In addition to demands for attention, she was a perfec-
tionist, hypersensitive to the evaluation of others. She presented herself as a
teenager, precociously concerned with her appearance, beauty, and sexual
attractiveness. There was a seductive quality to her behavior that placed her
constantly at center stage. At the time of referral, Rebecca met the criteria
for narcissistic personality disorder in childhood (Beren 1998).
Rebecca’s parents brought her for treatment because she had become
emotionally withdrawn and moody since her entrance in first grade. They
perceived her problems to have begun in kindergarten, when she first
exhibited a lack of motivation and took no pride in her work. Her initiative
continued to deteriorate until she reached a point where she seemed to lack
any sense of agency. Her mother’s dominant attitude was of disappointment
in her daughter. In school, Rebecca was learning at a slow rate, despite
good native ability and no evidence of developmental deficits. She was
extremely sensitive to shame and did not seem to understand that effort was
needed for achievement. She held herself apart from expectations for her
age group and demanded immediate recognition, despite her inability to
perform. She seemed to be enacting the role of a star performer who had
somehow lost her talent and star status but could not adapt to this changed
reality.
Most puzzling to Rebecca’s parents was the emergence of separation
problems at age six. Initial adjustment to preschool had occurred without
difficulty. Earlier socialization with peers reportedly presented no
140 PROFILES OF PLAY

problems. Despite moodiness in kindergarten, she had separated well. This

year, as her withdrawal and avoidance increased, she had become clingy
and was avoiding new experiences. She was refusing play dates and resisted
forming new friendships. These regressive trends were not at all consistent
with Rebecca’s view of herself as more a teenager than a young girl. This
disparity caused her endless upset, adding to her overall experience of frus-
tration and envy of others who did not have this problem.
Rebecca lived with her parents and younger brother, aged three and a
half years, in a single-family house in an affluent suburban neighborhood.
She was the product of a normal pregnancy and delivery, a happy infant
who slept well and was visually alert. She was always more expressive
verbally than physically active. At times she seemed to lack physical stamina
and always needed her naps. She was “dainty and feminine and did not like
roughhouse play.” Toilet training was achieved at two and a quarter years
with no difficulty. There were no serious illnesses or family losses. Rebecca
was prone to upper respiratory infections and would run high fevers, which
caused parental worry. Reportedly until age three years she was a happy,
bubbly, independent little girl. Rebecca’s parents identified the trigger for
her difficulties as the birth of a son, Joey, who was described as “outgoing
and loving.”
A review of family history revealed that Mrs R. grew up as an only child
in a house with a lot of screaming and belittling. She called herself a “yeller.”
She wondered if her daughter’s problems came from having always been the
center of attention. “Was Rebecca jealous of her brother?” The question was
asked in an uncertain manner, as if Mrs R. had difficulty understanding her
daughter’s feelings. Her general attitude was of disappointment at her
daughter’s lack of progress. Mrs R. described herself as always having been
insecure as a mother and somewhat distant from her children. Rebecca’s
early development had been reassuring to her. In a similar manner, she now
found Joey to be a source of good feelings, while her daughter had let her
down. Mrs R. had never enjoyed being at home with the children and had
always used full-time caregiving assistance.
Mr R. was antagonistic to treatment. Despite his negativity, however, he
was always pleasant with the therapist. What seemed to contribute to his
skepticism was an underlying intense emotionality and sensitivity. He was
fearful of changing his permissive and somewhat seductive relationship
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 141

with his daughter. Toward the end of treatment he was able to cooperate
with limit-setting established by the mother. Despite the difficulty he had
in accepting the need to change, he never actively undermined treatment.
Mr R. described himself as a person who avoided confrontations at all
cost. He attributed this characteristic to the fact that he grew up the child of
an alcoholic father. He always felt the need to protect his mother from
criticism, and he felt similarly protective toward his daughter, whom he
perceived as vulnerable. He was fearful of placing demands on her and was
cautious because “she might break up.” He described his daughter as
“spacy.” “She blocks things out, shows no real commitment to anything and
quits easily.” He felt Rebecca was insecure, always searching for attention
and love. She seemed to him to have a fear of abandonment: “She doesn’t
trust us, she has lost her inner security.”
In contrast to the mother’s uncertainty, Mr R.’s perceptions seemed to
be more articulate and empathic. Although inappropriate at times because
of his overprotective, intrusive stance, he nonetheless was able to read his
daughter’s signals of distress. This style of parenting intrigued me, as it
reversed the expected pattern of mother–daughter intimacy. I wondered
what effect this was having on Rebecca’s sense of identity and how this
balance of relationships affected oedipal outcome. Did it result in “oedipal
victory”? Did it represent a triumph of daughter over mother? Or, alterna-
tively, was her precocious sensuality a defense against yearnings for mother
and an underlying feeling of loss? I tended to think the latter dynamics
were at work, as Rebecca’s sadness became manifest and play themes
expressed her sense of loneliness and abandonment. Indeed, her father’s
role could not compensate for what Rebecca was missing in her relation-
ship with her mother. Mrs R. had already described herself as insecure in
her mothering. Was Rebecca somehow trying to compensate for these
maternal insecurities at the expense of developing a secure sense of who she
was as a separate person?
Parents and Rebecca agreed to a treatment plan of twice-weekly sup-
portive–expressive psychotherapy. Parent counseling sessions were held
twice a month. As treatment progressed, the frequency of parent sessions
declined to once a month. Treatment for Rebecca extended over a two-year
period. Throughout this time the family’s treatment alliance with the
therapist remained strong.
142 PROFILES OF PLAY

The Beginning Phase of Treatment

At our first meeting, I encountered a petite, attractive, intense, composed
child who sat maturely on the couch and began to enumerate her problems,
from time to time receding from direct eye contact and diverting her gaze.
She was afraid to go to other people’s houses and had big, sad feelings that
made her sigh and cry. I noted that Rebecca’s parents had not mentioned
depression or sadness, only withdrawal and “spaciness.” Were both parents
out of synch with this aspect of their daughter’s subjective experience?
The first phase of treatment consisted almost entirely of non-play
activity. Rebecca’s capacity to play seemed eclipsed by her assimilation of
“grown-up” icons, leaving her no room for self-expression. Our first
encounter was telling. Rebecca informed me that she intended to be a
writer. There was virtually no delineation of boundary between her expres-
sion of purpose and her expectation of achievement. Aspiration and attain-
ment were one. Rebecca asked me for pencil and paper and began to write
her “novel.” She was literally paralyzed and could not bring pencil to paper
productively. After agonizing for over half an hour she produced one
dangling phrase, “The little girl…” As Rebecca sat immobile in front of her
assigned task, she became frustrated and wondered aloud how she would
ever become a writer. My many efforts toward diversion went unheeded;
Rebecca was determined not just to write but to become a writer. Her frus-
tration and disappointment became enormous, but she continued to sit dili-
gently in front of the blank paper. Over the course of several sessions I was
able to suggest to her that the stories she had inside might emerge more
easily if she were able to tell me about her life.
Rebecca spoke of Donna, her teenage baby-sitter, whom she idealized.
Donna shared with Rebecca intimacies of her romances and allowed
Rebecca to watch sexy movies. Rebecca later confided that she had a fantasy
twin named Donna, who was her constant companion. I experienced an
almost immediate feeling of being valued as a trusted confidant.
Rebecca spoke openly about her brother Joey, toward whom she had
ambivalent feelings. “I cried when mother went to the hospital. He used to
be so cute and nice, but not anymore. He’s mean and hits me and doesn’t
share toys with me.” This complaint of transformation seemed to echo the
parents’ description of Rebecca’s change from cute baby to problem
three-year-old. Rebecca continued, “He hurts me sometimes by saying ‘I
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 143

don’t like you.’ He just says it to make me feel bad.” Her main worry was
that when her mother went away, she might not come back, a worry that
started when she was six years old. She felt it might never get better.
Rebecca’s response to my expression of interest in her was almost
immediate. She returned to our next session with several ambivalent
impressions of therapy and me. She shared a dream: “I dreamt you were
mean and you were going to take me away and steal me.” I viewed this
dream as the activation of her inner world. She was ready to share this
aliveness, though it was confined to states of consciousness where the self
was dormant, “asleep” to its everyday experience. She dared to dream I was
mean, wanting to take her away and steal her. The dream could be inter-
preted as a wish that, indeed, I would take her away from her parents and
coerce her to be with me. Perhaps more to the point, it was a communica-
tion to me about relationship. Rebecca’s understanding of relationships was
of master/servant enslavement. To be with me would not be her choice; it
would be a condition imposed upon her from which there was no escape.
In our meetings I saw Rebecca’s frightened side; she would hold on to
her coat, for instance. I saw her forceful, coercive side when she pleaded
with her mother to stay and then ignored her. She instructed her mother
not to yell in the car. She reported that she was not “really” scared at her
friend’s house. She informed me that her mother said she did not have to
come here again and that she would not be returning.
At this point, Rebecca engaged in her first play activity. She drew two
pictures, one on the front, the other on the back of the paper. The image on
one side was of a woman in slacks; she appeared rigid, defiant, and angry.
On the other side was a beautiful, smiling young woman with long hair and
flowing dress. Both figures were sparsely depicted, with minimal elabora-
tion. I shared with Rebecca that these pictures were two very different
images, the idealized princess of royalty and the frightening, hostile figure
(later in therapy to be elaborated as the bad witch).
During this early phase in treatment Rebecca preferred non-play
activity. She would engage me in long descriptions of events at school.
According to Rebecca, the other kids were “mean” to her. Bobby said her
father had died and made her cry. Trisha hit her and lied. When children in
class misbehaved, the teacher put their names on the blackboard, causing
her great apprehension. Whenever she met new people she worried that
144 PROFILES OF PLAY

they might be “mean.” Rebecca used the word “mean” to refer to a broad
category of people and experiences she considered unacceptable. These
included her brother, some peers, her mother, and at times her therapist.
Her father escaped this classification.
Rebecca’s sessions revealed additional evidence of her representational
world as sharply divided between the “good” and the “bad.” One day she
told of a bad dream she had had that morning. “I went to the doctor, I was
really sick. The doctor was just coming out; I was locked in the hospital. I
was crying and screaming for half an hour. There was a fire and I wouldn’t
let go of the doctor. Then, he let me out of the hospital and I got to go
home.” Rebecca’s fear of the doctor barely concealed a wish that the doctor
might keep her with him. It echoed the earlier dream of being “stolen” by
me. She was imprisoned, locked in, held against her volition, a relationship
based on coercion. She feared the fiery intensity of her feelings. Could these
be her “mean” feelings, which the doctor might discover, revealing the
ugliness inside her? Clearly, in the dream, Rebecca hoped for a cure and a
speedy return to her home. In her therapy, Rebecca was hoping for a rescue
from her dilemma of imprisonment. Was the imprisonment imposed upon
her by family demands, or was the imprisonment the result of her own rigid
and tormenting expectations?
Rebecca was grown-up in her demeanor as she described her problems.
She was articulate and offered her own self-prescriptions. For instance, she
gave me her remedy for not having bad dreams: “If I can convince myself
not to worry, then the bad dream won’t come back.” Her question to me was
“Do grownups ever get sad?” She felt she was bad because she cried and was
different from others.
Rebecca wondered if grown-ups were ever sad. In her experience adults
had been unable to contain and mirror her feelings of disappointment and
sadness. D. W. Winnicott (1963) and others (Beebe & Lachmann 1988;
Bion 1962; Emde & Sorce 1983; Stern 1985) have emphasized the impor-
tance of parental mirroring of their child’s affective states. This attunement
enables the child to define himself via the parent’s capacity for reverie and
introspection. I reflected how deficient Rebecca’s upbringing had been in
this regard. At first she was overvalued, and then she was devalued with no
support for development of her own authentic sense of self-esteem. Perhaps
Rebecca’s immediate connection to me reflected this lack of authentic rela-
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 145

tionship to her parents. How would she make use of the therapeutic oppor-
tunities now available to her?

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

In the beginning phase of treatment Rebecca gave only a brief glimpse into
her imaginary life. Most of the time in treatment was invested in complaints
about school, peers, her parents, her sibling, and the therapist. She could
not play; play activity was inhibited by rigid expectations of herself. She
longed to be a creative individual but strove to be creative in ways far
beyond her chronological abilities. Unrealistic wishes and corresponding
fears impeded the flow and spontaneity integral to play activity. In the
guise of dreams (non-play), Rebecca allowed herself some self-expression.
These dreams condensed the essence of bondage and imprisonment.
In contrast, by using art activity Rebecca was able to give two antago-
nistic images center stage. She did not perceive them as interacting in any
way; they were not in conflict and did not exist as simultaneous images in
time. Rather, these two young women existed sequentially, one following
the other. Each had its own integrity and its own reality. Each had its
separate place in time (splitting). The brief segment of play activity occurred
in the macrosphere of the everyday world. It was initiated by Rebecca and
inhibited by her through the use of avoidance. Despite the efforts of the
therapist to facilitate further unfolding of the play, Rebecca refused to
continue to draw and ended the play, seemingly satiated, and went on to
non-play (further complaints about the kids at school). The entire play
segment took place in the macrosphere.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
During this brief play activity segment, Rebecca’s overall hedonic tone was
sober. The spectrum of affects expressed was constricted, and the regula-
tion of affective states very rigid. There were no transitions between
affective states during this brief segment. The transition into drawing had
been spontaneous and abrupt, but there was no accompanying change in
affective state. Feelings Rebecca expressed while drawing included
aloofness and wariness. There was no evidence of the feelings of fear,
146 PROFILES OF PLAY

worry, or anxiety that were expressed in non-play dialogues and dream

states. Rebecca’s affective tone was appropriate to the content of the
drawing, though as noted it was not expressive. Her feelings for the
therapist were generally neutral and at moments somewhat positive. The
therapist’s attitude towards Rebecca was generally positive.

Cognitive Components
Role representation consisted of dyadic roles (simple collaborative
role-play) with the depiction of two characters. The characters were not
enlivened with dialogue. Crayons and paper were used in a realistic way and
represented realistic objects. There were no transformations of representa-
tions (persons or objects) in the play.

Narrative Components
Narrative components were not elaborated in the play activity. No topic or
theme of the play activity was explicitly described. The relationship
portrayed was only of the self, as the two images were independent of each
other. There was an implied relationship involving issues of control
(idealized versus demonized), never made explicit. Rebecca was silent for
the most part; there was a bare minimum of language used to identify the
characters. The therapist used language to describe the drawn images,
attempting to ascribe meaning to the play activity.

Developmental Components
The developmental level of the play was somewhat immature because of its
constriction. The drawings were of girls; therefore, the gender identity of
the play activity was predominantly feminine. Rebecca was initiating play
activity on her own, a beginning evidence of practicing efforts towards sep-
aration–individuation. For the most part, however, her activity implied
yearning for symbiotic merger—between the two girls and with the
therapist, who would understand the meaning of her drawings without the
need for words to communicate. The social level of Rebecca’s play was pre-
dominantly solitary (aware), with some cooperation in sharing the drawings
with the therapist.
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 147

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

In this brief play activity segment, Rebecca demonstrated the adaptive use
of art materials and minimal affiliation with the therapist. Conflict was
evident only in the avoidance of further elaboration about her work.
Most evident in the drawing were rigid/polarized defenses, including
the use of splitting (drawing of two women), idealization (woman with long
hair and flowing dress), and devaluation (woman in slacks). There was no
evidence of extreme anxiety/isolated play strategies.
Rebecca was consistently aware of her inability to play. She was also
painstakingly aware of the first surge toward play activity. Rebecca’s finely
tuned awareness of her own feeling states and incapacity to perform were
prominent markers of her rigidly held emotional state, a state she experi-
enced as precarious and fraught with dangers.

The Middle Phase of Treatment

The middle phase of treatment was marked by a shift in focus within
treatment sessions from primarily non-play to primarily play activity.
Rebecca used therapy as a safe haven to create a fantasy world inhabited by
myriad characters. Within our relationship she seemed to have ended her
intense search for a durable, nonretaliating playmate. For me, she had
become an active, energized partner in the business of playing. The play
took the form of enacting lively interacting roles.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Little Annie, from the comics, was a favored character. She had no friends,
only a dog for companionship. She would seek shelter within an
orphanage. But even there, refuge was not to be found. Annie might be
placed with “mean” foster parents!
At other times, Rebecca would be the mean old witch and command
the therapist to have her baby for her, so she could steal it and sell it, as she
was too old to have a baby herself. This phenomenon of the witch is a
familiar image, representing a cluster of emotional responses (Lane &
Chazan 1989). It was recurrent in Rebecca’s play. In the world of magic,
there are two kinds of witches, good and bad. The good witch has good
magic, implicitly knows who we are, and grants us our deepest wishes. The
148 PROFILES OF PLAY

bad witch has bad magic, is childless, and creates terror. Each image is split
off from the whole, while its counterpart exists in the unconscious (very
much like the two girls drawn by Rebecca in the first phase of treatment).
Rebecca’s witch was the hag, an old woman, badly dressed with stringy
hair, spindly legs, and a cackling voice. An example of her play follows:
“Remember your homework? Have sex—have a baby! You have until
moonstroke. If you don’t do it (approaches me menacingly as if to
penetrate me with her knife), I will cut off your head. I have returned
with my blade. Have you had a baby? Yes? Then, let me see it. No?
Because you didn’t have one. I’m sure you’ll taste good for dinner. Next
time there will be no second chance. Ha—ha! Did you have sex? Good!
In nine months you are to have a baby, or else—the blade! I need it for
my baby delivering shop. If you don’t have it, you will be killed. So, you
will work on it, sweetie? I’m too old to have babies. I sell babies. I take
them away from people. Since I have helped you and the princess make
gold out of straw, you have to give me your firstborn.”
This is a phallic old witch, with a long nose, a broomstick between her legs,
and a sharp blade. Unable to have children herself, a punishment for her
meanness, ugliness, and old age, she is reduced to robbing and stealing. This
is the vindictive fantasy of an oedipal little girl, mired in preoedipal
conflicts. She cannot forgive her mother for having a baby, and because of
her envy and rage she cannot identify with maternal nurturance and
life-giving qualities. Doubtless there are also direct transference implica-
tions in the depiction of the mean old witch (like the doctor in the dream)
who steals children, locks them up, and takes them away from their parents.
Wishes and fears are closely intertwined in this characterization.
Absent from this narrative is the fantasized prince who arrives on his
white horse just in time to save the damsel in distress. The old woman incor-
porates menacing phallic features, and a prince is nowhere in sight. He has
vanished; just as Rebecca’s idealized role dissipated with the birth of Joey,
he has been banished, never to return. Sex is degrading, dirty, and
demeaning—commanded, but not longed for. And Rebecca magically
abandons the beauty of youth, skipping two generations backwards to
become the old hag of a witch!
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 149

In addition to the bad witch and the beautiful princess, Rebecca intro-
duced many other characters: Dr F., who ran the orphanage, the Queen, the
Madam, the Gypsy lady, Cinderella (forced to servitude, who became trans-
formed into the princess by—at last—the arrival of her prince), and Annie
(condensing the themes of the “injured” one, the “lost” one, and the
“abandoned” one). By playing all of these roles, by reversing play roles, and
by playing out intense cannibalistic and aggressive affects, Rebecca began
to forge connections between the “split-off ” aspects of herself. As she
began to heal, object constancy developed. The threat of stealing and being
stolen came to an end with the consolidation of superego identifications. A
siren would sound, warning that protection was needed. The players
reliably heard and responded to its message.
Gone was the haughty demeanor that kept Rebecca aloof from rela-
tionship. With the creation of her pantheon of characters, Rebecca
developed a more vibrant and spontaneous style of relating. The diversity
of characters reflected a growing sense of the varied possibilities for telling
a story and having fun. Most important of all, Rebecca clearly perceived
herself to be a player, a competent player, capable of creating characters and
evolving narratives that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. The activity
of play had enabled her to reflect upon and reexperience the
misattunements of her early childhood, while continuing the important
process of growing.
Rebecca’s play activity was rich in its narrative liveliness and diversity,
as the above description demonstrates. She spontaneously initiated fantasy
play and enjoyed imitating the diverse characters, bringing them vividly to
life. Therapist and child jointly facilitated the play, which flowed with no
inhibition. There were no disruptions or interruptions in the play. The play
activity was usually ended by Rebecca with satiation. The play scenes
always took place in the macrosphere.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
Rebecca’s feeling state was consistently one of obvious pleasure while
playing. Her range of feelings expressed while playing was very wide; these
feelings included anger, aggression, anxiety, contempt, curiosity, disgust,
150 PROFILES OF PLAY

envy, worry, and pleasure. Transitions between affective states fluctuated;

at times they were smooth, at other times they were abrupt. Overall,
Rebecca’s emotional regulation was as expected. Her affective tone was
usually appropriate to the content of the play. The feelings between
therapist and child were mutually very positive.

