Anna Freud and Play in Child Analysis

Anna Freud and play in child analysis. Anna Freud's perspective on play has been misunderstood and distorted in some circles to the extent that it is even being said that Anna Freudian child psychotherapists or analysts do not use play. This is a gross misconception. Play is absolutely central in Anna Freud, um, as well as when a coffee and chart analysis, especially with young children. And we engage more actively with it than some, allowing ourselves to join in the child's play and not just watch and interpret it.

Anna Freud wrote much more about play from a developmental point of view and about play in child analysis. Initially, it's true, she, deep down, play, it's thinking that words should take precedence, which led to a controversy between her ideas and Melanie Klein's play technique. However, Anna Freud soon refined and elaborated her position by explaining why she didn't agree with Melanie Klein. The client's exclusively symbolic interpretation of play neglected a developmental perspective and bypassed the vital importance of the ego and its defenses. She said that although symbolic interpretation allowed certain flashes of direct insights into the child's unconscious, it seemed open to objection of various kinds. Like, one, interpretations of symbols, it had a tendency to become rigid, impersonal, and stereotyped without being open to corroboration from the child. It aimed at laying bare the deeper layers of the child's unconscious without working through the conscious and preconscious resistances and distortions.

Anna Freud saw play as having many different meanings, not just symbolic ones. She wrote, "Nursery school teachers may have a very good idea what each newly emerging play interest means for the child. What constitutes the expression of incest or concerns such as the filling and emptying of vessels, what serves reasoning, what mainly ambition, imitation of motherliness, or the wish to grow up in general." When a child builds with blocks to add one to another and sever height, a tower is achieved, it is as pleasurable for him as it is to throw over them structure and scatter the blocks. It would be an error to believe that only the former is done in a positive mood, the latter in anger, disappointment, frustration. On the contrary, the child feels gleeful when carrying out either activity, his mood betraying equal pride in achieving control and mastery of the medium. Ordinarily, play is fun. It will stop if it isn't enjoyable and disaffected when a child is anxious or fearful.

Anna Freud wrote, "Contrary to the popular belief that children can act out all their emotions with their toys, analysts know only too well how effectively a child's play activity can be blocked and inhibited by overwhelming effect or by inner conflict." This conviction, acquired within the setting of child analysis, was borne out further by war experiences, which showed that children did not begin to stage the bombing occurrences and other disasters which had befallen them before the effects attached to these happenings had been worked through in other inner ways, usually six to twelve months after the occurrence. She cited Laura, who did not play within when in hospital. She wrote, "The teddy bear, which she brought from home, together with the cherished blanket, is nearly held and cuddles clung to, a link from home." Laura certainly played when seeing first in her own home, but under the impact of her hospital experience, she reverts to using her toys as transitional objects in Winnicott's sense. According to experience, one would expect Laura to begin to play hospital doctor or nurse at home after the usual time.

I learned a lot about playing chart analysis from my first training case at the Hampstead Clinic, seven-year-old Sally. She needed very strong defenses to protect her fragile narcissism and couldn't tolerate any direct talking about herself, so most of the analysis involved working in displacement on Victorious feelings and worries. Sighs, Mum described her as an extremely sensitive and shy adopted child who cried over the slightest criticism and despite good intelligence couldn't lead. Sally knew about being adopted but insisted that she'd come from home, adoptive Mummy's tummy. I made the common mistake of new trainees and thinking that I should interpret Sally's anxieties and fears from the start, but this just increased her anxiety and led to wild behavior. She threw the toys about, overturned the furniture, and ran out of the room yelling abuse. With my supervisor's help, I learned to act more naturally, and Sally soon felt safer and began to play. The games revealed her view of herself as smelly, damaged, and destructive, and therefore thrown away by her birth mother and unwanted. My fellows, octave mother in child analysis, unwelcome self-representations are often externalized onto the animist, so I was cast in a school game as stupid Selena, while Sally was the bossy, strict teacher who punished and humiliated me. Another stupid girl in our class was the doll Lucy, who became the embodiment of Sally's denigrated Leo himself. We managed in the play to get Lucy into analysis, but at first, Sally confided, "Lucy isn't ready to talk about how long is yet. She just wants to play." And I whisper, "That's okay." Anyway, playing is also layered, talking about life later. Sally could tolerate interpretations of the dongs worries in therapy games. Sometimes, she used dramatic play defensively if I got too close to her painful feelings. In an ongoing game with the ugly and broken fairy doll, who was badly treated and thrown away, I voiced the fairy's sadness. Sally told the fairy, "Ask a witch for magic wishes." But when I said the south, the fairy's first wish was not to feel so sad. That Sally, as the witch, quickly turned me into a frog who could only croak very effectively, shutting me up.

