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CLINICAL NOTES SERIES (September 2016)
DONALD WINNICOTT ON PLAYING
Donald W. Winnicott (1971). ‘Playing: A Theoretical Statement,’ Playing and Reality
(London: Routledge Classics, 2005), pp. 51-70.
INTRODUCTION
Donald W. Winnicott was a paediatrician by training before he became a
psychoanalyst. Like most analysts who specialized in the analysis of children, he
knew the importance of playing in not only the everyday lives of children, but as a
tool of interpretation in the analytic clinic. So it is not difficult to appreciate the fact
that he identified the ability to play as an important criterion of mental health in
both children and adults. Winnicott however accorded much more importance to the
act of playing in children since there was no other way of accessing their
unconscious. The importance of play and playing was probably the only area in
which there was consensus amongst the analysts of different schools who took on
the onerous responsibility of developing the theory and practice of the analysis of
children at the British Society for Psychoanalysis in London during the war years. A
good point of entry into these theories would be to delineate what exactly they
meant by the terms ‘play’ and ‘playing.’ Since a comparative analysis of play in the
theories of Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and Donald Winnicott would be beyond the
scope of these clinical notes, I focus here mainly on Winnicott’s theoretical statement
on playing and leave the rest for another occasion. These notes should give both
theorists and clinical practitioners a feel for what Winnicott’s notion of play is and
why it is an important indicator of mental health or the lack thereof in young
children. For Winnicott, when a child is able to resume the habit of playing – which
might have been interrupted by distressing or traumatic circumstances – the analysis
will make rapid progress or even attain some measure of closure. These notes
summarize the main points raised by Winnicott in his theoretical statement on

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playing, though this is not the only paper that Winnicott wrote on this theme.
Subsequent chapters of the book from which I excerpt this statement go deeper into
his theory of play albeit in the context of the true self and creativity. It is important to
remember that Winnicott’s preoccupation with transitional objects and transitional
phenomena will not be readily comprehensible if we do not learn to appreciate the
theory of play that serves as its theoretical background. That is because children
mainly use toys to play and use them as transitional objects. It is however important
to remember that it is not the toy or the teddy that really matters. What really
matters is the use of the object rather than the object chosen per se. How exactly a child
goes about using a transitional object is an indication of the level of creativity with
which he is able to master the periodic absence of his mother. It would not be a
stretch to say that it was actually Sigmund Freud who discovered the transitional
object when he saw his grandson playing the ‘fort-da’ game with a spool of thread
that he would throw away and then pick up repeatedly. Freud like Winnicott must
have realized that what mattered was not the spool, but that it symbolized the
opposition between the presence of the mother and the absence of the mother. What
Winnicott does then is to think through the implications of such moments in the
Freudian text albeit in the context of an empirical rather than a textual or dialectical
approach to psychoanalysis.
PLAY AND PLAYING
What does Winnicott mean then by play and playing? How do these notions affect
the space of the clinic? Winnicott points out at the very beginning of his paper that
the space of psychotherapy includes that of the patient and the analyst. The
communication between the analyst and the patient is compared to ‘two people
playing together.’ The therapeutic imperative then, for Winnicott, is to make it
possible for the patient to play if he is being held back by inhibitions. In other words,
if the patient is able to play at the outset; then, it becomes a tool of interpretation. If
the patient is not able to play at the beginning of the treatment; then, getting him to
play becomes the aim of the therapy. Winnicott begins by citing the pre-existing
literature which recognizes an analogy between concentration in adults and the
feeling of absorption in play in young children. Winnicott however differentiates
between the terms ‘play’ and ‘playing’ in both the analysis of children and adults.
So, for instance, in the analysis of adults, the act of free-association can take on a
playful aspect; this could relate to the actual words used; inflections in speech; and
in the deployment of humour. Winnicott’s description of playing is related to his
theory of transitional objects and transitional phenomena. His fond hope is that the
analytic community will not only be able to make a connection between these
theories, but accord the same importance to his account of ‘playing’ as they
previously did to his work ‘on transitional objects and transitional phenomena.’