Cognitive Components
Rebecca represented complex roles in her play, including complex collabo-
rative role-play (three or more interacting parts), directorial play, and
narrator play. Representations of people were generally stable. Some trans-
formations occurred voluntarily within a character (for instance,
Cinderella). Objects were represented as consistently stable. Play objects
were used realistically. The style of representing play objects and people was
at times realistic, but usually a mixture of magic and fantasy.

Narrative Components
Rebecca’s play contained many topics, including fairy tales, killer, torturer,
the Caught One, the One Who Leaves. Themes expressed in the dynamics
of the play activity included bodily damage, breaking rules, sexual activities,
torture, competition, and servitude. With the arrival of the prince and
Daddy Starbucks, the level of relationship within the play narrative became
oedipal. Qualities of relationship portrayed within the play narrative ranged
from autonomous to malevolent control to destruction by an identifiable
agent. Using play activity as a medium of expression had released a
Pandora’s box of characters and fantasies into Rebecca’s play. In place of
inhibition there was vivid interaction and portrayal of a wide variety of
emotional states, often with an intensity surprising for such a young child.
Rebecca’s use of language included verbalization of multiple roles,
talking within the metaphor, talking about the meaning of the play, and
talking to describe the play. The therapist’s use of language included talking
within the metaphor and talking about the meaning of the play. Rebecca
was using her verbal abilities to complement her fluid, creative, imaginary
play.
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 151

Developmental Components
Rebecca’s play activity was very advanced for her chronological age. There
was no predominance in gender identity of the play. Separation–individua-
tion phases represented in the play included elements of practicing (various
roles), rapprochement (for example, Annie’s threatened return to the
orphanage), and constancy (Annie’s finding a home). In interactions with
the therapist, the social level of the play was reciprocal and cooperative.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Rebecca was consistently aware of herself as playing. She exhibited a full
range of adaptive coping strategies in the play activity, including adaptation
(of materials in the play room to her play), sublimation (in the stories that
clearly expressed her own strivings for acceptance and recognition), affilia-
tion (interaction with the therapist), identification (with the therapist), and
humor. Conflicted coping/defensive play strategies were not evident in the
play activity. In her fantasy narratives many of the rigid/polarized defenses
that had formerly had such a pervasive influence on her life appeared in the
guise of play characters. These defensive strategies included identification
with the aggressor, splitting, idealization, projective identification and devaluation.
Projective identification involves more boundary confusion than pro-
jection. In projection, an attribute is assigned to another; in projective iden-
tification, what is assigned to the other person is an unacceptable, aggressive
aspect of the self. Rebecca’s characters (Annie, Cinderella, the witch, the
doctor, and so on) represented split-off attributes of Rebecca herself. The
feared characters (such as the witch) were not only identifications with her
parents but also expressions of Rebecca’s own unintegrated aggressive
impulses. As such these characters were not simply characters; they were
aspects of Rebecca that she could recognize and confront in fantasy form.
To the extent that creating these characters facilitated Rebecca’s personal
integration, they were also adaptive and furthered the process of sublima-
tion. In this way, play activity provided a safe haven for exploration and
experimentation with feelings and thoughts that otherwise would have
remained polarized and rigid. Within the context of play activity, these
characters were no longer scary but became fun, intriguing, interesting, and
absorbing.
No extreme/isolated anxiety strategies were observed.
152 PROFILES OF PLAY

The Ending Phase of Treatment

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY
During the ending phase of treatment themes of rejection continued. This
time these negative themes emerged in counterpoint to themes of birth.
Through her play activity, Rebecca regained her own capacity for creativity
and her fantasized capacity for procreation. The oedipal dilemma was
resolved by the little girl’s relinquishing of her father as romantic consort,
her acceptance of the generational divide, her capacity to endure separation
and exclusion, and her reunion with her mother. A very vivid play episode
depicted Rebecca’s resolution of these issues. Following is the description of
the play activity as recorded in process notes.
Rebecca lies on the floor writhing with pain. In the midst of loud
screams and grunting noises she gives birth successively to three
babies. (How much has Rebecca taken in about sexuality and birth from
her teenage caregiver? Has she ever seen pictures or a film of birthing?)
The first is black and is given up for adoption. The second is kept for
only a few days. The third baby she cuddles and sings to with great
warmth, even though she has green eyes. Birth and acceptance of this
third baby seem to signify self-acceptance, as well as identification with
the nurturing maternal role.
The resolution of Rebecca’s narcissistic dilemma was seen in her entrance
into latency with a renewed sense of happiness and industry. She became an
active entrepreneur. She produced bracelets and lanyards, began a business
selling chocolates, eagerly anticipated and enjoyed playdates, and invested
effort in schoolwork. As these other interests emerged, our lively play char-
acters receded from view. Once again, our time together was spent primarily
in non-play, conversation about her daily activities and events occurring
within the family and in school.
The ending of treatment occurred gradually over a period of three
months. As the frequency of sessions diminished, I found myself reflecting
upon the powerful effects of play activity on development, as if the capacity
to play, “playfulness,” can become synonymous with the capacity for
humanness and relationship.
The analysis of the play activity in the ending phase of treatment
focuses upon the play segments depicting the birth of Rebecca’s three
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 153

fantasy babies. She played out these ideas in fantasy, using imitation of the
birth process, jazz singing, and art activity (drawing the babies). The play
was initiated spontaneously by Rebecca, who also gave suggestions to the
therapist as to how to play her role. Play activity was facilitated by both
therapist and child; there was no evidence of inhibition. Play activity was
ended by Rebecca when she was satiated. There were no disruptions or
interruptions of the play activity. All of the play was enacted in the
macrosphere.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
During the play activity Rebecca’s overall feeling was of obvious pleasure;
her spectrum of affects was very wide. Affects expressed in the play
included aggression, anger, anxiety, contempt, curiosity, disgust, envy,
worry, elation, and pleasure. Transition between feeling states was usually
smooth, with some abruptness due to dramatic effects. Rebecca’s regulation
and modulation of feelings were somewhat flexible, and the feelings
expressed in the play were appropriate to the content of the play. Rebecca
and her therapist became bonded through the play and shared very warm
and affectionate feelings.

Cognitive Components
Rebecca’s play was intricate and emotional. She used several interacting
characters in her play (complex collaborative role-play), and she directed
the play. Persons represented remained stable; neither persons nor objects
underwent transformation. Play objects were used realistically for the most
part, but occasionally Rebecca would substitute a different object to
represent something else. This capacity for symbolization enlarged the
domain of the play activity. Both persons and objects in the play had
elements of fantasy and reality.

Narrative Components
In Rebecca’s play, birth occurred in the presence of a doctor and a jazz
singer. She set the scene in a fantasy setting that had the atmosphere of a
fairy tale. The play was about birth and the process of giving birth,
154 PROFILES OF PLAY

caregiving, rejection, and separation. Relationships between characters in

the story were depicted as both autonomous (adults) and dependent
(infants). Rebecca was very verbal in the play. She communicated using
sounds (during the birth) and language to verbalize several roles, to talk
within the metaphor of the play, and to describe the play. The therapist
used language to speak within the metaphor of the play and to talk about
the meaning of the play.

Developmental Components
The developmental level of the play was very advanced for Rebecca’s chro-
nological age. The play was predominantly feminine, based around issues of
giving birth. The adult characters in the story had all achieved the level of
constancy. Interaction with the therapist (social level of the play) was recip-
rocal and cooperative.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Adaptive strategies used in the play activity included adaptation, problem-
solving, sublimation, affiliation, identification, and humor. Some evidence of
conflict was observed in the use of repression to ward off fears of giving birth;
also, sexual feelings were projected onto the character of the jazz singer, and
nurturance onto the character of the doctor.
Rigid/polarized defenses observed were minimal; identification with the
aggressor was used in the rejection of two of the babies. There was no use of
extreme anxiety/isolated defense strategies in the play activity.
Rebecca was consistently aware that she was playing and joyful in her
new assertive capacity.

Rebecca’s CPTI Profiles Over Treatment

Segmentation revealed sharp differences among the three phases of
Rebecca’s treatment. At the point of entry into treatment, Rebecca engaged
primarily in non-play activity, talking with the therapist about her difficul-
ties. During the beginning phase there was only one occurrence of play
activity; it was brief, yet expressive of Rebecca’s underlying relationship
issues. Play activity was inhibited because of unrealistic demands on herself
for performance. The middle phase of treatment was dramatically different.
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 155

Rebecca’s activity was predominantly play activity. As her trust in the ther-
apeutic relationship deepened, she was able to express herself through the
voices of various characters in dramatic play. The ending phase of
treatment returned to a predominance of non-play and art projects.
Rebecca became industrious, gregarious, and fun-loving. The play activity
segment analyzed dealt with birth and rejection, major themes in her
search for identity. By the conclusion of treatment, coping strategies were
predominantly adaptive. The shift in strategies from rigid/polarized to
characteristically adaptive is seen in Figure 4.1.

MOST CHARACTERISTIC 5

CONSIDERABLE 4

MODERATE 3

MINIMAL 2

NO EVIDENCE 1
Phase One Phase Two Phase Three

Adaptive Conflicted Rigid/Polarized Extreme Anxiety/

Strategies Strategies Strategies Isolated Strategies

Figure 4.1 Rebecca’s Coping–Defensive Strategies in the Course of Treatment

For Rebecca “the play was the thing.” Most issues were worked out in the
play activity itself, not in direct interaction with the therapist. The play
contained the sensitive feelings, allowing them to emerge without the
threat of retaliation. Within the play activities polarities were integrated.
Rebecca came to therapy predominantly introverted. Her rigid overcontrol
and fear of her feelings held a submerged, vital emotional life disguised as
aloofness. She left therapy a freer, more confident and playful person.
The story of Rebecca illustrates how early injury within the parent–
child dyad prevents healthy differentiation and integration. Rebecca’s diffi-
culties were rooted in failures of parental attunement, mirroring, and con-
156 PROFILES OF PLAY

tainment. In addition, Rebecca was at risk because of her extreme constitu-

tional sensitivity to the reactions of others. Her sensitivity was not balanced
by sufficient affect regulation and modulation. Rather, her sensitivities left
her emotionally labile and vulnerable. Because of her intense, unmodulated
feelings, she resorted to the use of maladaptive defenses, including splitting,
avoidance, and projective identification. These maladaptive defenses led to
estrangement and loneliness, the very feelings she feared. Aggression
aroused by maladaptive interaction with others was taken by Rebecca as
anger against herself, and she became sad.
Rebecca’s perception of herself as unworthy of love, as a slave to
superior beings (or the reverse, entitled to limitless love and admiration,
empowered over others), was portrayed through play activity. These images
had been shared by parents and child on an unconscious level. Avoidance of
authentic interaction between parents and child maintained the salience of
these fantasized relationships, images that became enshrined in Rebecca’s
subjective world as immutable realities.
In Rebecca’s play activity, themes of revenge and birth captured the
options of life and death. Living would mean to be less than perfect; dying
would be an embodiment of rigid parental expectations. In this sense,
Rebecca’s initial encapsulation in narcissism was submission to her own and
her parents’ harsh edict that she did not have a right to a full life. Instead, she
led an idealized existence, enslaved to false values and self-absorption. As
she confronted latency, these narcissistic defenses crumbled, giving full
expression to Rebecca’s inner despair. With this encounter with disillusion-
ment, therapeutic engagement became a possibility and cleared the impasse
to developmental progress.

Clinical Case: Anna and Her Therapeutic Baby

In contrast to Rebecca’s state of inhibition, the second clinical case to be
described illustrates how a low tolerance for frustration and poor control of
impulses can result in a reduced capacity for adaptability in play activity.
Although some of the major defenses Anna used in play activity—rigid/
polarized strategies—were similar in form to those used by Rebecca, her
capacity to cope and her ability to form relationships with others were, at
time of referral, markedly deficient.
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 157

Anna, the younger of two siblings living in an intact urban middle-class

family, was six years old at the time of referral for treatment. She experi-
enced extreme negativism and fears, uncontrolled outbursts of aggression,
and interpersonal difficulties with family and peers. Anna met all six
summary criteria for the diagnosis of borderline child (Vela, Gottlieb, and
Gottlieb 1983).
Review of family relationships revealed an unsettled environment,
partially in response to Anna and her difficulties, partially reflecting marital
disharmonies, and partially reflecting external extended-family and
financial pressures. Anna’s developmental history revealed that although a
second child had been planned for “sometime in the future,” her conception
was unanticipated and occurred at a time when Mrs A. felt overwhelmed by
the demands of mothering. Pregnancy and labor were normal. Anna was
breast-fed for four months. Sometime during the first year, she began to
reject her mother, turning her head away from an offered kiss or embrace.
Motor and language milestones were within normal limits. Toilet training
was spontaneous at about two years. Beginning at age three, Anna attended
a two-day nursery program, then at age four proceeded to a five-day
program. Separation problems did not appear until later in kindergarten
and began insidiously as dawdling when getting ready for school. By first
grade, departure from home was a source of ongoing stress and hostility
between mother and child.

The Beginning Phase of Treatment

Although Anna welcomed her therapy hours, she was slow to engage in
play activity. She noted the toys and talked about them positively; she also
noted that the therapist had a dog, and she associated to other dogs she had
known. She preferred the non-play of conversation; talking seemed safe
and a way to maintain control. Following this brief honeymoon period of
cooperation, Anna became increasingly attacking and oppositional. Direct
physical attacks alternated with wild mean looks and periods of puppet
play depicting sadistic patterns between a king and a queen. This was an
intense period of confusion, with marked ambivalence toward me, as Anna
tried to fend me off by perceiving me as frightening.
158 PROFILES OF PLAY

In one session, we worked with watercolors. There was good control,

with only a bit of spilling. Anna painted a hill with a circle on top, then
covered the painting with water, making the picture fade away. On another
sheet she muddled the colors together. I interpreted these colors as her
confused feelings, the reason she was coming to therapy. Each time she
made a mess of the colors in the box, she would ask my assistance to tidy
them up.
Anna: Where does the yellow go?

(I link the colors with feelings and suggest that when we work together feelings become
clearer and less confused. Anna asks for a larger piece of paper and then tears it up with
a malicious smile. I ask her if she can use the parts. She checks her watch and comments
that mine is fast by three minutes. I agree to follow hers)
Anna: The parts are too small. (Starts tearing smaller and smaller
pieces. In a baby voice) Too small…too small.
Therapist: A little baby sometimes feels the world is a confusing
place—everything seems to run together. It’s good to
have a place to bring those baby feelings.

(Anna, with a twinkle in her eye, goes to the blackboard and asks my assistance in
spelling the word “humorous.” She proceeds to write the word humorous over and over
again on the blackboard. She adds my name and writes, “Saralea is humorous.”)
Therapist: Yes, I am pretty funny, but maybe even a bit scary, too.

(Anna draws my face very clearly, then erases the features and makes them jagged with
lightning flashes)
Therapist: Sometimes I am humorous and it feels comfortable with
me; sometimes I am humorous and I have a lightning
face. It can be very confusing here.

During the next session, smiling maliciously Anna threw a ball directly at
me. I said this hurt me and directed her to a doll instead. She immediately
accepted the surrogate object and created a game of throwing balls at the
doll and keeping score.
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 159

Therapist: The doll does not have its own feelings, or otherwise it
would be hurt.
Anna: The doll is humorous. It likes getting hurt.
Therapist: No one likes getting hurt; that’s why we have toys to
play with.
Anna: (Examines anus of doll and pulls its legs apart) The vagina
would be here. This kind of doll takes water from a
bottle. The water comes out the back, but the bottle is
lost. We could put the water in its mouth.

As this session ended, I noted some anxious clinging to me at separation.

At a session the following week, at my suggestion we began with messy
pasting play. Anna used up a small bottle of glue pasting tissues into a large
wad.
Therapist: It’s fun to bring all of your messy feelings into therapy.
Somehow they are all holding together, but we have run
out of supplies.

(Anna begins kicking therapist. Therapist directs Anna to doll. Anna throws down the
doll and stands on top of it)
Therapist: Do you think she likes being thrown down and getting
hurt?

(Anna writes on sheet of paper: “You are humorous.”)

Therapist: That means you think I like getting hurt. No one likes
getting hurt. These feelings come on so suddenly. At
first you enjoy messy feelings, and then they become
frightening—suddenly you felt attacked.
Anna: (Begins a game of catch with the doll) Who is that? Really
me?
Therapist: Who is that? Really Anna?
Anna: (Hits the baby doll on the head four times, counting) One.
Two. Three. Four.
160 PROFILES OF PLAY

Therapist: Big girl Anna and baby Anna. When big girl Anna hits
baby Anna, does big girl Anna hurt baby Anna? It seems
like big girl Anna is confused. She thinks that if her baby
is hit, she will feel better. I think it hurts. Did anyone
ever hit you this way?

