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Abstract
In psychoanalysis, the question of child’s play owes its fame to child psychoanalysts. Before the emergence of child psychoanalysis, however, Sigmund Freud had evoked the question of child’s play in his works many times. Surprisingly, his views on play remain generally underestimated – with the notable exception of the famous “fort-da” game that, by irresistibly attracting innumerable comments to itself, has come to overshadow, in the author’s view, the whole Freudian conception of play. This paper therefore aims at archeologically re-examining this notion in the Freudian corpus. It intends to show that, far from being limited to an object of study as “interpreted,” play is also called upon for what it offers heuristically as “interpreting,” especially when Freud is faced with metapsychological obstacles. Two main strands of this theoretical conception of play are identified (a “deficit” and a “surplus” conception). The paper then highlights how the Freudian conception of play is intimately linked to his melancholy theory of the psyche and of culture. Finally, the paper changes tack in order to briefly suggest that this reconsideration of play might have psychoanalytic implications on two issues, namely the status of child’s play in analysis and the more general question of interpretation.
De l'importance de ne pas être sérieux. En psychanalyse, la question du jeu de l'enfant doit sa renommée aux psychanalystes d'enfants. Cependant, avant même la naissance de la psychanalyse d'enfants, Sigmund Freud avait soulevé à plusieurs reprises la question du jeu de l'enfant dans ses travaux. Étonnamment, ses observations au sujet du jeu demeurent généralement sous-estimées – à l'exception notoire du jeu du « fort-da » qui, en attirant irrésistiblement à soi tous les commentaires, est venu éclipser, selon le point de vue de l'auteure de cet article, la conception freudienne du jeu prise dans son ensemble.
L'auteure de cet article cherche par conséquent à réexaminer archéologiquement cette notion dans le corpus freudien. Elle tente de montrer que loin de se limiter à un objet d'étude à « interpréter », le jeu est convoqué pour ce qu'il offre d'un point de vue heuristique d' « interprétant », surtout lorsque Freud est confronté à des obstacles d'ordre métapsychologique. L'auteure identifie deux principaux versants au sein de cette conception théorique du jeu (« déficit » d'un côté et « surplus » de l'autre), à la suite de quoi elle met en évidence comment la conception freudienne du jeu est étroitement liée à la théorie mélancolique freudienne de la psyché et de la culture. Pour finir, l'auteure de cet article emprunte une autre direction, en rappelant brièvement que ce réexamen du jeu pourrait aboutir à deux questionnements additionnels, à savoir le statut du jeu de l'enfant dans la cure d'une part et, d'autre part, la question plus générale de l'interprétation.
Die wichtige Rolle des Nicht-ernst-Seins: eine Archäologie des Kinderspiels in Freuds Schriften (mitsamt Implikationen für die psychoanalytische Theorie und Praxis). In der Psychoanalyse verdankt das Thema des Spiels der Kinder seinen Ruhm den Kinderanalytikern. Bevor die Kinderpsychoanalyse auftauchte, hatte Sigmund Freund das Kinderspiel in seinen Werken aber schon oft angesprochen. Überraschenderweise blieben seine Erläuterungen des Spiels im Großen und Ganzen unterschätzt – mit Ausnahme des berühmten Fort-da-Spiels, das auf unwiderstehliche Weise zahllose Kommentare provoziert hat, die nach Ansicht der Autorin Freuds gesamte Konzeption des Spiels überschatten.
Der vorliegende Beitrag soll daher den Stellenwert des Spiels in Freuds Gesamtwerk archäologisch untersuchen und zeigen, dass das Spiel keineswegs nur ein zu „deutender“ Untersuchungsgegenstand ist, sondern dass es von Freud auch heuristisch als „deutend“ in Dienst genommen wurde, vor allem wenn er mit metapsychologischen Schwierigkeiten konfrontiert war. Beschrieben werden zwei Hauptstränge dieser theoretischen Konzeption des Spiels (eine „Defizit“- und eine „Überschuss“-Konzeption). Der Beitrag wirft Licht auf den engen Zusammenhang zwischen Freuds Verständnis des Spiels und seiner Melancholietheorie der Psyche und der Kultur. Darüber hinaus wird gezeigt, dass diese Neubetrachtung des Spiels möglicherweise auch psychoanalytische Implikationen für zwei bestimmte Aspekte hat, nämlich für das Spiel des Kindes in der Analyse und für die allgemeinere Frage der Deutung.