In another ongoing game, Sally was Dog Tanyon, a little dog cartoon hero who tried hard but kept making mistakes. One day, Dog Tannen was asleep in the castle when everyone left for dinner, waking up hungry, sad, and cross at being left alone. He hid and refused to be found. Sally and I made a wanted poster for him, and she asked me to make long searches for Dante Nyan, as she struggled with feeling unwanted and longing to be claimed lovingly. We played out many of Sally's adoption theories, such as how she felt thrown away like worthless feces. The doll Lucy was made to stand in the corner, forgetting her son was wrong and doing stinky poos, and when I voiced his doll's despair, Sally retorted, "I don't care. She was bullied, stupid, ugly, and stupid." A fantasy emerged of the adoptive mother as a rescuer who searched for Sally after she had been discarded by the birth mother. Sally had often throw the fairy talents of the bin. She was stupid and smelly to be flush down the loo. Now she said the fairy was sad, frightened, and lost in filthy sewers and cried out for help. She wrote, "Dear Mrs. Parsons, please save me," on pieces of toilet paper, and I would search for the family. One day she announced, "The fairy does have a mummy. You." I spoke her, the fairy's sad model, and wish for me to be her mummy. And Sally replied angrily that the fairy's mummy had died. Her pain and anger being no longer containable, she violently attacked the fairy, torturing it and smearing it with plasticine. Sally hadn't previously tolerated any mention of adoption, but something important now surfaced, and at home, she interrogated her parents about the adoption and why her birth mother had given her up. The first time she'd asked such questions. When I saw her next, she looked wildly anxious and Lana ran ahead to hide behind the chair in our room. After a tense silence, she burst out, "I want to tell you something. My mummy gave me away, and then I had another money. But don't tell me you have a big worry today." So we spent the hour handing happy birthday parties for Doc Telly to help her recover before working again on her painful feelings of acquaintance. Having faced the reality of her adoption, Sally began to read the release of curiosity, previously restricted, it seemed for fear of knowing about her origins, was now more available for learning and being able to give up the humiliating view of her service alone. Reader was a big boost for her self-esteem. Soon afterwards, I had to be a queen who left her newborn baby to look at Dog Tanya, who had just arrived on the doorstep. When the queen went back inside, her own baby had gone, so she adopted Dog Tagging instead. Sally became totally absorbed in the bliss of being looked after as Maidan baby, lying curled up on the floor, gurgling and drinking lustily from the toy bottle. Later, Sally gently told Teddy his adoption story, explaining that his mummy didn't have enough money to feed him, so she was going to look after him and loved him.

Hide-and-seek games are very common with adopted children. Initially, Sally would yell furiously that I didn't know where she was, I wouldn't be able to find her. Later, she asked me to find her slowly. During long searches, I muttered to myself about feeling given away because of not being given up good enough, about being tricked, about needing to keep secret thoughts hidden for fear of retaliation, about going to be wanted, found, and looked after nicely. One day, Sally declared, "Hiding is a bit like losing people, luck. If you lost your children, that's why people play hide-and-seek, isn't it?" So, if she did know that her created relatives up dramatizations were communications, and the analysis, Sally could work on her anxieties and conflicts through displacement in the play.

