Play and Playfulness Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Aspects

by Akhtar, Monisha; Akhtar, Salman; Bergman, Anni; Bornstein, Melvin; Brenner, Ira; Daniels, Lucy; Etezady, M. Hossein; A. Freeman, Daniel M.; Herzog, James; Kieffer, Christine; Lefcourt, Ilene Sackler; Mann, Mali; Scharff, Jill; Volkan, Vamik D.

• ISBN13: 9780765707604
• ISBN10: 0765707608
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-27
• Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc.

Summary

While the psychodynamic understanding of play and play's therapeutic potential was long restricted to the realm of children, Winnicott's work demonstrated the profound significance of the capacity to play for healthy mental functioning during adult life. Scattered writings of Erikson, Glenn, and Shopper notwithstanding, the early spark of understanding remained largely ill developed. In Play and Playfulness, the reader is offered an exciting and highly informative set of essays about the psychic area that lies between reality and unreality and between veracity and imagination. It is the area of paradox and creativity. It sustains the self, allows for ego-replenishing regressions, and adds to the joy of the vital and lived experience. This book provides an easy and readable passage to the valley of the transitional experience in which creative synthesis of reality and unreality leads to a world of vigor, enthusiasm, and liveliness. The cultural variations and the clinical implications of such an experience are thoroughly elucidated. The result is a volume replete with technical virtuosity, clinical relevance, and the basic and nearly self evident humane music of the day-to-day experience of life.

Author Biography

Monisha C. Akhtar, PhD, is a faculty member at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. She is an adult and child/adolescent analyst and maintains a private practice in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Development
Self-Other Action Play: A Window into the Representational World of the Infant	p. 1
Fathers and Play	p. 17
Adolescence as a Time to Play	p. 33
Psychopathology
Neurotic Inhibitions of Play	p. 51
Normal and Pathological Playfulness	p. 69
Remembering, Replaying, and Working Through: The Transformation of Trauma in Children's Play	p. 85
Sociocultural Aspects
Cultural Pathways to Understanding Children's Play: Mythology and Folklore	p. 105
Playing for Survival during the Holocaust	p. 129
Play and Creativity	p. 145
Play and Track II Diplomacy	p. 159
Technical Implications
Aggression in Children: Origins, Manifestations, and Management through Play	p. 175
Play and Very Young Children in Object Relations Family Therapy	p. 185
Playfulness in the Adult Analytic Relationship	p. 195
References	p. 209
Index	p. 223
About the Contributors	p. 233
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