Playing and therapeutic action in child analysis

From its inception, child psychoanalysis has used fantasy play as a window to both the content and process of children's inner worlds. Because of the link to action and primary process, young children's imaginary play is rich in symbolic expressions that facilitate analytic interpretive interventions addressing the conflicts impeding development. There are inevitable tensions between allowing play to emerge as a therapeutic process in its own right and the usual psychoanalytic emphasis on clarification, verbalisation and, above all, interpretation within and about the transference. For many children, the very act of playing carries much of the therapeutic work aimed toward facilitating their return to developmentally appropriate and adaptive psychic functioning. The mobilisation of capacities for play in the analysis allows children to do what is needed for their development to continue and makes use of the developmentally restorative functions of play in the service of therapeutic action.