For children in analysis, sometimes use play defensively. Anna Freud wrote, "Technical problems arise when a game or play in the session seems to be used purely for purposes of resistance, but playing games for a period does not necessarily serve only resistance in the child. There may be some material which can emerge only in this wedding, or the child may need time to feel sufficiently safe and comfortable in the analytic situation before going on." My patient Ben, 7, felt so nervous and shy that he could only play defensively at first, putting many, many toy cars in a long line. He would move the first full car forward an inch, followed by each car next in line, then repeat the whole painstaking process over and over. It was deadly boring to watch and terribly sad to see his tremendous anxiety reflected in such inhibited and strictly controlled plane. Gradually, he could use fantasy plane, but he remained ashamed of his feelings of thoughts and anxious that I would be disapproving or intrusive, like his lung. He was terrified about his own aggression and played many games in which grown-ups were hurt, but always magically came alive again. When for the first time, the grown-ups ended up dead in the game, I wondered about a funeral for them, but he said, "Oh no, he can't. That's too scary," as if a funeral game made the pretends death too real. His mother brought him because she was worried about his occasional angry outbursts and his wish to be a girl. As we worked in the nurses on his separation anxieties and fears of his destructiveness, he revealed the fantasy that if he could be a girl or perhaps a baby, he wouldn't need to fear his aggression, separation, or death. We played many games when he was the powerful queen, like his mother, and I was his lady-in-waiting. Later, we looked after a family of bears in our pet shop. Baby bear felt small and useless, but eventually, Ben and I, like proud parents, applauded baby bear taking his first faltering steps in learning to walk. Ben now talked for the first time about becoming a man and wanting to work for the government like Daddy, the first sign of his wish to grow up and identify with his father instead of his mother. Later, he was a deer in the forest, and I was a badger. He didn't know how to start the game, so I pretended I was waking up in the morning. Ben watched me closely, trying to think what to do next. I pretended to drink from the stream, and he then moved his neck around. Around as Badger, I said, "Oh, Edina, I wonder what he's doing." The deer said, "Hello to the Badger," and I said, "Hello. What are you doing?" He said, "I'm rubbing my head against a tree because I want my endless to grow. I want something like that." Suddenly, he stood tall, have pretended to be showing off something. I said, "Maybe endless, oh, growing, but I can't tell you because you're on your way." He said proudly, "They're growing fast." Then came closer, showing off with shy pleasure. I said, "You must be very proud of them." He preached himself, holding his head high, and said, "The antlers aren't very big yet, but each year they can pick up until I got ones like them." Ordre Gumption, who trained with Anna Freud, outlined the differences between playing in general and playing in analysis. She wrote, "The analyst, through verbalization and interpretation of conflicts, defenses, and transferences, aims to encourage the child to transform defender to apprentices by applying inter-meaningful communication." Playing then takes on a special meaning within the analytic relationship. It is the process which necessarily involves that the suspension of reality, but some children cannot use or sustain fantasy play for fear of giving away too much or of being overwhelmed by their fantasies. Reality testing cannot then contradict the existing fantasies or the belief in the power of omnipotent wishes and annihilating fears.

Another patient of mine, Charles, age six, was so overwhelmed by terror and so developmentally delayed that he was unable to play at all for many months. He was referred for analysis because of eruptive aggression and inability to relate to peers and alarming swings between infant behavior and pseudo-mature language. He had already been thrown out of three schools for attacking both children and teachers. He was terrified of abandonment, perceived himself as a devil, hated by his parents, and he was sure I would hate him too. He attacked me violently, behaving like a wild animal, spitting, biting, kicking, hurling toys, smearing feces. His unpredictable attacks were enactments of internal chaos, driven by panic. They weren't simply manifestations of rage. He experienced me in the transference as the source of danger, like his parents, whom he felt wanted him dead. He erupted in wild terror because he lacked resources for processing his feelings and thoughts in symbolic form, either through play or words, and he had no effective resources or defenses to manage overwhelming internal states. Talking just made things worse. So for some time, I simply had to survive without retaliating and try to offer him a sense of safety and containment. My initial aim was to try to provide a benign, protective experience and to help Charles recognize impending danger, the approach of what I called "spilly feelings," so that he could prepare himself by using anxiety as a signal, then be able to build appropriate defenses to manage reserve the worldly anxiety and feelings and channel them into play and words. Very gradually, play took the place of violent body talk. One day, he built a dam and spoke with mounting anxiety about the dam breaking and destroying the nearby town that he built. I realized that a dangerous spilly situation was approaching, but didn't interpret this directly, knowing it would catapult Charles into a spinny eruption. Instead, I used displacement in the plane. I said, "He built such an ugly town. It would be awful if it got destroyed by the dam breaking, but I got an idea to keep his safe. How about making channels at the bottom of the dam to let out small amounts of water? The downward bring the dam won't break thing and fragile town like this," and I showed him carefully removing a few bricks at the bottom of the wall. Charles was immediately believed and kissed me. I then said, "Sometimes feelings could spill out like the water in the dam. I'd like to help you find ways of managing your savetti feelings so they don't drug you, and this perhaps less understood use of play in child analysis is what Anna Freudians mean by developmental therapy." I was posturing Charles's ego development by offering ways to manage overwhelming feelings.

I'm hoping that these case examples will have shown some of the many meanings and functions of play in child analysis, but I'll end with some thoughts on technique from aldrig action, who wrote, "Constant interpretation of symbolic play can interfere with the child's pleasure or willingness to play with a therapist. The unfolding of fantasies will therefore be hindered rather than helped. The journalist has to find ways to sustain the child's analytic motivation, and to this end, the therapist may sometimes change the mode of environment from firing the child's play so leading it by understanding and responding to the expression, the fantasy." A pattern of exchange develops between the child who brings the material and the analyst who tries to shape it in a way which becomes therapeutically meaningful. The patient becomes aware that playing has become an important language of therapy, and this awareness enables the child to pursue the process of self-discovery.