L’importanza di non essere Ernesto. Un’archeologia del gioco infantile negli scritti di Freud (e alcune implicazioni per la teoria e per la pratica analitica). In psicoanalisi la questione del gioco dei bambini è stata portata alla ribalta dagli analisti infantili. Tuttavia, ancor prima che la psicoanalisi infantile emergesse come campo a se stante, Sigmund Freud aveva già fatto riferimento ai giochi dei bambini in numerose circostanze. Sorprende quindi che le sue idee in proposito siano a tutt’oggi per lo più sottovalutate – con la significativa eccezione del famoso gioco del “fort-da”, che, attirando con potere irresistibile innumerevoli commenti, ha finito per oscurare a parere dell’Autrice l’intera concezione freudiana del gioco.
Il presente articolo si propone perciò di riesaminare con metodologia archeologica questo concetto all’interno del corpus freudiano – mostrando come, lungi dal limitarsi ad essere un oggetto di studio da essere “interpretato”, il gioco venga anche chiamato in causa da Freud per ciò che esso può offrire di “interpretante” a livello euristico, specialmente nei passi in cui egli si trovava ad affrontare problemi di natura metapsicologica. L’Autrice individua nel pensiero di Freud sul gioco due correnti teoriche principali, una basata sul “deficit” e l’altra sul “sovrappiù”, procedendo poi a evidenziare come la concezione freudiana del gioco sia intimamente collegata alla sua teoria malinconica della psiche e della cultura. L’articolo cambia infine registro suggerendo – per quanto brevemente – che questa riconsiderazione del gioco potrebbe avere implicazioni per la psicoanalisi rispetto a due temi principali: lo status del gioco infantile in analisi e la questione più generale dell’interpretazione.
La importancia de no ser Ernest: Una arqueología del juego infantil en los escritos de Freud (y algunas implicaciones en la teoría y la práctica psicoanalíticas). En psicoanálisis, la cuestión del juego infantil debe su fama a los psicoanalistas de niños. Sin embargo, antes del surgimiento del psicoanálisis de niños, Sigmund Freud la había mencionado muchas veces en sus trabajos. Sin embargo, sorprende que sus puntos de vista sobre el juego sigan siendo subestimados —con la notable excepción del famoso juego fort-da, que al atraer irresistiblemente innumerables comentarios, ha llegado a eclipsar, desde el punto de vista de la autora, la concepción entera de Freud sobre el juego—.
Por ello, el presente artículo se propone reexaminar arqueológicamente esta noción en la obra freudiana. Así, intenta demostrar que Freud no se limita al juego como un objeto de estudio a ser “interpretado”, sino también lo invoca heurísticamente como “interpretador”, sobre todo cuando enfrenta obstáculos metapsicológicos. En esta concepción teórica del juego se identifican dos importantes vertientes (una concepción de “déficit” y otra de “excedente”). Luego se destaca cómo la concepción del juego de Freud está íntimamente vinculada a su teoría melancólica de la psique y la cultura. Finalmente, el artículo cambia de rumbo para sugerir brevemente que esta reconsideración del juego podría tener implicaciones psicoanalíticas en dos temas: el estatus del juego de los niños en el análisis y la cuestión más general de la interpretación.
Notes
1 “Something is always missing.”
2 Anyway, it seems that this allusion did not refer so much to Kinderspiel, child’s play, as Jones seems to suggest, as it did to play more generally in the sense of game, or even gambling.
3 S. Pfeifer, an orthodox disciple of Freud’s, would eventually write this monograph on play in the journal Imago (Pfeifer, Citation1919). His article, somewhat mechanical in the way he applies psychoanalysis to child’s play, appears in retrospect quite behind the times in contrast with Freud’s thought as it had evolved by that time.
4 This is one version of the myth, which explains why Dionysus then became a “twice born” god. According to the more official version, Zeus plucked him out of the dying Semele’s bosom and sewed him into his own thigh (Grimal, Citation1951).
5 Even though the question of play is not brought up in this work.
6 The little boy’s analysis starts in January 1908, but the father begins sending in his reports in 1906, according to Quinodoz (Citation2004).
7 So much so that Freud does not consider it worthwhile to explain its meaning.
8 He would continue doing so as late as 1933, in particular as regards the interpretation of the unconscious and violent content of little girls’ games: “Analysis of children’s play has shown our women analysts that the aggressive impulses of little girls leave nothing to be desired in the way of abundance and violence” (Freud, 1933, p. 118).
9 This overlooking of the specifics of play would seem to confirm Winnicott’s views, according to which the “psychoanalyst has been too busy using play content to look at the playing child, and to write about playing as a thing in itself” (1971, p. 46).
10 Let us note that this is Freud’s favorite method of interpretation, which he was again to put to use in the analysis of delusion (Freud, Citation1911a) and phantasy (Freud, Citation1919).
11 This insistence on the savings induced by play is at odds with the views of Bataille (Citation1961), who prefers to depict play, in the same breath as art, eroticism or potlatch (the famed gift-based system of symbolic warfare common to certain American-Indian tribes), as limitless spending.
