Select Page

The Space of Play and Psychoanalysis

by | Vol 32 (1) 2014

Many psychoanalytic theories address the question of the space of play. Based on Freud, the author first of all tries to show that the originality of psychoanalysis lets us consider the space of play as a scene (Bühne) which opens onto the Other Scene, the unconscious. A structural analogy between play space and tragic scene will be considered. Next the author will study the Winnicottian invention of potential space which allows us to explain the experience of play from a psychogenetic point of view. In this perspective it will be important to locate the area in which play takes place, an area of illusion that Winnicott describes as paradoxical. Finally a third perspective considering how play constitutes its own symbolical space will be considered. The author will propose that play institutes a third space allowing something to be said and at the same time a subjective division.

Related articles

  • Play and Pictorial Space in Collective Works by CoBrA Movement

    In the shared space around a work, the one who draws and the one who watches actually do the same thing: they play with matter and imagination. Based on playing and spontaneity, CoBrA movement collective creations were an opportunity to mix up the "distributions" (Rancière, 2000, 1987) in art experience. Arriving at this point has allowed us to find a way to think of artistic creation within the various art workshops.

  • The Play-Drive and the Cosmic Child

    Starting from the concept of a "play-drive" as introduced by Friedrich Schiller in his Letters on Aesthetic Education, the present study explores this concept at the interface of the crossroads between philosophy, anthropology, and aesthetics. In order to grasp what may be called the "space" of these phenomena, reflection must engage the relationship between Ancients and Moderns as well, to show that the figure of "the child" in Nietzsche and Heraclitus is apt to give its full dimension to Schiller's…

  • Psychoanalysis and Modernity

    This article gives a rough sketch of psychoanalysis as part of modern culture (modernity) and as participating in the problematic of modern culture (modernity). It starts from the present day lack of interest in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is minimally defined by its concern for human experience, dividedness and conflict and for the maintenance of a lack. Present day culture can be described by a prevalence of instrumentalism, narcissism and the practice of a culture of immediacy. It can be interpreted in…