(Anna shakes her head. She takes a large sheet of paper and draws a whole figure—a
snowman)

The doll (baby Anna) became a prominent attachment figure for Anna. One
day she came in very upset. A statue she saw on the way to my office had
been covered with paint on mischief night. She began to paint and painted
off the paper, seemingly unaware of the mess. She responded to limit-setting
by attacking me. I explained mischief night to Anna, who claimed that if
children attacked her car, she would throw apples out the window. She then
returned to the play activity, repeatedly letting the baby Anna fall. Anna
painted bruises on the doll.
Therapist: Poor doll. She keeps falling down and getting hurt. Poor
doll, you are pushing her down. She doesn’t like it. It
hurts. This is a very, very precious baby. She is humorous.
She has a high spirit and many, many needs. She needs a
lot of care. Maybe she would rather get a hug than a hit.
Maybe the baby is getting hit because she can’t get a
hug. A humorous baby is one you can hug.

(Anna gradually stops throwing the baby doll and, making eye contact with me, she
holds baby Anna close. Then Anna feeds baby Anna until she has had enough)

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Although Anna was cautious about beginning play activity, she did engage
in the categories of art activity, game play, and fantasy play. Her play activity
was subject to disruption as aggressive impulses broke through. In those
moments, the play activity was marginal and occasionally crossed the
boundary to become non-play. Play activity was usually initiated by the
therapist; it was facilitated by both Anna and therapist. Anna inhibited the
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 161

play by refusing to play. Play activity was ended by Anna at times with
satiation, at times with disruption, and at times by transition to non-play
activity; the therapist ended the play at times with limit-setting. The sphere
of the play was completely within the macrosphere.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
Anna’s feelings fluctuated over a wide range between pleasurable interest
and overt distress. Her regulation and modulation (control) of her feelings
was usually somewhat rigid, with transitions between affective states
usually abrupt (like lightning). Feelings expressed by Anna in her play
included aggression, anger, curiosity, fear, pleasure, anxiety, and wariness.
At most times her feelings expressed were appropriate for the content
played; exceptions were due to outbursts of aggression and maliciousness.
Anna was never neutral in her attitude toward the therapist; her feelings
toward her varied from very positive to very negative. Anna’s therapist was
somewhat positive in relating to her.

Cognitive Components
Anna’s role-play was on the level of dyadic representation (simple collabo-
rative play); Anna used the doll as a partner and also engaged puppets in
dyadic interaction. Representations of people were usually stable, but these
representations were also subject to voluntary transformations (the intense
ambivalence of “humorous”). Representations of objects appeared to be
generally stable. Upon close scrutiny, however, in her initial use of water-
colors Anna seemed to be expressing aspects of the experience of involun-
tary transformation with fluid representation. Similarly, her concern with
the statues being painted (non-play dialogue) was with the issue of invol-
untary transformation and fluid representation. This tendency to perceive
objects as marginally transforming communicates the subtle, intense edge
to Anna’s states of anxiety. Despite these anxieties, play objects were
generally used realistically. People were represented at times realistically, at
times with fantasy attributes; representation of objects was generally
realistic.
162 PROFILES OF PLAY

Narrative Components
The topic of Anna’s play was fighting; themes expressed in the play
included bodily damage, caregiving, messing, and hurting. Within the
narrative the level of relationships depicted was dyadic, representing inter-
personal events between two parties. The character of relationships
portrayed vacillated between dependency, malevolent control, and destruc-
tion by an identifiable object. Language used by Anna in the play included
verbalization of a single role, talking within the metaphor, and talking
describing the play. Language used by the therapist in the play included
talking within the metaphor, talking about the meaning of the play, and
talking describing the play.

Developmental Components
Anna’s play activity was somewhat immature because of impulses breaking
through the organization of her play. The play activity reflected no predom-
inance of gender role. Very early issues of separation–individuation were
observed, including differentiation (funny/scary; confusion of colors) and
practicing (trying out the expression of her feelings within a new relation-
ship). In interaction with her therapist Anna at times played alone, aware of
her therapist’s presence; at other moments she would engage in reciprocal
interaction. Even during intense moments of aggressive outbursts there was
give and take in communication between therapist and child. Anna was
attuned to the clarifications of the therapist, if not always able to modulate
her response.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

In this initial phase of treatment Anna was only minimally aware of herself
as playing. The boundary between playing and acting out of impulses was
unclear. Because of this confusion, play activity could not be experienced as
secure. Anna’s ambivalence toward the therapist was expressed in repeated
testing of the limits of the play. Clarifications by the therapist seemed to
ameliorate this confused state, which could become overwhelming for
Anna.
Adaptive strategies in the play included the beginning use of affiliation
(with the therapist) and identification (with the therapist). Conflicted strate-
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 163

gies were not observed in the play. The predominant strategies observed
were rigid/polarized defensive strategies. These defensive strategies
included splitting (therapist’s face as humorous, then frightening), projective
identification (the doll likes getting hurt), identification with the aggressor
(hitting and kicking doll), and omnipotent control (wanting to set her own
limits). Extreme anxiety/isolated play strategies were minimally observed
as dedifferentiation and dispersal in her messing and scattering of play
materials.

The Middle Phase of Treatment

During this phase of treatment the first sustained play activity appeared
that was not interrupted by bursts of aggression.

Upon entering the room, Anna chooses to play with small dinosaur figures. The
meat-eaters fight each other to “dead” the bird who teases “Come and get me.” The
plant-eaters take over the world, thanks to the bird. The meat-eaters eat each other up
and become extinct. “They are not only dead, they are all gone forever.” The dinosaurs
are bigger and stronger, but the baby bird can make them chase him and get a lot of
attention by teasing and being bad. The bad little bird wants the dinosaurs to chase
him. Anna plays at being the bird, jumping up and down on the couch. She lays eggs.
Anna finds a new hiding place under my desk, where she keeps her secrets. She
plays she is a jellyfish that stings and hurts while hiding in the ocean. Then she becomes
an octopus that continues to eat even after it is dead.

At the next session, from her hiding place Anna told a story about a desert
dog who lived in a tent left by explorers. They didn’t know they had left
her, since she was so very, very tiny—a baby. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Anna made a drawing. She crossed out the dog and put in eggs instead. The
drawing she didn’t like she gave to me (but didn’t tear up); the drawing she
did like she gave to her mother.
In play Anna increasingly became the nurturing one, welcoming me to
a tea party and feeding her babies. She began to seek out her mother for
security whenever she encountered threatening feelings. Mother’s presence
was becoming a source of reassurance. New additions to play activities
were gymnastics and jump rope skills. Anna practiced these activities and
enjoyed performing for me, and I felt entertained.
164 PROFILES OF PLAY

Several weeks passed, and Anna began a new play activity, this time
with a baby doll with hair whom she named David.
Anna: We’ll cut his hair and make him a penis. (She cuts the penis
off and he cries. She pastes it on again)
Anna: (Speaking for David) I feel weird. I don’t have a penis, and
I don’t have a vagina. I don’t know what I am.
Anna: Be still or I’ll cut off your arm. (To me) Tell him I’m not
serious. My Dad told me when I was very, very little he
cut my hair like this. He saved it, but I never saw it.

(We collect the doll’s hair and put it in an envelope)

Anna: (Turns to the Anna doll) She hurt the doll. I don’t know if
it’ is a boy or a girl.
Therapist: This doll hurt itself because it felt different. Its scars are
better now.

(Anna looks at the sores she had inflicted on the doll’s eyes and decides they are better,
too. She says “it” (David) is a boy and hurt his head so he was bleeding; she also draws
on new bruises)

At the next session Anna went immediately to the Anna doll and decided it
was a girl. She drew a vagina on it, with a clitoris and a place to pee.
Therapist: Some kids think that if they do not have a penis
something is wrong—it fell off, or got lost.
Anna: It didn’t. She’s a girl and has a vagina. She knows she
doesn’t have a penis.

(Anna continues putting sores on the doll because she is “bad.” She gives the doll a red
rear end and puts multiple hurts on her stomach)
Therapist: Some kids feel so bad they do not have a penis, they feel
they have to hurt themselves; they are so different.
Anna: Let’s clean her up. (She makes a diaper for baby Anna)
Therapist: How did she get hurt?
165 PROFILES OF PLAY

Anna: Her parents got shot. She jumped off the Empire State
Building. She couldn’t find her mommy and daddy.
They went to the Museum of Natural History and are
with the dinosaurs.
Therapist: How terrible it is when parents argue—you feel like
they cannot take care of themselves, like something
terrible might happen. Anna might lose them and worry
it was her fault.

(Anna takes the doll and immerses her totally in water. Then she cleans baby Anna
completely and pronounces that she “came out like new.” Anna wants her mother to see)

Two weeks later it was Mother’s Day. Anna drew a face, my face as she first
saw me. Then, she drew a succession of three faces: a composite face of
myself and her mother, a frenzied face, and a clown’s face. She was intent
on showing me the changes in her mother’s face and how she was different
from me. She was particularly concerned with the mouth and used a mirror
to search for her own uvula. We talked about changes that occur from day
to day and about differences between people, such as eye color. Anna drew
a picture of a “precious little girl.” She continued to hide in her tiny space
and asked not to be laughed at because she wished to be so small.
Anna: This little girl walks and talks at one second old.

Anna acknowledged that this is unreal. She remembered that when she was
little she slept in her parents’ room and ate potatoes and applesauce and
from her mommy’s breast.
Therapist: How did your brother feel about that?
Anna: He did not see me. I was in the crib in mommy’s room.

On the blackboard Anna wrote the words, “I am.” This was the first session
to end with no manifest separation anxiety.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Anna used various categories of play activity, including traumatic play,
fantasy play, exploration, and art activity. Anna was the primary initiator of
166 PROFILES OF PLAY

play activity, feeling more comfortable in the play room. Both Anna and the
therapist facilitated the play; the play was not inhibited. Play activity was
ended primarily by Anna with satiation. Play activity occurred in all three
spheres of play—minimally in the autosphere (examining her uvula), mod-
erately in the microsphere (miniature dinosaurs), and predominantly in the
macrosphere (dolls, art activity).

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
Overall, Anna demonstrated pleasurable interest in the play activity, with
some sober moments associated with the cutting of the doll’s hair. She
expressed a wide spectrum of feelings, including aggression, anger, anxiety,
curiosity, envy, fear, and pleasure. Transitions between affective states fluc-
tuated, at times smooth but at other times abrupt. Regulation of feelings was
midway between rigid and flexible. Anna’s affective expression was usually
appropriate to the content of the play. The affective tone between therapist
and child was somewhat positive, still tinged with ambivalence.

Cognitive Components
Anna engaged in complex role-play (representing three or more roles). She
also engaged in narrator play, where she commented on play events. Despite
initial confusion regarding the gender identity of the dolls, stability of rep-
resentation of both objects and persons was generally maintained, with no
transformations.
Although Anna played at taking multiple roles, none of these roles
transformed; rather one creature (or person) was substituted for another. An
exception occurred in the drawings of faces. Although not explicit, it
seemed that Anna was depicting not only the differences between the split
images (my and her mother’s faces), but also how they underwent transfor-
mation to become a frenzied face and then a clown face. These faces did not
seem to be separate perceptions. The first image (therapist/mother) was a
confabulation; the next two images seemed to some degree to be overlap-
ping and continuous. To the extent that these representations were sponta-
neous, they were fluid and not entirely voluntary.
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 167

Anna’s use of play objects was consistently realistic. Her style of repre-
sentation of objects and persons combined elements of reality and fantasy.

Narrative Components
Fighting (a response to confusion) and the search for identity were the main
topics of Anna’s play. Themes of the play included bodily damage, bodily
function, caregiving, feeding, resurrection, and rebirth. The play contained
episodes for two (dyadic) and three (triadic) players. A variety of relation-
ships was portrayed within the narrative, embodying the characteristics of
dependence, malevolent control, and destruction by an identifiable agent.
There was considerable use of language during the play activity. Anna ver-
balized multiple roles, talked within the metaphor, described the play,
talked about something other than the play, and elucidated its meaning (for
example, gender identity of the doll). The therapist used language to talk
within the metaphor, describe the play and the meaning of the play, and
talk about something other than the play.

Developmental Components
Because of the confusion reflected in Anna’s thought processes, the devel-
opmental level of her play activity was somewhat immature in organiza-
tion. Caregiving activities in the play were predominantly feminine;
otherwise the play demonstrated no gender dominance. Differentiation
and practicing were observed as Anna continued to explore and identify
differences (for example, between alive and dead, between devouring and
nurturing) and practice her new understandings gained through playing.
The social level of the play was reciprocal interaction between Anna and
her therapist.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

During this intermediate phase in treatment there was considerable
evidence of Anna’s growing awareness of her role as a player. This
awareness paralleled Anna’s increased sense of her own identity and dimin-
ished state of confusion. A strong pull toward relationship with the
therapist modified her need to nullify and divorce play activity from
meaning. As Anna communicated clearly to the therapist that “you can
168 PROFILES OF PLAY

accept my precious little girl self,” she instructed the therapist not to laugh
at her wishes, as she knew they were unreal. The strength of the therapeutic
bond (reflected in Anna’s instructions to the “therapist who listens”) seemed
to alleviate her previous alienation from strong wishes to be loved as little
and dependent.
Adaptive strategies were frequently observed in the play activity. These
adaptive play strategies included affiliation (with the therapist), identification
(for example, with the doll’s missing parts), emergence of authentic
(non-anxiety-based) humor. Projection and regression (conflicted strategies)
were major resources for feelings and themes expressed in the play activity.
Rigid/polarized play strategies were still dominant in the play activity.
These strategies included splitting (meat- from plant-eaters), projective identi-
fication (explorers leave baby dog, unknowingly), and identification with the
aggressor (cutting the doll’s hair; play at being the “bad” dog). The tendency
towards fluidity and multiple percepts described in the discussion of
cognitive components suggests an early modification of these embedded
rigid strategies. Also to be noted is the absence of disruptions due to loss of
impulse control. No extreme anxiety/isolated strategies were observed in
the play activity.

The Ending Phase of Treatment

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY
Toward the end of the second year of treatment, Anna visited a medieval
museum where she viewed the tapestries of the unicorn. Their portrayal of
blood and battle terrified her. In therapy, inspired by the tapestry and its
depiction of birds, she created a fantasy world of birds, an activity that was
sustained over a three-month period. Each bird was made of a different
metal (as were the church treasures in the museum), forming a hierarchy of
preciousness. Subsequently, this hierarchy was further refined with a lineage
of different-colored birds, each with its distinctive characteristics. In this
fantasy world there were also a pair of turtles, a snake, and a vulture. The
gold jay would nest and have babies (there were blue jays and cardinals
outside my office window). Within this play activity Anna was able to begin
to talk about relationships at home, sibling rivalry, and her brother’s wish
that she were dead.
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 169

The death of Anna’s pet bird, Bluebird, became an important focus for
family interaction. Anna wanted to hold and caress the dead animal. Her
father was frightened by these feelings and called me for suggestions and
reassurance. A funeral was held, and Anna was permitted to grieve. In
therapy she was able to talk about the episode and share her sadness with
me. Her fantasy was of rebirth, like a jack-in-the-box. She was angry at
Bluebird for leaving. She took out a doll and began caring for it.
Anna: When I grow up I will be a big girl, and then a teenager,
then a woman, then a mother; I will need a grand-
mother and grandmother will need a great-grand-
mother. Do I have a great-grandmother?

We talked about her awareness of death. Anna talked to me more about

Bluebird, saying “I feel completely good about her.” It was a moving
experience for her parents as well, who took pride in their management of
the loss.
Concerns about ending were first expressed at the time of the death of
Bluebird. Anna became aware that there might be a time when she would
no longer need to come to treatment. Coincidental with these concerns
were some definite signs of progress, both within her inner world and with
those in the world around her. Anna’s fantasies became less tyrannical and
punitive. Her characters became playful, and events that had seemed scary
now at times could be perceived as amusing. Anna was no longer a passive
agent in her play; she willfully imposed outcomes and suggested alternative
versions of scripts.
Anna became very involved with the widely publicized case of Baby
Fae, an infant who was given an artificial heart. In the therapy room, Baby
Susan was born. She suffered from a congenital defect of a split heart that
needed to be healed. Baby Susan survived, even in the face of the death of
Baby Fae, and was nurtured well by parents and doctors. Within the trans-
ference, sadistic projections decreased and there was increased pleasure in
being together. Particularly significant was Anna’s new-found ability to
make reparation: “I want to apologize. Sometimes when I get angry, that’s how I
act.”
These forward steps alternated with regressive periods, recalling the
earlier days of treatment. Outbursts of aggression, extreme fearfulness, and
170 PROFILES OF PLAY

physical attacks would indicate the resurgence of old issues. I told Anna that
when these frightening concerns came back, I noticed she could now
almost take care of them on her own. I reassured her that we would work
together on them as long as necessary. Anna created two new games reflect-
ing her understanding of the treatment process. One was called “Looking
Forward and Looking Backward”; the other involved discovering the end
and beginning of a maze. These games were played spontaneously at
different times during the ending phase of treatment, and we were both
actively involved in the play.
A new bird to replace the lost bird brought a resurgence of concerns
regarding separation. Anna talked about the loss of her old bird, who had
eggs; the new one was a male. Anna would sit in my rocking chair with baby
Anna alongside her and ask if she could always visit me and if I would visit
her. We talked about her wish to be my baby and always be with me. With
increased acceptance of the limits of the treatment relationship, our bond
strengthened. Anna talked about metamorphosis (a big word!); she defined
it as “something transformed that undergoes change like a butterfly or a frog.” The
room was her cocoon, and I reflected how comfortable she seemed to feel
now in the cocoon while undergoing change. Anna welcomed the new
school year, and in early fall we began a gradual disengagement from
treatment, with allowance for follow-up sessions as requested.
Anna’s play activity included imitation, fantasy, and art activity. Play
activity was initiated by Anna and facilitated by both Anna and the
therapist. There was no evidence of inhibition of the play activity. Anna
usually ended the play activity with satiation; alternatively, she moved on to
non-play without satiation (conversations). Although outbursts did occur
during the session, they were usually not disruptive to the play activity and
occurred as separate non-play segments. The balance of sessions was almost
equally divided between play and non-play (mostly talking about everyday
events).
Anna’s play included a microsphere (a tiny world of birds) of her own
creation. Like day residue in a dream, this imaginary world that she con-
structed had its antecedents in viewing a real work of art. Of note was the
transformation of this scary battling world into a pleasurable, ordered,
playful sphere of interaction. Considerable play occurred in the
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 171

macrosphere, the everyday realm, as well. No play occurred in the

autosphere (play on the body).

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Affective Components
Anna’s overall hedonic tone was predominantly obvious pleasure. The
range of feelings expressed was wide, including anxiety, curiosity, fear,
sadness, worry, and pleasure. Regulation of affects was somewhat flexible,
with transitions between feeling states generally smooth. Anna’s affective
tone was usually appropriate to the play content. Affective tone expressed
between the play participants (therapist and Anna) was very positive.

