Although therapy is a special conversation, it is nevertheless a genuine conversation.  Therefore it is held to the basic requirement of any authentic conversation: mutuality of influence and interest. Therapy is not a situation in which one person does something with or for another. It is, rather, an event in which two people relate to each other through the shared vulnerability of authentic speech.

The ‘shared vulnerability of authentic speech’ may sound a bit ominous, but in reality it is the essence of play. To make the point, as Winnicott has, we could look at therapy as an opportunity to play in the expectation of unknown revelations between us. The experience of therapy is not limited to something that happens within us – including inevitable unwanted revelations. It is essentially an event that happens between us. It is in that spontaneous and unanticipated occurrence between us where new possibilities of what it really means to be human are realized together.

Paradoxically, without the mutual willingness to endure surprise, discomfort and pain, entrance into the arena of the play of therapy is blocked.  Risk, mutually accepted, is at the center of therapeutic play.

The spaces of possibility between us are essentially held in the benign presence of therapeutic silence. Winnicott, Bollas and Milner among others make this point. The essence of this unique silence and true neutrality is in the mutual, spontaneous allowance of simply being together. The spoken word is not limited to sound. It is, in fact, carried on the spontaneous breath of genuine silence.

It may seem counter intuitive, but the therapeutic experience can only appear out of the mutually endured fog of nonsense – thus allowing the realization of being together to make sense on its own.

***

The searching for the self can come

only from desultory formless functioning,

from rudimentary playing,

as if in a neutral zone.

It is only here, in this unintegrated state of the personality,

that which we describe as creative can appear.

This, if reflected back,

but only if reflected back,

becomes part of the organized individual personality,

eventually this makes the individual to be found;

and  enables himself or herself

postulate the existence of the self.

This gives us our indication for the therapeutic procedure

to afford opportunity for formless experience,

for creative impulses, motor and sensory,

which are the stuff of playing.

And on the basis of playing

is built the whole of man’s experiential existence.

No longer are we either introvert or extrovert.

We experience life in the exciting interweave

of subjectivity and objective observation,

in an area

intermediate between

the inner reality of the individual

and the shared reality

of the world external to individuals.

The general principle seems to me

to be valid

psychotherapy is done in the overlap of the two play areas,

that of the patient and that of the therapist.

If the therapist cannot play,

then he is not suitable for the work.

If the patient cannot play,

then something needs to be done

to enable the patient to become able to play

after which psychotherapy may begin.

The reason why playing is essential

is that it is in playing that

the patient is being creative.

After Donald Winnicott

Playing and Reality