Intimate play and marital adaptation

LITTLE attention has been given to the contribution of spontaneous, idiosyncratically elaborated "intimate play" to marital adjustment. This exploratory paper draws upon research and clinical interviews with married couples, ethological observations and children's play, and psychoanalytic object relations conceptions of adaptive regression. An understanding of intimate play is developed based on intrapsychic structures and interpersonal process, with several dimensions explored and illustrated in depth: its context, ritualizations, growth-potentiating aspects, and the range of adaptations it reflects. Intimate play is seen as having a role in positive bonding, communication, and conflict reduction, and more generally, as tending to stabilize a marital relationship. The clinical implications of the various phenomena associated with intimate play are also considered.