Cognitive Components
Anna’s use of role representations was complex and included narrator play.
Roles represented showed various forms of stability. Most representations
were stable with no transformations (particularly inanimate objects).
Toward the end of treatment, however, there were remarkable instances of
voluntary transformations (of persons and animals) to stable representa-
tions. In a parallel development, change as part of living and growing could
be perceived as nonthreatening progress. These transitions were no longer
traumatic, as they were referenced to stable ongoing relationships. In her
play Anna used objects realistically. Representations of people and objects
were both fantastic and realistic.

Narrative Components
The narrative of Anna’s play activity was diverse and rich in variety of char-
acters and events. Battles (fighting), fables, treasures, and doctors were all
topics for her play. Themes of Anna’s play activity included birth, bodily
damage, caregiving, death, illness, metamorphosis, separation, and repara-
tion. Relationships portrayed within the play involved oedipal (familial)
dynamics (it was noteworthy that intergenerational references were to a
maternal lineage). The characteristics of relationships depicted in the play
narrative included autonomy, dependence, and destruction by an identifi-
able agent. Anna used words to express multiple roles and to speak within
the metaphor of the play. In addition she used language to describe the play,
172 PROFILES OF PLAY

to talk about things other than the play, and to convey the meaning of the
play. The therapist used language to speak within the metaphor of the play
and to converse about the meaning of the play.

Developmental Components
Anna’s play was developmentally advanced in its use of extensive metaphor
and elaboration of play concepts; there was no predominance in the gender
identity of the play. Rapprochement conflicts and constant relationships
(separation–individuation) were depicted in Anna’s play. Interactions
between therapist and Anna (social level) were both reciprocal and coopera-
tive.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY

Anna was consistently aware that she was playing. This observation is con-
sistent with her pleasure in the elaboration of extensive and continuous play
narratives (extending over several sessions) and the achievement of individ-
uation (separation–individuation) in play. Adaptive play strategies included
adaptation (of play materials, regulation of affective states in interaction),
anticipation (of the ending of the play), sublimation (of emotional needs), affil-
iation (with therapist, among characters in the play), identification (with the
therapist), and authentic (non-anxious) humor. Conflicted strategies
observed in Anna’s play activity included intellectualization (her museum
interests) and regression to infantile neediness.
Rigid/polarized play strategies were not observed within the play
activity. During aggressive outbursts in non-play segments when she was
interacting with the therapist, there was evidence of continued identifica-
tion with the aggressor and loss of impulse control. These problematic
behaviors reemerged as the ending of treatment became more and more of a
reality, as if to test the robustness of therapeutic progress. Within segments
of play activity, however, the focus was almost exclusively upon reparation,
healing, and metamorphosis to a more mature, integrated state of emotional
health. No extreme anxiety/isolated defense strategies were observed
within the play activity.
 THE RIGID/POLARIZED PLAYER 173

Anna’s CPTI Profiles Over Treatment

MOST CHARACTERISTIC 5

CONSIDERABLE 4

MODERATE 3

MINIMAL 2

NO EVIDENCE 1
Phase One Phase Two Phase Three

Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster

One Two Three Four

Figure 4.2 Anna’s Coping–Defensive Strategies in the Course of Treatment

A global assessment of segmentation over the three phases of treatment

(done from process notes; timed intervals were not available) revealed early
disruption of play activity due to the eruption of aggressive impulses.
Midway in treatment, boundaries within the play session became secure,
and play activity flourished. In the ending phase of treatment, the elabora-
tion of play activity and the use of metaphor embellished the play in new
ways. Play activity shared a focus with non-play. During periods of
non-play, occasional disruptive behaviors reappeared.
The shift in coping/defensive strategies over the course of Anna’s
treatment is shown in Figure 4.2. The beginning phase profile of
coping/defensive strategies in her play activity revealed a predominance of
rigid/polarized defenses, with minimal evidence of adaptation and
extreme anxiety/isolated strategies. As Anna became more secure within
the therapeutic setting and her play activity became more organized, there
was a definite diminution in rigid/polarized defenses, with a parallel
increase in adaptation and strategies dealing with conflict. By the end of
174 PROFILES OF PLAY

treatment, play activity had advanced significantly, becoming a major

secure route for Anna’s self-exploration. Rigid/polarized strategies were
no longer evident; play strategies observed either were adaptive or
conveyed conflictual themes involving regression and intellectualization.
Structural analysis of Anna’s play activity clarifies the process by which
therapeutic progress was achieved. Progress in treatment was reflected in
Anna’s greater affective regulation and modulation, cognitive reorganiza-
tion, and clarification of role representations, as well as demarcation of
boundaries between fantasy and reality. The dynamics of play themes
became complex, with myriad characters metaphorically resolving over-
whelming, terrifying play themes. As Anna’s play advanced developmen-
tally, she was able to achieve a cooperative relationship within the transfer-
ence, as well as within the metaphor of play. These are the gains that account
for the significant shifts that occurred in coping–defensive play strategies.

Both Anna’s and Rebecca’s cases demonstrate the function of play activity
as an essential sphere of child development. In the beginning of treatment,
inhibition obliterated Rebecca’s freedom of exploration of herself and the
world around her. In Anna’s case, confusion overwhelmed her, resulting in
an obliteration of boundaries that kept impulses and wishes apart from
thought and action. In order for these traumatic feelings to be modified,
they needed to be reenacted in treatment, either directly in the transference
relationship or indirectly in play and fantasy.
Interestingly, both Rebecca and Anna used the birth of a child as a
central vehicle for their own emotional rebirth. The common use of this
metaphor suggests the centrality of gender as an early organizer of the little
girl’s subjective experience. Gradually, as both children were able to use play
as an arena of safety, they were able to gain entrance to a creative representa-
tional mode of self-expression. Therapist and child were then able to use
language to facilitate the growth of mutual understandings, enabling
symbolic process to emerge in the linking of words with feelings.
 chapter 5

The Extremely Anxious/

Isolated Player

The extremely anxious/isolated child plays in a manner that is personal

and often idiosyncratic. The degree of anxiety he experiences is cata-
strophic, threatening to overwhelm his very existence. These children can
appear to the observer to be withdrawn from their surroundings, attuned
exclusively to their own inner worlds; they shun other people, ignoring,
avoiding them as though they threaten danger, pain, and even annihilation.
Exploration for these children may consist of discovering the touch and
sound of their own body and its parts, at an age beyond when such explora-
tions are commonplace. Alternatively, concrete sensory experience with
inanimate objects or parts of objects may become the focus of their
attention. Other children may evoke their curiosity and be imitated or
observed from a distance. Social interaction is fleeting and is often rigidly
repetitive. Relating to others lacks the spontaneity, warmth, and the joy of
human companionship. These children’s deficits in communication may be
compounded by affective expression that is primitive and underdeveloped,
often bizarre and difficult to comprehend.
The play of these very anxious children lies within the outer margins of
play activity. Although it is qualitatively different from mainstream play
activity, however, to the extent that the child becomes engrossed in his
activity—activity that is apparently at his own initiative, an expression of
his feelings, focused on himself, persons, objects, or surroundings—he is
playing. Developmentally, this play activity represents an early level of
play, play activity that is not yet represented using consensual symbols or
communicated through the reciprocal use of language.

175
176 PROFILES OF PLAY

What sorts of children present with very anxious play activity?

Although some children present with all of their play activity at this very
anxious level, other children experience encapsulated moments of regres-
sion when their play activity presents with these characteristics. Generally
speaking, children within the autistic spectrum of disorders are most likely
to play exclusively in this extremely anxious/isolated manner.
Three severe deficits that impact on the development of play activity
distinguish autistic children from other retarded and psychiatric groups
(Chicchetti, Beeghly, & Weiss-Perry 1994). These deficiencies occur in the
areas of symbolic play, communication, language, and social interaction
(Baron-Cohen 1989; Hobson 1986; Rutter & Garmezy 1983; Sigman &
Mundy 1987). In autistic children, all these weaknesses combine in what
has been characterized as a generalized social–cognitive deficit (Dawson 1989;
Rutter 1978, 1983). Many autistic-spectrum children never develop
language or symbolic play. In those children that do, symbolic play is most
often rigid, repetitive, and stereotyped, lacking the varying degrees of com-
plexity, fluidity, and creativity observed in normal, character- disordered,
and mentally retarded children.
In her study of children who had experienced neglect, abuse, and severe
disturbances in their relationships with caregivers, Selma Fraiberg (1982)
described defensive behaviors that could be observed in early infancy (birth
to 18 months). Since these behaviors appeared in a preverbal period, prior
to the development of evocative memory, they were not yet expressive of
internal conflicts between drives and an emerging ego organization. Rather,
they appeared as symptomatic behaviors in very young children who had
suffered environmental and relationship deficiencies. For other children, the
same type of defenses might arise from neurological or constitutional issues
or a combination of etiologic factors.
Selma Fraiberg and her colleagues observed these patterns of defensive
behaviors between mother and child during home visits. The pathological
behaviors included total or near-total avoidance of the mother by the child;
freezing in an almost complete immobilization of posture, motility, or artic-
ulation; and fighting in an effort to ward off feelings of extreme helpless-
ness and dissolution of self. Two of these defensive behaviors—avoidance
and freezing—are included in our cluster of very anxious/isolated play
 THE EXTREMELY ANXIOUS/ISOLATED PLAYER 177

behaviors; identification with the aggressor (fighting) is classified in the

cluster of polarized/rigid defensive–coping strategies.
Frances Tustin (1990) has described autistic impediments to the devel-
opment of play activity. Among the children she observed some exhibited
these impediments from birth, while others seemed to be reacting to
extreme deprivation. She described these children as compensating for
early psychological deficiencies by overvaluing tactile physical contacts
and the sensations they aroused; only what was tangible and physically
present was felt to exist. The overwhelming influence of the immediate
present led to a diminution or near extinction of memories and images,
blocking imagination essential for the development of play activity. The
autistic child’s preoccupation with sensory objects protected him from
experiencing loss, thereby precluding the use of images and memory to
recall persons and objects.
The very anxious/isolated player demonstrates this reliance for
security upon immediate sensorimotor experience. At this level of playing,
the child is not differentiating clearly between self and other, between what
is internal and what is external. Rather, he is playing out a muted state of
consciousness, in which he clings to toys, seems oblivious to pain or
pleasure, and destroys the world as we know it in order to hold on to his
protective inner subjective state.
This state of “nothingness” and its inhibiting effect on play activity is
illustrated by the case of four-year-old Jane described by Tustin (1990).
Jane was observed in her play group, where she stood at the edge of the
group, eyeing the other children while clutching a dome-shaped shell in
her hand. She was afraid of making contact with the other children and
would look longingly at them. She was very constricted in her choice of
play materials and would purposely choose defective ones, such as broken
pencils that she would try to draw with. She often used the word “nothing”
in her conversation. For example, she drew “snakes doing nothing,” and she
also drew something she called “nothing going very fast.” After talking
about a loaf of bread that had been ruined by the rain, Jane drew “spots of
nothing.”
Tustin observed Jane using the shell compulsively to fill a void; having
said “nothing” she would take a peep at her shell. Used in this manner, the
shell functioned as a sensation object to compensate for Jane’s feeling of
178 PROFILES OF PLAY

“nothingness.” By clinging to the shell, Jane also clung to a feeling of

existence; the shell shielded her from the terror of feeling she had lost a vital
part of her body and reassured her that she would continue to
“go-on-being.” At the same time, the shell did not exist symbolically and
could not be used in that way (Milner 1955). Thus, the shell could not be
represented in memory or used as a touchstone for fantasy to further the
development of play activity. The shell as object could not be redefined or
modified; it remained adhered to the immediate present. Any effort to
modify the function of the shell in any way would be resisted by the child at
all costs.
Donald Meltzer (1975) and his colleagues reported on a number of
autistic children who had been treated with psychoanalysis. Meltzer
described dismantling as a defensive process of eradicating meaning from
an experience by diminishing it to a level where it no longer can be compre-
hended as common sense. Reducing an activity to this level eradicates
emotional significance and symbolic form. The event is not contained and is
observed to be only disparate pieces, various parts that exist in a random,
mechanical way. The child uses dismantling to reduce an experience to parts
devoid of meaning. If the event is not represented symbolically, it is unavail-
able to inner thought processes and cannot be retained in memory through
representation.
Meltzer reflected how a mental process, such as dismantling, at first used
defensively can also potentially be used by the child for the purpose of
adaptation. He outlined how the child can begin to create an experience of
inner and outer (see Bick 1968 who describes this process as the creation of
an emotional skin) that progressively expands to become a four-dimen-
sional emotional space (inside me, outside me, inside you, outside you).
Attainment of the level of development depends upon the existence of a
relationship that affords the child an opportunity to contain his emotional
experience and give it meaning. Play activity is the medium that provides
the child with opportunities for this development of self. Once meaning is
achieved, the reverse dissolution of a whole into its parts (dismantling) can
be experienced as a creative abstraction, rather than an act of destruction.
Thus, it is the clinician’s capacity to recognize and contain the child’s
emotional states in a state of playfulness that promotes the growth of mind
within the child. This “holding function” (Bion 1962) of the therapist gives
 THE EXTREMELY ANXIOUS/ISOLATED PLAYER 179

form to the inchoate pieces and encourages the emergence of patterning

within the child’s emotional experience. Meltzer’s comments highlight the
interface between coping and defensive functions, with the balance contin-
gent upon the subjective experience of the child. The spectrum of four
clusters of play strategies allows for observation of this movement (or fluc-
tuation) within subjective experience while the child is playing.

Defensive–Coping Strategies Used By the Extremely

Anxious/Isolated Child
Using the CPTI the observer obtains a complete measure of extreme
anxiety and of the various ways in which it affects the child’s capacity to
play. It enables the therapist to document the presence versus absence of
play activity; the presence or absence of symbolic play activity, the relative
levels of cognitive representations used in the play activity, the distinctive
patterns of feelings expressed in the play activity, the varying levels of
social and verbal communication within the play activity, and finally the
coping/defensive strategies observed within the play activity.
The manual of the CPTI (Kernberg, Chazan & Normandin 1997)
defines nine strategies in the cluster of extremely anxious/isolated play
activities. In addition to Selma Fraiberg, Frances Tustin, and Donald
Meltzer, several other child theorists have described the use of these strate-
gies and their impact on the playing child (Beebe & Stern 1977; Klein
1930; Mahler 1972a, 1972b; Sander 1983; Ogden 1989). Their work
also contributed to the definitions of extremely anxious/isolated play strat-
egies compiled in the CPTI manual and listed below.

Dedifferentiation
Several different items lose their separate identity and become homoge-
neous. Order is removed from an organization, so that it is rendered chaotic.
“Everything is mixed together; these are all the same.”

Constriction
There is an extremely persistent, perseverative, rigid repetition of thoughts,
affect, and behavior. All three characteristics must be present. Constriction
180 PROFILES OF PLAY

involves a significant narrowing of the self or the child’s perception of the

other.
“It must stay in one area; it must be limited to the same story, with the
same beginning and ending.”

De-animation
An animate object is rendered lifeless.
“It is still, not doing anything.”

Dispersal
Dangerous aspects of the self or other are broken into fragments and
scattered. Note: The object may be disparate pieces (such as Lego); the
whole object need not be formed concretely in order to be scattered.
“It is broken into pieces and spread around so it will not be dangerous
anymore.”

Dismantling
A person or toy is reduced to disconnected segments.
“It is disconnected, the parts (of the body, of a theme) are no longer
bound to each other.”

Autistic Encapsulation
Through the play activity the child communicates an insulation of self from
his surroundings and his therapist. The play activity is an all-encompassing,
protective barrier.
“I am keeping it walled inside.”

Fusion
Boundaries between self and other, between internal and external worlds,
are blurred into a state of continuous oneness.
“I get (it gets) lost in a boundlessness with everything. Everything is all
mixed together.”
 THE EXTREMELY ANXIOUS/ISOLATED PLAYER 181

Freezing
The functioning of the self/other person is halted for the purpose of
survival.
“To control my terror I make everything stop and stand still.”

Hypochondriasis
A dangerous feeling or impulse is experienced as residing within a particu-
lar body organ. This part of the body is perceived as being capable of
destroying the individual. Instead of terror being felt because of others, the
feeling is transformed into a terror of part of the self, experienced as pain in
part of the body.
“The terror is taken in again and hurts me.”

Reversal of Affect
The appropriate feeling is replaced by its opposite, often a bizarre and inap-
propriate opposite.
“I am terrified, it makes me laugh; it is hilarious!”