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Winnicott then goes on to describe the modalities of playing in terms of space and
time. The space of play for him is neither inside nor outside in the conventional
sense of the term. What Winnicott has in mind is a space in between the baby and the
mother. This is the space that will re-emerge in between the patient and the analyst in
the clinic in the context of mutual playing.
PLAYING AS A CULTURAL UNIVERSAL
Winnicott pitches strongly for his theory of the transitional object and the process of
playing as cultural universals because they represent how the baby relates to his
mother. Whether a baby will grow up to be healthy will depend on how successful
he is in the attempt to relate to his mother at this phase of development. Winnicott
illustrates the phenomena that he has in mind with the help of case vignettes. So, for
instance, in the case of a two and a half year old boy named Edmund the specific
difficulty is that he will play only with his mother and not accept any substitutes
including his grandmother. This specificity in object choice later becomes a character
trait. It began as difficulties in weaning since he refused to be fed by a bottle.
Winnicott worked out Edmund’s patterns of attachment and detachment to his
mother by observing how exactly he would play with the toys in the clinic in the
presence of his mother. In the case of five year girl named Diana, the teddies in the
clinic gave Winnicott an opportunity to observe how she worked-through her
mother’s pregnancy and prepared to look after her younger brother. In both these
instances what is involved, argues Winnicott, are not the child’s instincts, but the
opportunity to relate meaningfully to the presence of the mother. What is at stake in
the child’s development is not only the ability to handle the transitional object, but
also the capacity to be alone (albeit in the presence of the mother).
SURPRISED BY PLAYING
For Winnicott, playing is both a ‘creative experience’ and ‘a basic form of living.’
Playing is however a ‘precarious’ construct that is neither fully subjective nor open
to an objective description by the analyst. Another important implication of play
therapy is that it is not dependent on ‘clever interpretations’ on the part of the
analyst. The efficacy of play therapy depends on whether or not the patient is able to
‘surprise himself’ in the act of playing. While these points are made specifically in
the context of the analysis of children they have important implications for a theory
of analysis as well. This is because Winnicott is committed to the proposition that a
clinical interpretation can avoid the dangers of ‘compliance, indoctrination, and
resistance’ only if it is within ‘the ripeness of material’ produced in the clinic. The
importance of this clinical insight cannot be over-emphasized since it summarizes in
a single sentence why many analyses cannot be completed or why they invariably
fail. The analytic interpretation will be therapeutic only at the point at which the child

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has developed the capacity to play. Furthermore, in addition to a sense of mutuality
between the analyst and the patient there must be spontaneity in the act of playing. In
the absence of these pre-conditions, the analyst will not be able to intervene in a
child’s unconscious. This is Winnicott’s version of the Freudian distinction between
‘what the patient knows’ and ‘what the analyst knows.’ It is the point at which the
patient is ‘surprised’ by what he (unconsciously) knows without (consciously)
knowing that he knew it, that he is deemed to be cured.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, Winnicott’s theory of playing begins with the child’s ‘preoccupation’
which is comparable to ‘concentration’ in adults. The term preoccupation is also
used in Winnicott’s theory in the context of the ‘primary maternal preoccupation’
which is the state of mind in which an expecting mother prepares to give birth. The
locus of play is neither inside nor outside. It is a shared space in between mother and
child.
Transitional objects in the external world are used to work-through the child’s inner
states; they are therefore imbued with the sense of dreams. The trajectory of
development comprises ‘transitional phenomena, playing, shared playing,’ and then
on to ‘cultural experiences.’ This trajectory depends on whether there is adequate
trust between the mother and the child. The child’s ability to play depends on the
state of his body and on whether he can handle the bodily excitement that accrues
from play. If there is an increase in excitement, the child will not be able to play. In
addition to excitement, there is the possibility of the child experiencing anxiety
during play. Success in playing therefore depends on developing the ability to
contain experiences that are the main sources of bodily excitement and anxiety. There is
necessarily something ‘precarious’ in play since it combines the subjective
experience of play with the objective reality of playing. Likewise, Winnicott’s clinical
work is characterised by the relationship between a theory of playing and the play of
theory in the analysis of children.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN