Man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being when he plays. (Schiller 1967, 107) --Schiller
We would like to demonstrate some of the major theories regarding the concept of play and its manifestation as exploration. In doing so, we will distinguish between the differing functions of play for children and adults.
The concept of play is a vital component of the aesthetic theory of Kant and Schiller.
Schiller’s theory of the aesthetic revolves around three drives, the form drive, the sensuous, and the play drive. Under the play drive, the sensuous drive and the form drive are united. The sensuous drive looks for our experience of time to be filled with content; we expose ourselves to determination by things. Under the form drive, we form things; what we wish is to bring about figures; to suspend time. The form drive is a state of determination and under it we seek an end to change. Play is a way of uniting change and identity. In play we remain exposed to impressions that come to us from the world, and reflect on our relation to the world. Thus we explore our moral autonomy. Play is the aesthetic state, and we must dwell in the aesthetic state to experience beauty. Beauty, as such, is a figure that has come alive and that we are only able to relate to through play.
For Kant, an aesthetic judgment occurs in the free harmonious play between understanding and imagination. Imagination presents a form that seems unitary and coherent without any concept, thus satisfying understanding’s need for unity. It is the play of faculties that differentiates the aesthetic state from all other mental states. With no interest in the object, the subject feels pleasure in beauty as a means in itself, and lingers in reflection. Agamben describes this lingering as pure means or gesture. This gesturality with no motivation towards an end is characteristic of a general notion of play; play is self-rewarding. In “Playstations” Steven Connor says play is free from the sense of independent of purpose or interest; to play is to have freedom to opt out of the normative. The origins of the desire to play are to be sought only in the activity itself, not in an external goal. Play is non-functional- the behavior is spontaneous and undirected. For Kant judgments of taste, free of all constraint by theoretical or moral concepts, are ultimately symbols of moral freedom itself. The freedom of imagination that is the essence of the experience is the only way that our moral autonomy becomes tangible to us.
Likewise play, as an exploratory activity free of concept and determination, may be the grounds where our moral autonomy becomes tangible. Spontaneous play of children within their peer groups is widely believed to demonstrate this concept. Freidrich Frobel, one of the earliest advocates of child centered education, thought play to be “the highest expression of human development in childhood”. Piaget, perhaps the most influential developmental psychologists, adhered to this theory as well. Despite the recognition that spontaneous play (and the inherent activities of exploring and performing) is necessary to a child’s moral development, there is the persistent idea in child-centered education that the child’s spontaneous capabilities must be tamed. The teacher’s goal is to socialize the child, to enforce rules and organization. Piaget notes that at about age 10 children begin to view rules as flexible and are developed to facilitate play, rather than as authority-given dogma. This transition involves a change in moral posture, and a move away from adult influence towards the peer group.
This peer group can be viewed in terms of what theorist Lloyd Reiber calls the microworld. The microworld transforms a space into a place, constructing a trusted zone that nurtures the benefits of play. A (constructivist) microworld is a small, but complete version of some domain of interest naturally found in the world or artificially constructed. Learners immediately know what to do with a microworld – little of no training is necessary to begin using it
In his essay ‘Creative Writing and Day Dreaming’ (1907), Freud discusses the role of play and it’s transformation into phantasy, humour and art. Looking back to the origins of ‘imaginative activity’ he identifies what he believes to be the most favoured occupation for the child, that of play and suggest similarities with that of the creative writer.
Analysing the child’s motives underpinning their play, and determining it’s purpose and characteristics, he links both play activity to and differentiates it from, what he believes to be its adult counterpart - ‘the phantasy’.
Having established play and phantasy as both distinct and related, Freud draws out the similarities between the activity of the creative writer and that of the child at play. ‘He [the writer] creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously - that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion - while separating it sharply from reality’. Gray (1995, p438)
With examples of the use of play in [german] language he demonstrates that play functions as a suffix - providing a linking of tangible objects with representations of imagination. The suggestion is the artist plays with language [the sign] to form representations of the imagination that maintain a link back to tangible objects.
To play, then, for Freud, involves a type of imaginative activity that links the real world to that of the phantasies of the player, although is not real, and yet is still continuous with seriousness. For Freud, this activity can be seen in the workings of the Joke or through humour.
The point of departure between play, art and phantasy is situated in acts where play becomes hidden or disjunct from reality. The child does not conceal his play which is linked to the real world of growth and development. The adult does conceal his phantasies because they cannot be linked to development. This point of departure for Freud is in the psychical activity that deviates from the world of the real to compensate for unfulfilled wishes and gives rise to types of phantasies that are essential to conceal; for revealing them may cause greater anguish, shame and unpleasure. Thus ‘a person who plays and a person who phantasies’, Gray (1995, p439) are differentiated on account of their motives - ‘which are nevertheless adjuncts to each other’(ibid)
Child’s play is determined by a single wish - ‘to be big and grown up’ and there should be no reason to conceal this. An adult however, believes he is expected to terminate his play and phantasies and at the same time has secret wishes that give rise to them.
The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, every phantasy is a fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality.
A further point of departure for Freud, occurs when a phantasy or art is shared. The ordinary response to a phantasy is to feel ashamed. Hence, when the phantasy is shared the audience will feel ‘repelled or at least be left cold’, Gray (1995, p443). A writer then overcomes this repulsion through a number of techniques that enable the barriers between a ‘single ego’ and ‘other ego’ to be traversed. Aesthetic forms causing pleasures and hence a welcoming reception to the contents of the work whether tragic, shocking or humourous.
In adulthood, it appears we give up our pre-occupation with play as a free and open gesture of pleasure and imagination; and by doing so replace it with jokes, phantasies and/or art. This process operates under the rule of the 'substitute' and 'surrogate', what is given up , if anything at all, is the supposed link with ‘real objects’; instead of playing, the adult now phantasies’, Gray (1995, 438).
Here then we have a single psychic process - the ‘will to play’ transformed by networks of psychical-social forces within child-to-adult growth processes and spaces. A network of libidinal undercurrents flow up into consciousness to be played out within the different social and psychic spaces. These spaces under normative frames are categorised as above and yet we can consider the singular presence of libidinal forces also blur and trouble these categories. The manifest forms all these activities are constituted by sensations, affects, incentive bonuses, fore-pleasures and/or elements of erotic/egoistic wish fulfillment.
In his essay ‘The transformations of Puberty’ in ‘Three Essay on the Theory of Sexuality’ (1925), Freud discusses Fore-pleasure - [we know it as fore-play] in some detail and determines how the purpose of foreplay is transformed by altering the sexual aim.
He begins by defining fore-pleasure in relation to its ‘sexual aim’ proper. Fore-pleasure the pre-orgasmic pleasure, the ‘sexual aim’ orgasm - the ‘end pleasure’. He goes on to identify preliminary energies in childhood that can be related to fore-pleasure and are experienced in the body since infancy ‘although at this earlier stage it is on a smaller scale’, Gray (1995, p281) Freud remarks on ‘an instance of pleasure’ where a minor pleasure signifies the possibility of ‘the attainment of a greater resultant pleasure and thus operating as an ‘incentive bonus’.
Further on in his discussion in ‘Dangers of Fore-pleasure’ Freud describes the process of deviation where fore-play is taken as an end in itself. Concluding fore-pleasure to loose its purpose when turned back on itself and conceiving it as a ‘fixation’ to be deemed ‘perverse’.
In the essay ‘The Sexual aberrations‘ Freud introduces the terms ‘deviation’ and 'perversion' to describe sexual energy that deviates from the sexual aim, he goes on to state they are; ‘activities that either: (a) extend, in an anatomical sense beyond the regions of the body that are designed for sexual union, or (b) linger over the intermediate relations to the sexual object which should normally be traversed rapidly on the path towards the final sexual aim’ Gray (1995, p482).
Particular to perversion is the ‘overvaluation of the sexual object...where appreciation extends to the whole of the body of the sexual object and tends to involve every sensation derived from it’. It is possible for over-valuation to become psychological too and here; the subject becomes as ‘it were intellectually infatuated’ Gray (1995 p249). The term overvaluation appears again in a later in ‘Unsuitable substitutes for the sexual object - Fetishism’ and here Freud links the term to the ‘abandonment of the sexual aim’ where:
‘1- the sexual object is part of the body inappropriate for sexual purposes.’
‘2 - to an inanimate object which bears assignable relation to the person whom replaces it’ Gray(1995 p249).
Where an abandoned sexual aim and the sexual object becomes the ‘sole object’ - the fetish is pathologised.
The absence of the sexual aim, is a standard characteristic of infantile libidinal activity. In the infantile state, the libidinal drive is inter-twined with other instincts and according to Freud at three and five years - at the stage of the first libidinal peak, - the child shows signs of activity akin to research which has as its goal, ‘knowledge’ and ‘mastery of the world'. In this primary stage, the child is thought to be aroused to research by the libido and initially attracted to questions of a sexual nature. In short, the child is subject to a libidinal drive via sensation, movement and affect within the body, that is as much in search for pleasure as an end in itself, as it is in search for intelligence and knowledge of the world
The Libidinal drive in the child then, appears to operate within a different affective register due to 1 - the genaralised erotogenic zone that is the body, and 2 - the absence of the sexual aim; so here, it is easy to begin to see the libidinal energies at play within the activity of play. If we consider Freud’s rationale for child’s play - as a practice for adulthood - we can see that play is adjunct to or perhaps even synthesised with research and thus can perhaps be practiced as a method of research. Considered from the another position, the energies driving research in part belong to the libido, and we can begin to allow for possible research activities to include acts of play, acts of imagination and acts of overvaluation of objects and/or sets of knowledges. In short we can be allowed to become fetishist of theory, knowledge and art productions due to the close proximity and interconnectedness of phantasies, pleasures and the real. To deviate from the determining rules is to create playful, phantasmic, fetishistic and/or aesthetic productions and might be considered an authentic mode of criticality. Using Freud against his own seriousness we can approach his works as a type of fiction or creative writing and could perhaps open to further indeterminate possibilities with further generative outcomes.
As opposed to spontaneous play demonstrated by children, the way in which adults interact has been described in terms of “flow theory,” which is the peculiar state of extreme happiness and satisfaction experienced through adult play. They are so engaged and absorbed by certain activities that they seem to ‘flow’ along with it in an automatic manner. People who experience flow must have the ability to focus attention, to concentrate without distraction. One result of flow is psychological growth – an individual becomes more complex or elaborate.
As mentioned, adult play can manifests through fantasy and humor. In humor, this can take the form of the joke or practical joke. Practical jokes or pranks create a situation from nothing using only actions and words. The humor inherent in a practical joke is ultimately ephemeral. Practical jokes create a dynamic between the prankster and the victim, establishing a power differential between the two. Crucial to the joke is the element of “practice,” in which someone is made to do something, a practice, vs. the telling or reading of the joke. Presently, we are interested in the idea of humor as play and aim to explore this notion further for our final presentation.
Cited by Steven Connor in “Playstations Or, Playing in Earnest”, p.8. From On the Aesthetic Education of Man. From; Gray, P. (ed.) (1995) The Freud Reader. London: Vintage originals.
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