Clinical Case: A Child Called Sammy

At the time of referral, the aspect of Sammy’s difficulties that caused his
parents most grief was the fact that he could not play. Twenty-eight months
old, he was trapped within a rigid, at times terrifying, isolated world. He
was incapable of solving the simplest problem, experienced intense, con-
stricted feelings, and could communicate only pain and discomfort
through his high-pitched, shrill cry.
At 26 months of age Sammy had been given the diagnosis pervasive
developmental disorder with autistic features by the diagnostic team in his
local school district and by several independent consultants. Sammy’s
parents were shocked and overwhelmed by this diagnosis. Meeting with
Sammy’s parents brought an important reminder that any diagnostic for-
mulation for the child is also a critical intervention for the parents.
The behaviors Sammy exhibited included significant receptive and
expressive language delays, delayed play skills, withdrawn and bizarre
social interaction, hyperactivity, and a short attention span. He was
182 PROFILES OF PLAY

motorically driven and had virtually no frustration tolerance; his mother felt
she could not connect with him in a “normal” way. Both parents viewed
Sammy as an oddball and laughed nervously when they described him, a
response that seemed a defense against feelings of helplessness.
Sammy was the younger son of Mr and Mrs M. The firstborn, Michael,
was 20 months older, an alert, highly verbal child whose play skills were
advanced. Michael occasionally experienced mild fears. The parents were
both skilled professionals, but Mrs M. had chosen to be a full-time
homemaker, having decided to leave an excellent position seven months
earlier. Mrs M. had returned to work when Sammy was eight months old
and continued working until he was 21 months old. It was when she
stopped working that Mrs M. became aware of Sammy’s troubled develop-
ment and began to seek assistance.
Sammy was conceived when his older brother was 11 months old. The
pregnancy was uncomplicated. There were concerns regarding insufficient
weight gain, but five routine sonograms revealed a normal embryonic
course. Delivery was spontaneous; birthweight was seven pounds.
Breast-feeding was attempted for one month but could not be established
successfully. Mrs M. was deeply hurt and disappointed by Sammy’s
rejection of breast-feeding. For the first three months, Sammy was generally
unfocused and seemed to be uncomfortable or unhappy most of the time.
Sammy’s parents both reported that it was difficult to read Sammy’s
signals and to understand what he wanted. It was also difficult to elicit
smiles or laughter. Motor milestones were within normal limits; in contrast,
language development was significantly delayed. Sammy said single words
at between 14 and 15 months and two-word phrases at two years.
Audiology evaluation at two years was normal. Most importantly, Sammy’s
parents were concerned that he was “not attached enough.” During his first
year of life, he pushed both parents away and became attached to a plush
dog. At one year he became attached to his father and a warm, caring house-
keeper. Sammy first began to show affection for his mother at 18 months.
His brother, Michael, was always someone Sammy sought out. In addition
to his plush dog, Sammy clung to a baseball bat and a hammer, objects he
used for hitting, and his bottle, which he wanted to dangle from his mouth
at all times.
 THE EXTREMELY ANXIOUS/ISOLATED PLAYER 183

The Early Phase of Treatment

Although Sammy’s parents described Sammy as being unable to play, when
I first met him it was clear that this statement was not an accurate assessment
of their son’s capacities. It was not that Sammy did not play, but that he
played in a manner unrecognizable as such to either of his parents.
Although Sammy was playing, he was playing differently from other
children his age, and in a manner highly idiosyncratic to Sammy. He
grasped his two sensory objects at all times, hard (hammer in hand) and soft
(bottle dangling from teeth). These objects were not play objects per se;
rather, they were viewed by Sammy as an extension of his own body. Any
effort to remove them from his grasp resulted in a shrill, piercing cry of
protest. It took all of Sammy’s parents’ energies to calm him and their
attention was focused on supplying and retrieving these objects. Thus, their
attention was diverted from what Sammy would do once he had the objects
in tow. In fact, he would explore his surroundings for sporadic bits of time
and engage objects briefly, knocking his body against others and then
returning to his parent. Just as he played in an idiosyncratic fashion, his
attempts to engage his parents’ attention were unfocused and diffuse (for
example, nudging them, continuously wailing, and wandering aimlessly
about).
My earliest glimpses of Sammy’s capacity for play occurred at our
second meeting, when he arrived in the company of his older brother. He in
fact did succeed in locating a truck and wheeling it along the edge of the
table, all the time eyeing his older brother. At the moment his older brother
picked up a toy, Sammy made a beeline for that toy. He physically attacked
his brother, tried to grab the toy, and could not be placated. The older
brother relinquished the toy, and Sammy proceeded to play with it briefly
and then ran back to connect with mother (all the time he held both
sensory objects in tow). In this session, Sammy demonstrated that he could
play, but he was also continually distracted by trying to control his
surround. His mother was unable to engage him in play, as she was always
navigating a path of survival in the field of battle.
In these early meetings Sammy demonstrated an acute awareness of his
sensory environment and of minute changes in his surroundings. He was
capable of diffusing his attention, so that it scattered and wandered from
object to object without sustaining focus on himself or the other person.
184 PROFILES OF PLAY

He carried his “autistic sensation objects” (hammer, baseball bat) with

him in an effort to feel hard and strong. For Sammy these hard sensations
were experienced through the activity of banging. In sessions Sammy was
observed to bang with his head, his arms, or his whole torso, as he would
bang with his hard objects. According to Tustin, these hard objects help the
child to feel safe; they are the hard part of himself, a barrier to protect him
from the dangerous “not me” objects that threaten him and his existence.
Sammy also demonstrated the use of what Tustin refers to as “autistic
sensation shapes.” These arise from soft bodily sensations, such as the flow
of urine from the body, bubbles of spit from the mouth, diarrhea, or vomit.
They can also be engendered by holding an outside object loosely or
pressing gently against it, by rocking or spinning, and by hand and body
stereotypic movements. The shapes thus engendered are felt by the child to
have no separateness from his own body, nor are they related to the shape of
any particular objects. Like autistic objects they are idiosyncratic to the indi-
vidual child. They are “tactile hallucinations,” and because they are soothing
and calming, they are a bodily form of tranquilizer. Sammy’s soft shapes
included his saliva, produced by voluntary bubbling, sucking, and drooling;
his bottle; his plush dog; and the soft contours of his mother’s body.
The method of intervention chosen for Sammy and his family was
simultaneous treatment. In simultaneous treatment the parent and child are
treated by the same therapist. The focus of treatment is on the parent–child
relationship and on the separate as well as shared subjective experience of
parent and child. Thus, the therapist is concerned not only with the interac-
tions between parent and child but also with the individual representational
experience of both. Since Sammy was a young child, the child sessions
would be dyadic meetings, with both parent and child present. Mrs M. was
receptive to the suggestion that she and Sammy meet jointly with the
therapist twice a week. At times, Sammy’s brother Michael would be present
as well. In addition Mrs M. would have her own individual sessions with the
therapist on a weekly basis. Because Mr M. was continuing twice-weekly
analytic treatment, contact with him would consist of monthly parent
meetings focusing on issues of parent management.
With parental consent, all joint mother–child sessions were videotaped.
Analyses of Sammy’s play activity were based on ratings of these videotaped
 THE EXTREMELY ANXIOUS/ISOLATED PLAYER 185

sessions using the CPTI. A detailed description of the complete course of

Sammy’s treatment has been published previously (Chazan 1995).

SEGMENTATION OF THE SESSION

In what follows, the sequence of segments within the session is described
consecutively. Each successive segment is identified as pre-play, play
activity, non-play, or interruption. The duration of the segment
(minutes:seconds) is indicated in parentheses.
Sammy enters the session crying inconsolably for his bottle. He runs to
the door, bangs on it, and cannot be soothed (non-play, 1:44). Sammy
and his mother leave the room to retrieve the bottle (interruption,
0:49). Sammy and his mother return and she sits him on her lap and
gives him the bottle. He takes the bottle in his hands and drinks
(non-play, 0:58). The therapist takes out some rhythm instruments and
begins to play the triangle. Sammy watches the therapist, interested in
what she is doing (pre-play, 1:33). Sammy leaves his mother’s lap, and
with bottle dangling from his mouth he begins to play the triangle
(play activity, 0:52). Sammy returns to cuddle with mother (non-play,
1:00). Sammy comes back to play the triangle again, while the
therapist sings (play activity, 1:49). Sammy watches while the therapist
plays a drum (pre-play, 1:41). Sammy sits on the floor sucking his
bottle, he lifts the bottle to reference his mother’s face. She smiles back at
him and hugs him (non-play, 2:17). Sammy remains seated on the
floor with the therapist. He begins to play with a sorting toy, putting
different shapes into a container that then makes a sound (play activity,
4:16). Sammy returns to sit on his mother’s lap and begins to suck on
his bottle, which has been dangling from his mouth (non-play, 3:01).
Sammy gets down from his mother’s lap and joins the therapist at the
dollhouse (pre-play, 0:34). Sammy walks away from the therapist and
begins to wander about. His mother moves from the couch and gives
him a hug (non-play, 3:35). Sammy communicates that he wants the
“choo-choo” put together. Bottle dangling from his mouth he engages
therapist and mother in play (play activity, 5:52). (This was the longest
play activity segment and the one rated. A detailed narrative of this
segment follows segmentation of the entire session.) Sammy walks
away from the activity and gives his bottle to his mother (non-play,
186 PROFILES OF PLAY

0:48). Sammy walks back to the trains and looks at the setup (pre-play,
1:55). Sammy wanders away and climbs up to the table to play with a
puzzle (play activity, 4:26). Sammy walks away and wanders around
the room, and his mother holds him (non-play, 5:06). Sammy wanders
over to the triangle and begins to play with the therapist’s assistance
(play activity, 4:22). The therapist ended the session.
In this first session rated, Sammy and his mother were alone with the
therapist. She was less detached from Sammy and responded warmly to his
overtures: the mother’s depression had clearly diminished. The therapist
was active in initiating communication between mother and child. Sammy
used the soft sensation object, his bottle, to initiate contact with his mother.
For example, while engaged with the therapist Sammy paused and raised his
bottle in the direction of his mother, and a long moment of mutual gaze (a
first) ensued. This visual focus, or holding, became an important medium
for the growth of the parent–child relationship. Once visual contact was
established, Sammy could begin to seek contact with his mother more
directly.
Segmentation of the therapy session revealed that 45 percent of this
session was spent in play activity. The strong alliance between therapist and
child worked toward enabling Sammy’s mother to observe his potential for
playfulness, which had been hidden by a veil of nonrelatedness. Pre-play
activity constituted 12 percent of the session and consisted mainly of
Sammy’s response to the therapist’s invitation to play. Non-play activity
accounted for 40 percent of the session and consisted of interactions
between mother and child, as well as Sammy’s aimless wandering around
the room. There was one brief interruption as mother and Sammy departed
to retrieve his bottle. Without the bottle it would not have been possible to
calm, engage, or focus Sammy. He did, however, relinquish the bottle to
mother toward the end of the session.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY SEGMENT

The following narrative of the longest play activity segment, the segment
used in rating Sammy’s play activity, is based upon observations of the vid-
eotaped session.
 THE EXTREMELY ANXIOUS/ISOLATED PLAYER 187

Sammy initiated play activity with a request (communicated through

gesture) to put the “choo-choo” together. Mother began assisting in
joining the train tracks. Sammy wandered off and then returned to the
play. His bottle was in his mouth, dangling from his teeth, he held a
hammer in his hand, his affect was flat. Sammy’s mother was involved
in the activity and was watching her child closely. Sammy asked for
“track” and gestured towards the trains. His affect continued to be flat
and his face non-expressive. The therapist responded: “Yes, I will get
the tracks.” Sammy echoed “track”, all the while holding his bottle in
his mouth.
The therapist asked Sammy’s mother how to fit the tracks together
and she started putting tracks together. The therapist asked Sammy if
he would like to put tracks together. He put two train cars together.
The therapist described the cars as “together.” Sammy’s mother con-
structed a setup of the tracks in a circle. Sammy put a train on the
tracks; his mother watched and complimented him. He then opened
and shut the door to the room very briefly; he wanted to go to the car
(less than 20 seconds, insufficient time to be an interruption). Sammy
went over to the dollhouse and opened and shut the windows and
doors. The therapist and Sammy’s mother joined him at the dollhouse.
The therapist described what was happening; Sammy’s mother
watched. Sammy put a toy figure inside the house, then, opened and
closed the windows and door. With his hammer in his hand and his
bottle in his mouth Sammy wandered away from the dollhouse and
joined his mother on the couch. His affect was flat; he seemed to lack
energy and was fatigued.

Sammy’s play activity included exploration of the room and manipulation

of various toys. He also began to construct a train joining two cars together.
Sammy initiated the play by indicating an interest in the trains. Both
mother and therapist facilitated the play considerably by following
through on Sammy’s initiatives and making further suggestions. Sammy’s
mother initiated the setup of tracks. Sammy inhibited the play activity by
leaving the room and ended the play activity by transitioning to non-play
without clear evidence of satiation. He wandered away, lost focus, and went
to sit on his mother’s lap. It seemed as though he was tired out by the
188 PROFILES OF PLAY

activity, but not necessarily satisfied by it, he simply could not sustain
interest any longer.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY SEGMENT

Affective Components
Sammy’s emotional tone was generally sober. His face was usually
non-expressive and the spectrum of affects narrow. He seemed most often to
be aloof from social interaction. He expressed some curiosity about the
tracks and the dollhouse, but anxiety (reflected in his wanderings) and
sadness balanced the minimal pleasure from playing. His regulation of
feeling states was moderate, with a bland nondescript, muted quality; transi-
tions from one feeling state to another were always abrupt, with a swift shift
from aversive to positive feelings. His emotional reactions were always
appropriate to the content of the play. Sammy’s attitude towards the
therapist was neutral; the therapist’s attitude towards Sammy was very
positive.

Cognitive Components
Sammy’s play activity consisted primarily of sensory and motor explora-
tions and manipulations. He did demonstrate some understanding of “open
and shut,” in trying to open the door of the office and the windows and
doors of the dollhouse. He put a small boy figure inside the house, an early
precursor of role-play. He also understood the action of connecting the
railroad tracks as the joining of two separate pieces.

Narrative Components
Although there was no continuous narrative to the play activity the topics of
the play included the train tracks and the house. Themes were sparsely
organized around the activities of joining and separating (the tracks),
coming and going (the toy train and the office door), and opening and
shutting (dollhouse door and windows). Sammy was silent most of the time.
He verbalized “track” to refer to the railroad track. The therapist and Mrs M.
usually gave verbal descriptions of what they were doing in the play, for
example putting the cars of the train “together”; they were occasionally
silent, and at times they imitated sounds of the train. They both also verbally
reflected upon Sammy’s actions in a supportive manner.
 THE EXTREMELY ANXIOUS/ISOLATED PLAYER 189

Developmental Components
Sammy’s play activity was somewhat immature for his chronological age.
He did not engage in elaborated symbolic play and gave only a hint of the
play potential that might emerge over time. His interest in vehicles reflected
primarily a masculine orientation; however, again the evidence was scarce
and minimally suggestive of gender preference. Sammy played alone most
of the time, but he was aware of the presence of the therapist and his
mother, who made efforts to make their presence important to Sammy’s
play. There was some evidence of parallel play activity as Sammy played at
joining the tracks alongside the therapist and his mother, who were
similarly engaged in putting together the railroad tracks.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY SEGMENT

In his play activity Sammy demonstrated some minimal attempts at
problem-solving, an adaptive coping strategy, in attempting to put the
railroad tracks together. He also evidenced minimal avoidance of interaction
with the adults and regression, suggesting some evidence of conflict. There
was no evidence of rigid/polarized defenses. Most prominent were strate-
gies reflecting extreme anxiety and isolation. These strategies included dis-
mantling and constriction. Constriction was seen in the narrow band of play
interests observed and the lack of variation in play activity. Dismantling
was observed as a more extreme manifestation of avoidance, where Sammy
wandered around the room aimlessly, seemingly unaware and unresponsive
to human interaction. When addressed at these times, he would not turn
away; he would simply respond as if the person addressing him did not
exist. It was necessary to confront him firmly and touch him to reestablish
contact. Sammy seemed to have little vitality or energy to invest in related-
ness, and he would spin off by himself to recoup. A promising aspect of this
play activity segment was Sammy’s mother’s close involvement with the
play, as active observer, commentator, and player. Also promising was
Sammy’s return to her, joining her on the couch as the play segment ended.
Sammy was unaware of himself as playing during this play activity
segment, but his mother showed first signs of being aware of her own
enjoyment in being an active player.
190 PROFILES OF PLAY

The complex duet between Sammy and his mother continued to unfold
in treatment, with visual seeking and physical contact becoming important
parameters in the growing secure attachment between mother and child. In
intervening sessions Mrs M. began to invite Sammy to games of “Finding
Mommy,” when she would hide under a hat, and “Finding Mommy Ghost,”
when she was hidden under a table. Sammy began to engage his mother by
playing he was a kitten. At first it was difficult to discern the direction the
role playing would take. Would Sammy become the little kitten that Mommy
adored? No, Sammy decided he was Sammy, playing at being a kitten, and in this
play activity he discovered a new sense of his identity.
In a following session, another meaningful moment occurred when
Sammy was hard at work and absorbed in playing with his sand toys. For 15
minutes Sammy was engrossed in covering and uncovering a dump truck.
Mother was involved in an active way only minimally; she sat nearby
making accompanying noises of a truck digging. The climax of the play
activity came when Sammy held up the sand tray and with a broad smile
announced that he was “Done.” Ending the play activity segment with
satiation indicated Sammy had achieved a conceptualization of beginning,
middle, and end and was beginning to comprehend the constancy of objects
over time. These observations highlighted the important role of play in
forming and strengthening secure bonds between parent and child (Chazan
1995). The gains were made indirectly through metaphor, but the reference
was a direct one to the parent–child relationship.

A Session Nine Months Later

SEGMENTATION OF THE SESSION
In this later session there were 14 segments, as compared with 20 segments
in the earlier session. As in the discussion of the earlier session, the succes-
sion of segments is reviewed and the longest play activity segment is
subjected to structural and functional analysis.
Sammy enters the office, sits down on the couch, and asks to see the
therapist’s dog (non-play, 1:15). When his request is denied, he gets off
the couch and meows, playing he is a cat. His mother comments, “The
pussycat’s here.” Sammy plays with a box on the floor (play activity,
2:33). Sammy begins to talk again about wanting to see the dog,
 THE EXTREMELY ANXIOUS/ISOLATED PLAYER 191

gesturing towards the door of the office (non-play, 2:33). Sammy

leaves the office to see the dog with the therapist. The therapist brings
her dog momentarily into the waiting room to greet Sammy (interrup-
tion, 2:56). Sammy returns to the office and sits down to eat his snack,
a regular feature of our sessions (non-play, 1:29). As he is eating,
mother and Sammy begin to play with a globe on the table. They play
briefly at going and coming from different parts of the world (play
activity, 0:52). Sammy returns to eating (non-play, 0:53). Sammy
begins to play at feeding a toy turtle and then at feeding his mother
(play activity, 2:41). Sammy gets up and takes out a toy truck prepara-
tory to playing (pre-play, 1:19). Sammy begins putting together train
tracks. As he puts the train on the track, he says “Bye-bye” and pushes
the train around the tracks (play activity, 6:54). There is a pause in the
play activity. Sammy looks up gazing lovingly at his mother. His
mother returns his gaze warmly (non-play, 0:33). Sammy whispers to
his mother secretly about the truck. They seem to be plotting together
(pre-play, 0:55). Sammy looks at the therapist and smiles. He says “big
truck” and pushes the truck out from under a chair toward the train
tracks. This is the longest play activity segment of the session (play
activity, 15:00). It is significant that this long activity segment is con-
tinuous with the previous play activity segment involving pushing the
train around the track. It is Sammy’s idea to bring the truck and train
together to tell his story. The therapist initiates cleaning up that ends
the session (non-play, 2:17).

COMPARISON OF SEGMENTATION OF TWO SESSIONS

In session two Sammy increased the time he spent in play activity from 45
to 66 percent (see Figure 5.1). Clearly Sammy was able to play early in
treatment, given the increased focus of his mother and the support of the
therapist. The percentage of time spent in non-play decreased from 40 to
21 percent from session one to session two. In session two it seemed that
Sammy could not refrain from playing; even while eating he began to
interact playfully with his mother. Playfulness had clearly become his
major way of being with the therapist and his mother during sessions.
Pre-play decreased from 12 to 5 percent from session one to two, reflecting
greater spontaneity and liveliness in Sammy’s play. Interruptions occurred
192 PROFILES OF PLAY

in both sessions at the beginning of the session. Both of these interruptions

were instances of Sammy’s asserting his will to do something specific before
beginning the session.

Excerpt From the Later Session

70

60
Pre-Play

50

40
Play

30

20 Non-Play

10

0
SESSION SESSION
ONE TWO

Figure 5.1 Changes in Segmentation in the Course of Sammy’s Treatment

This play activity segment was a continuation of an earlier play activity

segment in which Sammy and his mother were coupling tracks together. It
began when Sammy started to roll a large truck out from under a chair
toward the train tracks. He was very animated and excited by the crash of the
truck with the tracks.
Mother: The truck is on the track. Stop the train!
Sammy: Uh-oh! (Babytalk)
Mother: Shall we try again?

(Sammy’s mother helps him to recouple the train. Sammy continues playing with the
train for a long while; then it comes apart)
Sammy: Stop the train!
 THE EXTREMELY ANXIOUS/ISOLATED PLAYER 193

Therapist: (On play phone) Hello, train company, is the train coming
on time? It’s late!
Sammy: It broke.
Therapist: Stop! There’s a truck on the track.
Sammy: Stop! Back up! (Sammy picks up play phone and speaks
animatedly in babytalk)
Mother: There’s a truck on the track. We need a tow truck to
bring it off.

(Sammy and his mother, after extended combined effort, manage to tow the truck off
the track)
Therapist: Is the train on time?

(Sammy puts the breakdown car back on the track)

Sammy: Oh, no!

(Sammy and his mother confer together. The therapist speaks on the toy phone. Sammy
puts train cars together. Finally the breakdown car clears the track and the truck goes
on its way)
Sammy: (With little fireman figure and fire truck) Hurry! Come and
fix the track! There’s a fire on the track!

(The toy fireman walks up the ladder. Sammy continues to play at being the toy
fireman going up and down the ladder. The therapist helps Sammy to put the toy fire
engine together. Animated conversation (not understandable) between child and
therapist is accompanied by much excitement. Sammy finally pushes the train around
the track, while he continues to talk without stopping (not understandable). Sammy
takes the toy fireman off the track and the fire is out)

The therapist initiated cleaning up the toys, as it was time for the session to
end.
194 PROFILES OF PLAY

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY SEGMENT

Sammy’s play activity during this play activity segment was categorized as
exploratory, manipulative, and construction play. In addition, the play
activity was a literal duplication of events in the everyday world, where
vehicles get stuck on railroad tracks and need to be hauled away and then
the tracks have to be repaired. The story was action-oriented and realistic; it
could also be understood as a metaphor. The truck crashing with the train
was Sammy’s depiction of trauma that impeded his connection to his family
and the world around him. The train is rescued from disaster, the truck is
freed to resume its journey, and the little fireman comes to repair the discon-
nection and fire on the tracks.
Sammy clearly initiated this play activity segment and schemed his
ideas with his mother. Although he could not clearly verbalize his story, the
dyad communicated through gestures and facial expression. Sammy also
was active in facilitating the play. He was joined in his efforts by the
facilitative activities of his mother and his therapist. There was no inhibition
of the play. The play activity was ended solely at the suggestion of the
therapist. In this session Sammy took a definite role of leadership in
planning, framing, and sustaining the play activity.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY SEGMENT

Affective Components
The affective ratings revealed a significant shift in Sammy’s affective expres-
sion between sessions. The most significant shifts, as anticipated, were
toward significantly greater pleasure, a widening of spectrum of affects,
more flexibility in modulation, smoother transitions, and more positive tone
toward the therapist. While there was a diminution in aloofness and sadness,
there was an increase in anxiety and worry.

Cognitive Components
The cognitive ratings indicated a shift from precursors of role-play in
session one to more advanced individual (as toy fireman) and dyadic
role-play (talking on phone to therapist as conductor of the train), with
some suggestion of triadic role-play (mother, therapist, and Sammy as fixers
of the track), in session two. All representations of objects and persons
 THE EXTREMELY ANXIOUS/ISOLATED PLAYER 195

remained stable. The style of representation of objects and persons was

consistently realistic. The toy objects were also used realistically (a toy
track was used as a track).

Narrative Components
There was continuity in topic around transportation and home in both
sessions that expanded in the second session to become a train with track
obstruction and subsequently a fire on the track. The theme of the play pro-
gressed from separation and connectedness to reconstruction and overcom-
ing mechanical problems. Once Sammy was able to complete the construc-
tion of a setup of tracks, he introduced issues of blockage and possible
destruction. Each one of these obstacles was solved in turn, with Sammy
emerging victorious as the train continued its journey.
The language subscales reflected a shift in the use of silence as well as of
words. In the first session, Sammy was predominantly silent; in the second
session, silence was more typical of the therapist. In the second session,
Sammy demonstrated imitation of sounds, verbalization of a single role,
and talk within the metaphor. The therapist in the second session paralleled
Sammy’s verbalization of a single role and speech within the metaphor.

Developmental Components
Developmental ratings revealed an increment to age-appropriate play
activity in the second session. Gender identity of the play was predomi-
nantly masculine. The most significant finding occurred in the social level
of the play activity. Sammy made significant gains in social level of play,
progressing from solitary (aware) to reciprocal play activity (give and take
with his mother and the therapist).
196 PROFILES OF PLAY

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY ACTIVITY SEGMENT

MOST CHARACTERISTIC 5

CONSIDERABLE 4

MODERATE 3

MINIMAL 2

NO EVIDENCE 1
Adaptive Conflicted Rigid/Polarized Extreme Anxiety/ Awareness of Self
Strategies Strategies Strategies Isolated Strategies

Session 1 Session 2

Figure 5.2 Sammy’s Coping–Defensive Strategies in the Course of Treatment

Figure 5.2 illustrates the changes that occurred over time in the functional
analysis of Sammy’s play activity. In the second session, Sammy demon-
strated considerable use of adaptive coping strategies in his play, including
anticipation, sublimation, affiliation, and altruism. He was fully engaged in col-
laboration with his mother and therapist in the play (affiliation); he antici-
pated the need to stop the toy train and call for assistance (anticipation).
Sammy’s affective involvement in the play indicated the presence of sublima-
tion, a strategy capable of converting anxiety-evoking circumstances into
constructive, creative activity. Sammy’s concern with disruption to the
train’s progress barely concealed his anxiety and worry about cars crashing
and breaking down. His solution to this crisis was to reach out to others
(communicate by phone) in order to seek repair. Thanks to the altruistic
efforts of the toy fireman the train could continue its journey.
Conflicted play strategies were present in the second session to a
moderate degree. Sammy used projection to invest the toys (train, fireman)
with expressing his own needs. He used the strategy of doing and undoing as
the toy fireman went up and down the ladder repeatedly while the fire was
 THE EXTREMELY ANXIOUS/ISOLATED PLAYER 197

put out. Most remarkable was the absence of either rigid/polarized or

extreme anxiety/isolated defensive strategies in the second session.
These dramatic changes in overall function of the play activity were
also reflected in the summary variable awareness-of-self playing which
shifted from no evidence in session one to considerable evidence in session
two. Sammy clearly made large developmental strides in treatment. These
gains were reflected in measurable changes in his play activity.
This videotaped case study enabled me to view and review the
emergence of human connectedness based on joy and the growth of attach-
ment through play activity. There were many reasons underlying the choice
of topics and themes for the play activity. These topics and themes included
movement, the transportation of people and objects, separation and return,
breakdown and repair. Most importantly, the play activity dealt with
togetherness, as Sammy and his mother repeatedly “coupled” train tracks
and cars. The process of Sammy’s growth and development was docu-
mented using the CPTI and was traced qualitatively and quantitatively
through the progression of play data. One clear example of Sammy’s new
capacity for sharing feelings and ideas occurred in the second session. The
longest play activity segment was preceded by a 20-second interval of
non-play when mother and child exchanged loving glances and then
conspired intimately together (pre-play), previewing the play activity to
come. The togetherness of this dyad was the happiness of reunion. In the
shared joy and anticipatory plans for playing, Sammy’s mother encoun-
tered the child she had yearned for, as Sammy discovered he was a player.
How does one account for Sammy’s striking progress? Maturity is
always a potent force propelling a child forward toward growth and devel-
opment. Certainly, in Sammy’s case maturity was a partial answer to
account for his developmental course. Controlled studies are necessary to
clarify the respective roles of maturation and therapeutic intervention. It is
important to note that the enhancement of Sammy’s affective and cognitive
development progressed at a quickened pace and with emotional changes
that exceeded expectations. It seems reasonable to conclude that the thera-
peutic intervention of simultaneous treatment was an important
component in contributing to these welcome changes.
 chapter 6

Play Activity, The Player, and

Development of the Self

Of ’times the child knows

but cannot tell in words
a truth beyond all else.
“The play’s the thing!”
that’s all there is
and e’er will be.

The Function of Play and Playfulness

Playing and growing are synonymous with life itself. Playfulness bespeaks
creativity and action, change and the possibility of transformation. Play
activity thus reflects the very existence of the self, that part of the organism
that exists both independently and interdependently, that can reflect upon
itself and be aware of its own existence. In being playful the child attains a
degree of autonomy sustained by representations of his inner and outer
worlds.

The Child’s Awareness of Himself as a Player

The child’s awareness that he is playing is a summary variable. It includes
both the child’s awareness of himself and his awareness of being in a state of
play. When a child lacks awareness of himself as a player, he also lacks a
capacity to be aware of the special, unique attributes of playing. The play is

198
 PLAY ACTIVITY, THE PLAYER, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 199

then experienced as immediate and real. Play activity that is experienced as

real rather than pretense is placed within constraints; it lacks the flexibility
and modulation of more adaptive play. An example of the difference
between the real and the pretend would be the difference between a profes-
sional ball player and a child imagining to be his favorite player running all
the bases in his backyard. One would be imaginary, the other a real event.
The child who is closely tied to a set of concrete play behaviors is unable to
create an imaginary narrative. Once the child becomes capable of using
objects and persons in his play in a symbolic way, the variety of strategies
used in play activity expands rapidly. As the child begins to use play
activity as trial action on the path to mastery, he may attempt various
maneuvers not used previously. Similarly, with awareness of the boundary
of make-believe the child’s imagination expands to include diverse per-
spectives and infinite possibilities. With each expansion of his play activity
the child becomes increasingly aware of new aspects of himself.

Revisiting Carla
Carla’s play activity, described in Chapter 2, revealed a shift from repetitive
mocking and aggressive actions to benevolent and pleasurable activity. The
significant shift in behavior toward the doll reflected a shift in Carla’s
attitude toward herself. At first she was rigidly repeating a pathological
identification with a dangerous and assaultive parent. Then, after sharing
an imaginative moment with her therapist, a transformation occurred. Carla
became aware of the beauty of the falling snow contained in the paper-
weight. The beauty of this perception was translated into a transformation
in her role toward the doll to become a caring and companionable parent.
The experience of transformation in play activity enhanced Carla’s
awareness that as a player she could change terror of the past into a pleasur-
able moment in the present.
Carla also had learned that she could pretend and that pretending could
heal. Perhaps she discovered this state of mind as a very young child, and
that discovery enabled her to cope with the difficult circumstance of being
raised by deaf-mute parents. She told her therapist that she could make
music, she could wind the music box! Winding the music box was a real
accomplishment. The metacommunication was that she could listen and
200 PROFILES OF PLAY

she could hear. In the past the self-discovery of being a person who could
hear was a real discovery that may have sparked imaginings about the
future. Carla could begin to imagine interactions with people other than
herself, empathic people who could speak and listen. These imaginings
were actualized in her play therapy.

The Development of a Capacity for Pretense and Theory of Mind

The capacity to pretend precedes the capacity for symbolic thought. It is
evident in the play of infants between 10 and 18 months of age (Bates,
Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Votterra 1979). Jan Drucker (1979)
refers to an endowing process that predates symbolic representation. This
aspect of early experience enables the very young child to organize his
world on the basis of personal understandings gleaned from earliest
parent–child relationships. These very early experiences with another
person endow the process of emergence of imaginings and pretense. (See
also Mayes & Cohen 1992; Stern 1974, 1992.)
Pretense is also an important component in a child’s acquiring the
understanding that other people act from their own perspective, called the
child’s theory of mind (Wellman 1990). Around two years of age, children
usually learn that people act on the basis of their desires. Around age four,
children acquire the understanding that people act on the basis of their
beliefs and intentions. They also begin to distinguish acts done on purpose
from accidental acts. Understanding pretense as a state of mind is essential
to these later developments in theory of mind, as pretense involves the
ability to represent another person’s mental attitude (Leslie 1987). Thus,
two-year-olds can infer what another person can see, and they can put
objects in and out of sight. By age three or four, children can infer how these
objects appear to other persons (Flavell 1977).
On the basis of these findings, it seems probable that Carla could under-
stand at a very young age, that her parents could not hear (an endowed
understanding of deficiency, or loss). Moreover, later on she could represent
herself as someone who could hear, and she could anticipate a future experi-
ence of sharing listening with someone else. This pretend experience was
enacted in her play activity with her therapist. The degree of Carla’s
awareness of herself as a player also reflected her degree of understanding
 PLAY ACTIVITY, THE PLAYER, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 201

of, or empathy with, the experience of another. The transference relation-

ship with her therapist reawakened fantasy yearnings from the past that
defined herself, Carla, as a hearing and caring person in relationship to
another caring and hearing person. The trigger for this shared experience
was a visual one, the falling snow; it led to a verbal response by the
therapist, who reflected upon what she saw with an expression of awe
regarding the glittering sight.
Jerome Bruner (1990) traced an early stage in the development of
theory of mind to deitic gaze. In this state, the infant spontaneously looks
in the direction of another person’s gaze in order to check out what that
person is looking at; reading information from the person’s eyes as at a later
date the infant will read information from the pointing finger. Actions of
giving, showing, and pointing out objects involve facial processing. The
infant makes eye contact and alternates his gazing at the person with
looking at the target. Later the other person’s appraisal of the object being
pointed out becomes important in giving information about the other’s
perspective (Sorce & Emde 1981). These two early visual processing activi-
ties are critical in determining the child’s ability to judge other people’s
mental states and to recognize what they are thinking and feeling
(Baron-Cohen 1989, 1991, 1995).
The link between these early cognitive developments and emotional
growth is close and intimate. They may be conceptualized as simultaneous
cognitive-affective events in the life of the child that precede the formation
of representations. Both how a child comes to understand others and how
he forms secure attachments depend upon the quality of early visual
attunement and the experience of pretend play (Trevarthen 1980). Distor-
tion of these essential playful experiences, either though deprivation or
trauma, leads to psychopathology. Just as play activity is the sphere within
which the child’s mind and emotions originally develop, it is also the
sphere within which the child’s mind and emotions can find repair (Singer
& Singer 1990; Sutton-Smith 1976; Vygotsky 1966).

Distinguishing Reality From Fantasy

Awareness pertains to the conscious experience of the child that he is
“playing at” or “playing out” a hypothetical scenario. Sigmund Freud
202 PROFILES OF PLAY

alluded to this awareness of a distinction between the realm of

make-believe and the realm of reality in his essay on Creative Writers and
Daydreaming (1908).
The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real. In spite of all
the emotion with which he cathects his world of play, the child distin-
guishes it quite well from reality; and he likes to link his imagined
objects and situations to the tangible and visible things of the real
world. This linking is all that differentiates the child’s “play” from
“phantasying.” (p.143)
Robert Emde and colleagues (Emde, Kubrick and Oppenheim 1997)
expanded on Freud’s observations, placing the emergence of imagination in
shared narratives at age three years. Emde and colleagues agreed that the
very young child can begin to differentiate pretense and what is not pretense
quite well and that much of this early imaginative activity has an adaptive
future orientation. In his discussion Freud emphasized that such activity
combines a current impression that arouses a wish with an earlier experience
in which the wish was fulfilled, as well as an imagined anticipated future ful-
fillment of the wish. For example, the toddler’s game of peek-a-boo
involves expectations of return that are future-oriented.
The use of narratives to preview future happenings begins even earlier
in the observed duet between parent and child (Trad 1993). Thus, in com-
municating with her infant the mother does not exactly replicate the child’s
expressive response but somehow changes the inflection, tone, or length of
her resonating response. The parent in making these changes is previewing
the next step she expects will follow in the infant’s development. She is
future-oriented, looking ahead to further developments that are yet to come
but are not yet apparent.
As the young child experiences the difference between what he commu-
nicates and what is returned, this difference informs him in an immediate
way of another psychic reality, the paradoxical world of play activity. In this
paradoxical, future-oriented realm, the immediate present is replicated with
something extra; the experience is never repeated in exactly the same way.
This difference allows for the creation of other realms that exist as wishes,
anticipations, expectations, imaginings, plays, and games that are not real
and yet might, or might not, become real. As measured by the CPTI, the
 PLAY ACTIVITY, THE PLAYER, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 203

awareness of the child that he is playing implicitly reflects an understand-

ing of this paradox; that thoughts and feelings can be unreal and yet
imagined to be real, or possibly real, while in the state of mind of playing.
The child demonstrates his acceptance of paradox (the suspension of
disbelief) to the degree he seems aware of himself as a player (an imaginer)
engaged in play activity.

Coping/Defensive Strategies and the Child’s Emerging

Sense of Self
In Chapters 2 through 5, profiles of coping/defensive strategies character-
istic of different kinds of players were discussed in detail. Profiles of
coping/defensive strategies were used to demonstrate progress in
treatment. In addition to their use as broad measures of change in play strat-
egies over time, these profiles can be analyzed to identify specific strengths
and weaknesses in the components that comprise play activity (affective,
cognitive, narrative, and developmental). It is then possible to observe how
these differences affect the overall development of the child, his percep-
tions of his surroundings, and his emergence of a sense of self. To illustrate
this kind of analysis, the cases of George (from Chapter 3) and Sammy
(from Chapter 5) will be revisited in the pages to follow. It is important to
recall that each coping/defensive strategy condenses several meanings.
Each strategy contains an element of wish fulfillment, an element of
cognitive-affective expression, and an element of interrelatedness (object
relations). In revisiting George and Sammy, these separate elements will be
identified, adding to the understanding of the function of the play strate-
gies in the total development of the child.

