The Game; Characters, Stories, Performances

Abstract

The game sequence of a nine year old child in analysis, is used by the author to think over, ways of approaching a patient in order to achieve greater confidence and hope in the analytical encounter. Following Bion’s model of the mind, he proposes metabolization as a pictogram summarizing an afferent or a series of them, which would be the elements in a sequence causing what is derived of the narrative. This can be appreciated in a child’s recollection, a dream, etc. and each mind uses them in its own preferential way. The author then reflects upon different topics: interpretation as a means of growing up, text signals not only as a repetition of the patient’s history but also as something coming from the immediacy of what’s going on. At the same time, playing as a mediator between fantasy world and external world, has the same function as stories in an adult patient. The point is that analysis enables the development of a game, without closing up its sense.