12 In German: Nabel des Traums
13 Freud turns to play once more as he struggles to distinguish between neurosis and psychosis as they relate to reality. But since he does not go beyond a quick analogy, we shall not dwell on it here:
… whereas the new, imaginary external world of a psychosis attempts to put itself in the place of external reality, that of a neurosis, on the contrary, is apt, like the play of children, to attach itself to a piece of reality – a different piece from the one against which it has to defend itself – and to lend that piece a special importance and a secret meaning which we (not always quite appropriately) call a symbolic one. Thus we see that both in neurosis and psychosis there comes into consideration the question not only of a loss of reality but also of a substitute for reality.(Freud, Citation1924, p. 187)
14 This aspect is also highlighted by Solnit (Citation1993, p. 38 sqq).
15 This is probably why Freud favours the game – and in particular the chess game – simile (a game being played with rules), as he considered the handling of the Freud analysis (Freud, Citation1913, p. 123).
16 Alexander relates this “surplus” or “overflowing” dimension to Schiller, Spencer and Jean Paul (Citation1958, p. 176).
17 It is obvious here that these two conceptions jostle with one another in Freud’s theory.
18 See Supra p. 3, especially Freud, 1908 [1907], p. 144.
19 We have used the French translation, since this extract is not to be found in the English edition, which is a combination by the translator of his English translation of the German edition published in Switzerland in 1944 with fragments of Huizinga’s English translation of his own text.
20 I borrow from Derrida this idea of a double polarity of play and interpretation, but this does not imply the adoption of a deconstructionist perspective. For further insights into Derrida’s conception of play and how it may bear on psychoanalysis, see an interesting paper by Bitan (Citation2012).
21 Freud writes: “if he was angry with it, and throw it on the floor, exclaiming: ‘Go to the fwont!’ He had heard at that time that his absent father was ‘at the front’, and was far from regretting his absence” (Freud, Citation1920, p. 16).
22 It is true that this emphasis on the joyful elaboration of the loss through the game in the vein of Lacan (Citation1953, p. 77) and Green (Citation1970, p. 83) doesn’t say much about how the lost object comes to be found in the first place. Winnicott would later brilliantly insist on this perspective by inventing the “transitional object” – at the same time “presented” by the mother and “created” by the child (1971, p. 16). However, this point is already foreshadowed in Freud’s “hallucinated desire of the nursling”: “the first wishing seems to have been a hallucinatory cathecting of the memory of satisfaction” (Freud, Citation1900, p. 598). On these two dialectical ways of stressing the relation to the loss of the object, see Strauss (Citation2010).
23 See Gabbard (Citation1997) and Feldman (Citation2007).
24 Hanly (Citation1990), although not focusing on its inherent nostalgic dimension, writes in favour of this conception of interpretation as correspondence. In so doing, he relies on Freud’s “tally” argument (Citation1916, p. 452) as stressed by Grünbaum (Citation1984).
25 On this subject, see Spence (Citation1982a, Citation1982b) and Levine (Citation2016), who focus on interpretation respectively understood as “narrative” or “aesthetic.”
26 This question of truth recently gave rise to Collins’ illuminating overview (Citation2011) and to a recent special issue of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly (see Greenberg, Citation2016). See also, from a French perspective, Laplanche (Citation1992) and Miller (Citation1996).
27 Previous works have already stressed this aspect (Battin, Citation1993, p. 72; Cohen and Solnit, Citation1993, pp. 50–51 and passim).
28 See Author’s name.
29 Especially (but not only) in psychotic, perverse or autistic configurations. In these cases, one might question their “metaphoric status,” see Solnit (Citation1987, p. 211 and 217) and author’s name.
30 For this reason, as Neubauer points out, clinicians should be vigilant in order “to differentiate those conditions in which the repetition does not lead to a new solution and those acts that provide discharge patterns that permit new forms of psychic constellations” (1993, p. 46).
31 Whereas “we all think we know what we mean when we speak of or hear about play” (Solnit, 1987, p. 205), it might be necessary to consider that the definition of play is not “as easy as child’s play” (see Waelder, Citation1933, p. 208; Neubauer, 1987, p. 3).
32 To borrow from Homburger, although in his perspective play is only interpreted and he does not consider the possibility that it may be “interpreting”: “one cannot offer any stereotyped advice as to the form or time when interpretations of play are to be given to a child” (Citation1937, p. 167). One could also imagine a process of interaction taking place between these two functions, but this will have to be left to another paper.
33 The question becoming, then, what sort of interpretation is the most relevant. On that matter and the subtle differences between interpretations “in” or “outside” the play, see Ritvo (Citation1978, p. 301), Neubauer (Citation1987, p. 3), Solnit (Citation1987, p. 210) and Mayes and Cohen (Citation1993, p. 1236).