Revisiting George
George’s initial profile included defensive–coping strategies from each of
the four clusters. His major conflicts centered about the expression of
aggression and, on a more fundamental level, reflected insecure attachment
to his parents. His relationships at home were marked by tension that
started in infancy and continued with intermittent lack of social support for
the family. Help from extended family or a social network might have acted
204 PROFILES OF PLAY

as a buffer shielding George from the hostile, rejecting feelings of his

parents. Instead his bonds with his parents were weakened by frequent
moves and paternal absence. His sister’s birth further diminished George’s
sense of security as he struggled to deal with his intense feelings of sibling
rivalry.
At the beginning of treatment, George was clearly and consistently
aware of his role as player and seemed to enjoy playing. However, he was
not fully aware of the meaning of his nonverbal actions in play that at times
amplified his verbalizations, and at times he gave hidden expression to his
deepest longings for connection and bonding.
George’s initial profile demonstrated his capacity for affiliation with the
therapist and his enjoyment of problem-solving. These capacities were
realized in rich fantasies in which he used his abilities to devise various
possible alternatives to dilemmas. George was able to use avoidance and
reaction formation to disguise threatening impulses. His play fantasies made
abundant use of projection as in the use of the markers as a magical vehicle
and the creation of the planet “Za” and regression to earlier levels of expres-
sion. However, George resorted to even more potent defensive strategies to
achieve the control he needed. In his narrative he endowed himself with
supernatural powers and rescued himself as the planet exploded using the
strategies of omnipotent control: idealization. Although our hero escaped in
time, there was the hint of an idealized loss that could not be restored.
Through his actions of scattering and disorganizing play materials, as
well as the explosion of the imaginary planet, George conveyed his greatest
fear: of losing his sense of self. He could no longer protect the earlier safe
haven; he needed to separate from this earlier habitat. It took great strength
to escape safely; however, there was also aggression against this earlier rep-
resentation of the self that shattered violently. Although George’s skills as a
player were considerable, the pain he experienced was urgent, threatening
to disrupt the continuity of the play through disorganization. Dispersal of
play materials was the mode George used to express underlying subjective
states of fragmentation in his ongoing experience of continuity of self.
Thus, the planet’s explosion was safely couched in play activity, while the
threat to continuity in play activity occurred through the breakthrough of
disorganizing aggressive impulses.
 PLAY ACTIVITY, THE PLAYER, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 205

Midway through treatment, George manifested a growing bond to his

therapist, reflected in affiliation and identification. He was able to use a
wide variety of play materials and made frequent use of humor. Important
to note is that this humor was based not only on an expression of his
anxieties but also on an understanding of how these anxieties appeared
from the perspective of a different “lens”—diminished and incongruous.
Use of humor was the first indication of George’s emergent capacity to
reflect upon his feelings from a different viewpoint. This growth in
cognitive flexibility seen in his social referencing was a major adaptive gain
for him. Feeling more secure in his subjective experience, George was able
to experiment with emotional closeness as he peered into the eye of the
watching camera, detecting the thoughts and feelings of another. When the
therapist asked what would happen next, he responded with positive antic-
ipation as he began to enlarge upon his play narrative. These growing
feelings of secure attachment formed the foundation for continuing
progress through play activity.
Trusting the therapist, George began to approach the camera lens
playfully, conveying his hunger for visual attunement and recognition in
his use of regression in the service of the ego. Using projection, he was able
to give expression to his inner feelings through a variety of play characters.
He played with his ambivalence regarding closeness to the object (the
camera) using avoidance, reaction formation (his attacks against the
camera), and intellectualization. Through the medium of the video camera
George experimented with the perspective from which to view and connect
with this desired/threatening object. As his play strategies became more
flexible, he relied less on omnipotent control and increasingly could place
himself in the role of aggressor. One reminder of George’s prior social
isolation remained in the representation of the black hole, a void of form-
lessness that manifested the strategy of dedifferentiation. As he approached
the terror of the black hole, George fearlessly explored the boundary
between the real and the imagined.
By the end of treatment George’s playfulness had advanced to new
heights of hilarity and trial risk-taking. In the last play activity segment
described, George directly approached his therapist with provocative,
assertive moves that alternated with hidden, secretive activities. He was
experimenting, in the state of playfulness, with gaining reciprocity wherein
206 PROFILES OF PLAY

he could exchange roles, goals, thoughts, and feelings with his therapist.
Who was the deceiver? Who was the deceived? Who was the victim? Who
was the thief? In exchanging passive for active means of communication,
George was able to express early infantile needs and wishes without the fear
of retaliation or loss of relationship. Regression when it occurred was in the
service of deepening the play to explore his intense needs for emotional
dependence and closeness.
George made considerable use of varied adaptive strategies, including
humor, anticipation, sublimation, and identification. Indications of conflict
appeared in his continued use of reaction formation and projection. Doing
and undoing was another conflictual strategy used to forestall fear and
enable the play activity to continue. The themes of this conflictual play were
greed and cannibalism, play themes that were becoming increasingly
familiar to George. At first he played at being fearful of the doctor who took
kids home and ate them for dinner, and later he played at consuming his
own prey (the poker chips). Dispersing characters in play was George’s
recurrent response to being overwhelmed, perhaps a memory of early
feelings and how he would create chaos in the family as a screen to hide his
state of extreme anxiety. Barely disguised in pretend play dispersing (the
scattering of play characters) functioned to end the play activity. In this way,
the early experience of extreme anxiety previously unthinkable became
transformed into a conscious representation as a play activity.

Coping/Defensive Play Strategies and the Emergence of

Psychic Reality
In revisiting George’s profile of coping/defensive strategies, the capacity of
play to accelerate and repair development is manifest. How do these
coping/defensive strategies perform this function? Mary Target and Peter
Fonagy (1997) have suggested from a clinical perspective a process whereby
a child develops a sense of psychic reality. According to their theoretical
model, in early childhood psychic reality is characterized by two modes of
relating internal experiences to the external situation. In the psychic equiva-
lence mode the child expects the internal world in himself and others to corre-
spond to external reality; in the pretend mode the child knows that internal
experience may not reflect external reality and thinks that the internal world
 PLAY ACTIVITY, THE PLAYER, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 207

has no relationship to the outside world and no implications for it.

Sigmund Freud’s (1908) observations noted how the young child is serious
about his pretend world and knows it is separate from the everyday world.
Target and Fonagy commented, however, that the child’s affective invest-
ment in his play may directly reflect the extent to which his fantasy incor-
porates a disguised piece of “serious” reality, such as the relationship
between his parents or the imagined consequences of acting on dangerous
wishes. In normal development the child integrates these two modes to
arrive at a stage of mentalisation, or reflective mode. In the reflective mode,
mental states are experienced as representations. Inner reality can then be
seen as linked with external reality, yet each realm retains its distinctive
qualities. Furthermore, neither realm needs to be equated with the other or
split off from the other.
Reflecting on George’s mental states, his therapist facilitated George’s
process of mentalisation. As therapy progressed, George was increasingly
able to represent his ideas and feelings. This progress was possible because
of the safe state of playfulness. George was able to express his feelings and
wishes (when he was only pretending) and in interaction with his therapist
have them recognized as existing outside of his own mind. Moreover, the
therapist responded playfully by exaggerating reality, and George’s pretend
experience could become blended with something real.
When George was a young child, his difficult early experiences of con-
nection and disconnection with his parents had led to a partial failure in the
integration of these two modes of experiencing reality. He experienced
early feelings surrounding nurturance needs within the mode of psychic
equivalence; he could not move beyond experiencing these earliest wishes
and fears as if they were real. The therapist’s awareness of George’s inner
world enabled George to dare to think about his feelings and thoughts as
representations, rather than replicas, of external reality.
The profile of coping/defensive strategies can be viewed as illustrating
George’s progress in mentalisation, that is, in integrating psychic equiva-
lence and pretense. While his play activity became more adaptive and inter-
active, it remained predominantly conflictual. Moreover, his play activity
strategies continued to reflect, to a minimal degree, intense anxiety and
social isolation. These intense fantasies remained entrenched in the pretend
mode. They were expressed through the depiction of a terrifying black hole
208 PROFILES OF PLAY

and through the activities of dispersal and dedifferentiation. Despite this

intermittent intrusion of intense anxiety, George was able to be predomi-
nantly aware of himself as playing.

Revisiting Sammy
In contrast to George’s profiles, the profile of Sammy’s coping/defensive
strategies depicted a child who was minimally aware of his role as player. As
has just been described, to the extent that a child can mediate between the
realm of pretense and the realm of the real through the medium of
mentalisation or representation, we can clearly observe the activity of the
self. In these instances of normal development, the child himself engages in
active commerce between these two realms, each of which enriches the
experience of the other. When first engaged in treatment, Sammy was pre-
dominantly preoccupied within his own world of sensorimotor fantasies.
His realm of pretense included soft and hard objects experienced as exten-
sions of his own body, protecting him from external intrusions. Sammy’s
early history was replete with parental absence, fear, confusion, and depres-
sion. There was no one available to him to aid him in integrating his internal
states with external events. Significantly, Sammy’s highest levels of relating
were observed in relationship to his older brother, whom he was able to
both imitate and prey upon in play.
The two profiles of defensive–coping strategies provided a measure of
Sammy’s emergent representational capacities. The integration of his
intense fantasies with interpersonal experience through the use of play
strategies also enabled him to gain perspective on himself in the role of
player. In the first session, Sammy demonstrated minimal problem-solving
abilities in attempting to put together two tracks. He also evidenced conflict
by avoiding interaction and regressing to the neediness of a much younger
child. In the beginning of treatment Sammy’s play style was dominated by
the use of extremely anxious/isolated strategies, including constriction and
dismantling.
From Sammy’s profile of play it was clear that his social constriction had
immediate consequences in the constriction of his experience of himself. In
regressing into a general state of withdrawal, Sammy remained uncon-
nected to the source of possible personal growth and development. In this
 PLAY ACTIVITY, THE PLAYER, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 209

sense Sammy created his own dilemma of unrelatedness. As if through

metaphor (a hint of Sammy’s potential for integration), however, Sammy
showed an interest in connectedness by focusing on the task of putting
railroad tracks together.
The second session analyzed manifested a very significant shift in
Sammy’s style of playing. In this session there was no evidence of extreme
anxiety or isolation. Sammy had also become well aware of his role as
player. He was able to integrate his fantasy world of trains, travel, catastro-
phe, and repair (pretend mode) with the interpersonal realities of relation-
ship to form new representations. The small fireman who goes up and
down the ladder was a translation of his new experience of his own capabil-
ities within the language of play. The play space included three players, his
mother, the therapist, and Sammy. It was within this triadic focus that
Sammy was able to progress developmentally. Adaptive attributes observed
in his play activity included anticipation, sublimation, affiliation, and
altruism. Projection and doing and undoing (conflictual strategies) were
present to a moderate degree. Sammy’s progress was mirrored in his
mother’s active involvement, her anticipation of his play, her close bonds to
him while playing, her altruism in giving of herself in the play, and the sub-
limation of her personal interests in the growth of her child.
Sammy’s play activity demonstrated the emergence of imaginary play
from shared meaningful interaction with his mother and therapist. In his
isolated state at the beginning of therapy, Sammy’s early attempts at play
activity evoked confusion for him. His intermittent withdrawal from
involvement with mother and therapist and his wandering off might be
understood as efforts to regulate this initial feeling of disorganization. As
therapy progressed, meaning emerged from the shared focus of the play
activity. Sammy’s earliest desire was to connect, and he expanded upon this
desire to develop and grow by representing travel, movement, separation,
and reunion. Most poignantly, Sammy represented in the last play activity
segment the occurrence of breakdown and repair.
Robert Emde (1995) traced the beginnings of pretense and imaginative
play activity to before the end of the second year. Citing Freud’s observa-
tions of his 18-month-old grandson’s “fort”...“da” (“gone” and “there”)
game (Freud 1920), Emde claimed that this game was an early form of
pretense, making use of an alternative reality. Thus, upon his mother’s
210 PROFILES OF PLAY

departure Freud’s grandson engaged in repeated solitary play involving the

disappearance and return of a spool on a string. Moreover, not only was this
play activity an active repetition of the experience of helplessness resulting
from mother’s separation, it also brought a sense of mastery in the return
sequence that contained both relief and pleasure. The social aspects of this
play activity were not immediately obvious, but Freud noted how the boy’s
mother encouraged her son’s becoming aware of her return after a period of
disappearance by hiding her face with her hands and then, to the child’s joy,
reappearing.
Robert Emde stressed the future orientation of this imaginative activity,
emerging from the social play between mother and child. It was this future
orientation that contained the adaptive element of hoping, imagining what
would happen next. Thus, Sammy’s mother when playing with him at
peek-a-boo created an anticipation, a shared expectation of her reappear-
ance. These shared joyous expectations constructed the atmosphere of hope
and expectation that contributed to Sammy’s enhanced development.
Looking forward enabled Sammy to construct a narrative linking events.
His stories enabled him to hide objects without the fear of losing them and
have objects break down without the fear of permanent injury. With these
new understandings, Sammy gained new flexibility in his capacity to
regulate his feelings and states of self-awareness. Thus, the development of
Sammy’s imagination did not add to his confusion; rather it gradually elimi-
nated his confusion by enhancing his self-awareness and closeness in rela-
tionships with others. Play activity was the medium within which the devel-
opment of these two important aspects of ego functioning—imagination
and self-reflection—were observed.

Profiles of Play as a Measure for Observation of a

Child’s Development
Play activity, so essential to the welfare of children, can be both understood
as an overall process and analyzed into specific parameters using the catego-
ries of the CPTI, a valuable tool for observation and shared clinical and sci-
entific understanding. These categories tell us about the relationship
between play and everyday reality, play and the child’s emerging self-per-
 PLAY ACTIVITY, THE PLAYER, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF 211

ceptions, and the role of play activity in the normal course of development
and in psychopathology.
With the use of the CPTI, it is possible to identify patterns among
variables that contribute to play activity, resulting in profiles of play
activity. Why pursue this elaborate taxonomy? What value do these
observed categories have in promoting our understanding of the process of
change in play activity? Since the observer often has an immediate intuitive
understanding of the child’s play, one might ask if all of this analysis is
necessary. The author’s mission has been to demonstrate how these at times
laborious procedures can provide clinicians and researchers with valuable
new insights into various kinds of play, various kinds of players, and the
process of change in play activity over time. It is intended that these profiles
be understood as multidetermined in the case of each player. Do certain
diagnostic groups, age groups, cultural groups also have characteristic
profiles? Only extensive scientific epidemiological research can give the
answers to this last question.
The term “profiles of play” has another connotation. Profiles are
intended to identify patterns of organization that underlie manifest play
activity. These profiles identify styles of playing. As play activity changes, it
is possible to identify changes in parameters associated with these transfor-
mations. In addition, as demonstrated in this book a profile of play is multi-
dimensional, therefore the CPTI facilitates greater detection of individual
differences within the general category of play activity. Profiles of play
capture the interplay of dynamics between regulatory mechanisms, pro-
gressive movement, regressive pulls, and creativity. A profile of play identi-
fies an individual child’s style of organization while playing, a way of
expressing his own individuality.
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 Garmezy, N. 177 Oppenheim, D. 203
Name index Garner, B. 66
Garvey, C. 60 Papousek, H. 48
Gordon, P. 109 Papousek, M. 48
Abelson, R. 60 Gottlieb, E. 158 Peller, L. 69
Altshuler, J. 60 Gottlieb, H. 158 Piaget, J. 52, 55, 56
Anthony, J. 76 Greenberg, J. 49 Pine, F. 23, 49
Apfel, N. 56 Greenspan, S. 66
Gunzenhauser-Hart, N. 10 Rayne, J. 60
Baron-Cohen, S. 177, 202 Roberts, J. 9
Bates, E. 201 Harbader, E. 9 Rose, G. 49
Beebe, B. 21, 52, 145, 180 Hobson, R. 177 Rosenblatt, B. 22, 52
Beeghly, M. 177 Hunt, J.McV. 76 Rutter, M. 177
Benigni, L. 201 Ryger, R. 9
Beren, P. 140 Izard, C. 48
Salemanto, A. 9
Bergman, A. 23, 49, 135 Jacobs, L. 9 Sander, L. 52, 53, 180
Bick, E. 179 Johnson, J. 66 Sandler, A.M. 21
Bion, W.R. 145, 179 Jordan, P. 9 Sandler, J. 21, 22, 52, 53
Blum, E. 9 Sarnoff, C. 70, 100
Boettcher, C. 9 Kelly, K. 109 Schank, R. 60
Bowlby, J. 21 Kernberg, P. 9, 12, 21, 27, 30, Scholl, H. 9
Bresner, M. 9 46, 78, 109, 138, 180 Seitz, E. 9
Bretherton, I. 55, 56, 201 Klein, M. 180 Selman, R. 69
Bruner, J. 58, 59, 202 Kohut, H. 21 Siegler, A. 9
Kruger, R. 9 Sigman, M. 177
Camaioni, L. 201 Krystal, H. 49
Chazan, R. 10 Singer, D. 202
Kubrick, L. 203 Singer, J.L. 202
Chazan, S. 12, 27, 30, 46, 52,
78, 109, 138, 148, 180, Slade, A. 23, 24
Lachman, F. 21, 145 Sommer, A. 9
185 Lane, R. 148
Chicchetti, D. 177 Sorce, J. 145, 202
Leslie, A. 201 Stern, D. 21, 48, 52, 59, 145,
Cohen, D. 201 Lichtenberg, J. 48, 52, 53, 54,
Cohler, B. 76 180, 201
76 Stoball, C. 9
Corrigan, E. 109 Lipsett, L. 48 Sutton-Smith, B. 202
Lobel, J. 9
Dale, N. 55
Dawson, G. 177 Target, M. 207, 208
Mahler, M. 21, 23, 49, 71, Trad, P. 203
De More, J. 9 180
Drucker, J. 201 Trevarthen, C. 48, 202
Mandelovitch, C. 9 Tustin, F. 57, 178, 180, 185
Dunn, J. 55, 65 Mayes, L. 201 Tyson, P. 69
Meltzer, D. 179, 180 Tyson, R. 69
Eisenbach, J. 9 Meyers, H. 9
Emde, R. 48, 145, 202, 203, Milner, M. 179
210, 211 Urist, J. 62
Mitchell, S. 49
Engel, E. 10, 60 Moran, G. 22 Vela, R. 158
Erikson, E. 22, 35, 41, 53, 75 Moriarty, A. 77 Votterra, V. 201
Erikson, J. 22 Moskowitz, J. 9 Vygotsky, L. 202
Fein, G. 56 Mundy, P. 177
Murphy, L. 76, 77, 78, 88 Weiss-Perry, B. 177
Fine, R. 10 Wellman, H. 201
First, E. 134 Nelson, K. 59 White, R. 53, 76
Flavell, J.H. 201 Neubauer, P. 22 Winnicott, D.W. 11, 21, 35,
Fonagy, P. 207, 208 Nicholich, L. 56 49, 53, 134, 145
Fraiberg, S. 53, 77, 177, 180 Normandin, L. 9, 12, 27, 30, Wolf, D. 60
Franklin, A. 9 46, 78, 109, 138, 180 Wolf, J. 9
Freud, A. 65, 108
Freud, S. 12, 53, 202, 208, Ogden, T. 180 Youngblade, L. 65
210

