Copyright 2011 by Calvin A. Colarusso, M.D.
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved.
True Nature Productions
www.truenatureproductions.com/
CONTENTS
--Pretending Without Consequence
Watching and Listening: Spectator Play
PLAYTIME FOR GROWNUPS
Playing peek-a-boo, hopscotch or baseball; listening to rock and roll, Sondheim, or Sebelius; reading romance novels or watching a Shakespearian play—what do they all have in common? All are expressions of one of the most ubiquitous and intriguing human activities—play. And you thought playing was something that kids and a few adults who never grew up did. Actually, play is not random, carefree action, free from the restraints of more mundane human pursuits. Like all other thought and behavior, play is molded by the forces of the mind and the environment into nearly endless forms that fascinate us from shortly after birth until the end of life.
Do Adults Play?
The lifestyle of some adults might, at first glance, suggest a negative response to that question. So would the thinking of some philosophers and the actions of many adults. Kids play, but adults work. Nose to the grindstone. Support the family, etc. But if that’s the case, how do we explain adult activities such as chess, cards and the enormous involvement in spectator sports? In order to understand why adults play, we need to consider the motivations that prompt this universal form of human expression and discuss its characteristics in both childhood and adulthood.
What Motivates Play?
Play has been extensively studied by psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, who have suggested that kids play so incessantly because they have to, not because they want to. Because their young, immature minds are flooded with ideas and situations that they cannot easily understand or quickly integrate, children live in a perpetual state of overload and over-stimulation. Their play is an attempt to master such experiences that are too overwhelming to be integrated in one fell swoop. Play is different at different ages (in both childhood and adulthood) because of gradually increasing levels of mental sophistication and the need to address new experiences and challenges that arise as we move through life. Adults are better equipped mentally to meet the challenges of everyday living than children. However, adult existence is certainly not free from stress or over-stimulation; hence the same basic human need motivates adults, as well as children, to play.