218
 affect and development of awareness of playing, child’s
Subject play 48–9
observed in play activity
199–200
awe 85
50–2
index appropriateness of affect
to content 51
background of safety 53, 117
ballet 68
child’s affective tone birth 154, 172, 175
acrobatics 68 towards therapist 51 bizarre representation 58
acting out 136 overall hedonic tone 50 blanket 95
adaptation 78, 152, 155, 173 regulation and board games 68
adaptive player 14, 72, modulation of affects bodily damage 168, 172
75–107, 148 50
adaptive strategies used by spectrum of affects 50 cannibalism 129
child at play 78–80 therapist’s affective tone card games 68
adaptation 78 towards child 51 caregiving 95, 104, 105, 130,
affiliation 79 transitions between 155, 163, 168, 172
altruism 79 affective states 50 caricatures 68
anticipation 78 affiliation 79, 87, 100, 106, categories of play activity
humor 80 118, 124, 131, 148, 152, 30–3
identification 79 155, 163, 169, 173, 197 art activity 32–3
problem-solving 79 aggression 49, 56, 85, 104, cause–effect activity 31
sublimation 79 116, 118, 121, 123, 129, construction activity 31
suppression 79 150, 154, 158, 162, 164, exploratory activity 30
clinical cases 167, 170 fantasy activity 32
Carla and “evoked against self 118 game play activity 32
companion” 80–8 altruism 79, 106, 197 gross motor activity 30
Kate and “Land of the anal components of play imitation (literal) activity 32
Unwanted” 88–107 activity 70 manipulative activity 31
exc e rpt f ro m 7 t h anger 44, 85, 129, 150, 154, problem-solving activity 31
treatment session 157, 167 sensory activity 30
90–3 animals 117 sorting–aligning activity 31
next session, later that annihilating relationship 61 traumatic activity 32
same week 101–7 annihilation 62, 118, 176 cause–effect activity 31, 33
session at end of 6th anticipation 78, 106, 124, child care 112
month of therapy 131, 173, 197 Children’s Play Therapy
93–6 anxiety 20, 28, 32, 52, 85, Instrument see CPTI
2nd session following 116, 121, 124, 150, 154, child psychotherapy, role of
return from summer 167, 172, 189, 195, 197, play activity in 22–6
interval: 8th month 206 chronological development
of treatment 96– see also extremely level of play activity 64
101 anxious/isolated player clay 33
descriptive analysis of play apprehension 121 cognitive components 14, 41,
activity 83–5, 93–4, 98, art activity 32–3, 121, 166, 52–8, 85–6, 95, 99, 104,
103–4 171 116–17, 122, 129–30,
functional analysis of play assertiveness 139 147, 151, 154, 162,
activity 87–8, 96, attachment bond 49, 161 167–8, 172, 189, 195–6
100–1 autistic encapsulation 181 and development of play
structural analysis of play autistic sensation objects 185 52–4
activity 85–7, 94–6, autistic spectrum disorder observed in play activity
99–100, 104–5 177–9 54–8
affect and development of autonomous (independent) role representation 54
play 48–9 relationships 61, 62, stability of
affective components 14, 41, 99–100 representation
48–52, 85, 94, 99, 104, autonomy 105, 172 (persons and objects)
116, 121, 129, 146–7, autosphere 35, 171 54
150–1, 154, 162, 167, avoidance 101, 112, 118,
172, 189, 195 124, 148, 157, 190

219
220 PROFILES OF PLAY

style of representation constriction 180–1, 190 146, 148–50, 153–4,

(persons and objects) construction activity 31, 33, 161–2, 166–7, 187–8
54 116 categories of play activity
use of play object 54 containment 156 30–3
colic 112 contempt 150, 154 script description of play
collaborative play 55, 151, control, loss of 118 activity 33–5
154 cooperative interaction 87, spheres of play activity
communication 177 105, 173, 175 35
competitive sports 68 cooperative play 69, 123 despair 32, 125
complex role play 55, 56, coping 76 destruction 62, 63, 64, 130,
129, 151, 154, 167 coping–defensive strategies 172
compliance 24 14, 41, 72, 87, 105, 133, destructive relationship 61
compulsion neurosis 108 135, 156, 174, 175, 197 devaluation 88, 138, 148, 152
conflicted player 14, 108–35 and child’s emerging sense development of play
clinical case: George, the of self 204–7 and affect 48–9
Mad Scientist, and the and emergence of psychic and cognitive components
camera 112–35 reality 207–11 52–4
excerpt from session at used by extremely developmental components
beginning of anxious/isolated child 41, 64–73, 86–7, 95–6,
treatment 115–18 101, 180–2 100, 105, 117, 123, 131,
excerpt from session CPTI (Children’s Play 147, 152, 155, 163, 168,
during ending phase Therapy Instrument) 173, 189, 196
of treatment 125–32 12–13, 14, 15, 27, 30, 33, observed in play activity
excerpt from session 72, 78, 109, 138, 198, 64–73
midway in treatment 211–12 chronological
119–25 George’s CPTI profile over development level of
George’s CPTI profile 8 months of treatment play activity 64
over 8 months of 133–5 expected chronological
treatment 133–5 Rebecca’s CPTI profiles levels of play activity
segmentation of three over treatment 155–7 65–8
therapy sessions 114 creativity 23, 29, 153 gender identity of play
conflicted strategies used by cross-identification 67, 131, activity 64
child at play 72, 109–12 134 psychosexual level of
avoidance 112 crying 38, 51, 112 play activity 65
doing and undoing 110 curiosity 85, 104, 121, 129, separation –
intellectualization 110 150, 154, 167, 172, 189 individuation level of
introjection 111 play activity 65
isolation 110 daydreaming 68, 108 social level of play
negation 110 de-animation 181 activity (interaction
projection 111 death 170, 172 with therapist) 64
rationalization 110 dedifferentiation 125, 135, differentiation 71, 117, 156,
reaction formation 110 164, 180 163
regression 111 defensive behaviors 177 directorial play 55
repression 111 defensive–coping strategies disgust 150
somatization 111 used by extremely disintegration of self 128
turning aggression anxious/isolated child 101, dismantling 178–9, 181, 190
against the self 111 180–2 dispersal 118, 124, 132, 135,
descriptive analysis of play delays, language 182 164, 181
activity 115–16, 120–1, delight 121 distress 30, 51
128–9 denial 137 doing and undoing 11, 110,
functional analysis of play dependent relationships 61, 132, 197
activity 118, 124–5, 62, 130, 163, 168, 172 doll-directed play 56–7
131–2 depression 120, 125, 143 dolls 66, 75, 83–4, 85–6,
structural analysis of play descriptive analysis 13–14, 87–8, 167
activity 116–17, 121–3, 30–5, 83–5, 93–4, 98, dominant components of play
129–31 103–4, 115–16, 128–9, activity 71
conflicts 79 dramatic role-playing 66, 67
 SUBJECT INDEX 221

dreams 144, 145, 146 extremely anxious/isolated humor 80, 100, 131, 152,
duplication 106 strategies 72, 169, 173 155, 169, 173, 206
dyadic level of relationship hyperactivity 182
61, 62 facilitation 34 hypochondriasis 182
dyadic mirroring transactions fairness 68
48 fantasy idealization 88, 118, 148,
dyadic role play 36, 55, 56–7, activity 32 152
95, 104, 147, 168, 195 distinguishing from reality identification 79, 87, 100,
202–4 106, 124, 131, 134, 135,
elation 154 play 31, 101, 154, 161, 152, 155, 163, 169, 173
ending 34–5 166, 168, 171 with aggressor 88, 125,
envy 150, 154, 167 representation 58 135, 138–9, 152, 155,
“evoked companion” (clinical fear 20, 28, 51, 52, 116, 121, 164, 169
case) 80–8 129, 167, 172 identifying play activity:
expected chronological levels of malevolent control 62 segmentation 26–30
of play activity 65–8, 69 feeding 104, 168 illness 172
birth–12 months 66 feelings 19, 32, 85, 121, 129, imitation (literal) activity 32,
1–2 years 66 146–7, 150, 154, 167, 61, 171
2–3 years 67 172, 189 individuation level of play
3–6 years 67–8 feigned indifference 129 activity 65, 173
7–9 years 68 fighting 168 inhibition 34, 121
exploratory activity 30, 166, fitting in 29 initiation 33
195 fluid changes 57 insecurity 142
exploratory–assertive food 105 integration 156
motivational system 76 forbidden activities 128 intellectual curiosity 130
extremely anxious/isolated forbidden wishes 108, 128 intellectualization 101, 110,
player 15, 96, 176–98 freezing 181–2 124, 173
clinical case: child called frustration 63 interaction 84, 105, 121,
Sammy 182–98 functional analysis of play 151, 157, 173
early phase of treatment activity 87–8, 96, 100–1, with therapist 64
184–91 118, 124–5, 152, 155, internalization 21
excerpt from later 163–4, 168–9, 173, interruptions 13, 29–30, 44
session 193–6 190–1, 197–8 introjective/projective
session nine months fusion 181 processes 134
later 191–3 inversion 101
defensive–coping strategies game play activity 32 involuntary transformation 57
used by extremely games 66, 67, 68 invulnerable child 76
anxious/isolated child gender differentiation 60, 67 isolated play-unaware 69
101, 180–2 gender identity of play isolation 110, 125
autistic encapsulation activity 64, 69, 167, 168 see also extremely
181 gender role expression 131 anxious/isolated player
constriction 180–1 generalized social–cognitive
de-animation 181 deficit 177 jealousy 113
dedifferentiation 180 glee 19, 28 jokes 68
dismantling 181 good-enough holding 49
dispersal 181 greediness 130 “Land of the Real” 97, 98,
freezing 181–2 grieving 170 100
fusion 181 gross motor activity 30 “Land of the Unwanted” 97,
hypochondriasis 182 guilt 89 98, 100, 106
reversal of affect 182 language, use of 62, 117,
descriptive analysis of play healin, 173 130–1, 168, 172, 176,
activity 187–8, 195 helplessness, feelings of 123, 177
functional analysis of play 133, 177, 183 latency 68, 100
activity 190–1, 197–8 hiding game 67 components of play activity
structural analysis of play holding environment 53 70, 71
activity 189–90, 195–6 horizontal decalage 52 laughter 128
humiliation 49 leaving game 67
222 PROFILES OF PLAY

libidinal object constancy 53 nurturing 106, 164, 168 narrative components

limit-setting 162 observed in 61–4
loneliness 157 object constancy 71, 105, 150 player, and development of
love 106, 157 observing play activity 17–40 self 199–212
descriptive analysis of play psychosexual level of 65
macrosphere 35, 116, 121, activity 30–5 separation – individuation
129, 154 identifying play activity: level of 65
magic tricks 68, 70 segmentation 26–30 social level of (interaction
magical representation 58 play activity and with therapist) 64
maladaptive defenses 157 representational world of play materials 66, 67
malevolent control 62, 130, child 21–2 play object, use of 54, 151,
168 principles of play 19–20 168
malevolent relationship 61 revisiting three children: play space 21–2
manipulative activity 31 descriptive analysis player, child’s awareness of
maturity 198 36–40 himself as 199–200
meaning 23, 61 role of play activity in child playfulness 76, 153, 206
memory 66 psychotherapy 22–6 function of play and
mentalization 208 oedipal components of play 199–202
mentally retarded children activity 70 playing alone 69
177 oedipal level of relationship plays 68, 123, 168
merger experiences 21 61, 62, 105, 151, 172 pleasure 85, 104, 129, 150,
messiness 130 omnipotent control 118, 125, 154, 167, 172
metamorphosis 172, 173 135, 138, 164 polarized play activity see
metaphor 61, 100, 105, 151, open space 53 rigid/polarized player
155, 168, 172, 173, 175, oral cannibalism 132 practicing 71
191, 196 oral receptive level of precursor role play 55
microsphere 35, 98, 103, 121, psychosexual development preoedipal conflicts 149
129, 171 96, 105 pre-play activity 13, 28, 42,
mime 57 overall hedonic tone 50, 51 43
mind, theory of 201–2 overcontrol 156 pressure 32
mirroring 66, 156 pretend mode 207
modulation and regulation of pain 176 pretense, development of
affects 50 painting 32 capacity for 201–2
mother–child relationship 15 parallel play 69, 190 primary intersubjectivity 48
mother–child transference 96 parallel relationships 61, 62 primitive devaluation 138
mothering 158 parent–child relationship 11, primitive idealization 137–8
multiple roles 61, 105, 131, 96, 109, 156, 187, 191 principles of play 19–20
168, 172 parenting 142 problem-solving 76, 79, 106,
musical instruments 68 path towards mastery 78 118, 155, 190, 205
pathological behaviors 177 abilities 116
narcissistic pathology 139–40 peek-a-boo 66 activity 31
narrative components 14, 41, peer group 105 process notes of therapy
58–64, 86, 95, 99–100, penetration 71 session, therapist’s 46–8
104–5, 117, 123, 130–1, phallic components of play profiles of play as measure for
147, 151, 154–5, 163, activity 70 observation of child’s
168, 172, 189, 196 play activity 13, 27–8, 42–3, development 211–12
and development of play 44–5, 106 profiling 15–16
58–60 affective components projection 101, 106, 111,
observed in play activity observed in 50–2 118, 124, 132, 155, 169,
61–4 chronological development 197
narrator play 55, 167 level of 64 projective identification 137,
negation 110 cognitive components 152, 157, 164, 169
negative emotions 49 observed in 54–8 protest 49
non-play activity 13, 27, 29, function of play and psychic equivalence mode 207
42, 43, 45–6, 106, 114 playfulness 199–202 psychic reality, emergence of
nonverbal actions 118 gender identity of 64 207–11
nothingness 178 psychoanalysis 179
 SUBJECT INDEX 223

psychosexual level of play m i ddl e p h a s e o f script description of play

activity 65, 69 treatment 164–9 activity 33–5
psychotherapy 26 Anna’s CPTI profiles ending 34–5
pun 61 ove r t re at m e n t facilitation 34
174–5 inhibition 34
quality of relationship 62 Rebecca “The Perfect initiation 33
One” and the segmentation of session 15
rage 49 “Witch” 139–57 and identifying play activity
rapprochement 71, 152, 173 beginning phase of 26–30
rationalization 110 treatment 143–8 interruptions 29–30
reaction formation 101, 110, e n di n g p h a s e o f non-play activity 29
118, 124, 132 treatment 153–5 play activity 27–8
Reactive Attachment Disorder m i ddl e p h a s e o f pre-play activity 28
of Early Childhood 80 treatment 148–52 session segment 1: non-play
realistic play 57 Rebecca’s CPTI profiles activity #1 42
realistic representation 58 ove r t re at m e n t session segment 2: pre-play
reality, distinguishing from 155–7 activity #1 42
fantasy 202–4 descriptive analysis of play session segment 3: play
rebirth 154, 168, 170, 175 activity 146, 148–50, activity #1 42–3
reciprocal interaction 66, 87, 153–4, 161–2, 166–7, session segment 4: pre-play
105, 173 169–71 activity #2 43
reciprocal play 69, 196 functional analysis of play session segment 5: play
reciprocal reward system 48 activity 148, 152, 155, activity #2 43
recognition 80 163–4, 168–9, 173 session segment 6: non-play
games 66 rigid/polarized strategies activity #2 43
reflective mode 208 used by child at play 72, session segment 7: play
regression 106, 118, 120, 88, 96, 137–9, 174, activity #3 44
124, 131, 132, 169, 173, 175 session segment 8:
190, 207 denial 137 interruption #1 44
regulation and modulation of identification with session segment 9: play
affects 50, 52 aggressor 138–9 activity #4 44–5
rejection 155 omnipotent control 138 session segment 10:
relief 116 primitive devaluation non-play activity #3
reparation 172, 173 138 45–6
representation primitive idealization self
role 54 137–8 disintegration of 128
stability of 54, 151 projective identification play activity, player, and
style of 54 137 development of
representational world of child splitting 137 199–212
and play activity 21–2 structural analysis of play preoccupation with 62
repression 111, 155 activity 146–7, 150–2, sense of 120
resurrection 168 154–5, 162–3, 167–8, self-confidence 76
reunion games 66 172–3 self-esteem 139, 145
reversal of affect 182 RIGs (“Representations of self-expression 106, 146, 175
revisiting three children: Interactions that have been self-object(s) 21
descriptive analysis 36–40 Generalized”) 21 experiences 21
rhyme 61 role-playing 60, 66, 96 self-regulation 106
rigid/polarized player 15, 25, role representation 54, 55, sensory activity 30
101, 136–75 147, 175 sensory qualities 57
clinical cases rules 68 separation 155, 171, 172
Anna and her breaking 130 anxiety 39
therapeutic baby problems 140, 158
157–75 sadness 32, 116, 121, 143, separation – individuation
beginning phase of 145, 172 level of play activity 65,
treatment 158–61 safety, background of 53 175 71, 96, 100, 147, 152,
end ing ph a s e o f satiation 167, 171 173
treatment 169–73 setting the stage 28
224 PROFILES OF PLAY

shame 49 structured games 32 warmth 106

silence 61 style of representation (persons withdrawn and bizarre social
single role 61 and objects) 54 interaction 182
social development 87 subjective distress 30 word game 93–4, 95
social interaction 52, 69, 176, sublimation 79, 87, 100, 106, worry 150, 154, 172, 195,
177 131, 135, 152, 155, 173, 197
social level of play activity 197
(interaction with therapist) submission 71
64 substitution 57
social relationships 108 suicidal behaviour 112
socialization 140 suppression 79
solitary interactions 87, 189 surprise 20, 28
solitary role play 27, 55, 123 swimming 68
somatization 111 symbolic play 57, 60, 67, 76,
songs 66 95, 175, 177, 190
sorting–aligning activity 31 symbolic substitution 104
spectrum of affects 50, 51, symbolic thought 54
104, 146, 195 symbols 24, 100
spheres of play activity 35
splitting 137, 146, 152, 157, tactile hallucinations 185
164 temper tantrums 112
stability of representation tensions 108
(persons and objects) 54 theme of play activity 61
stable changes 57 theory of mind 201–2
stories 22, 68, 94 therapeutic alliance 37
storytelling 60 therapy session 42–8
stress 79, 158 segmentation of 42–6
structural analysis 14, 41–73, therapist’s process notes of
85–7, 94–6, 99–100, 46–8
104–5, 116–17, 121–4, topic of play activity 61
129–31, 146–7, 150–2, toys 33, 36, 51, 57, 66, 68,
154–5, 162–3, 167–8, 116, 196
172–3, 189–90, 195–6 transference 95, 106, 120,
affective components 122, 170, 175
48–52, 85, 94, 99, 104, transformation 154, 200
116, 121, 129, 146–7, transitions between affective
150–1, 154, 162, 167, states 50, 52, 94, 104,
172, 189, 195 116, 150, 154, 162, 167,
cognitive components 189
52–8, 85–6, 95, 99, trauma 23
104, 116–17, 122, traumatic anxiety 77
129–30, 147, 151, 154, traumatic experiences 22, 137
162, 167–8, 172, 189, traumatic play 166
195–6 triadic level of relationship 61,
developmental components 62, 168
64–73, 86–7, 95–6, trickiness 130
100, 105, 117, 123, turning aggression against self
131, 147, 152, 155, 111
163, 168, 173, 189, turning relationship 61
196 twinning 62
narrative components
58–64, 86, 95, 99–100, verbal skills 81, 116
104–5, 117, 123, visual-motor skills 81
130–1, 147, 151, voluntary transformation 57,
154–5, 163, 168, 172, 104, 129, 172
189, 196
therapy session 42–8 wariness 121, 129