Children's Imaginative Play: A Visit to Wonderland (Child Psychology and Mental Health)

In this visit to the wonderland of children's imaginative, make-believe play, readers are be exposed to both a general, bird's-eye view of the whole of this fascinating realm, and to a closer look at its diverse regions. This volume examines the borderlines between make-believe play and akin phenomena such as dreams, drama, and rituals. Readers will become acquainted with the secret codes of make-believe play. These codes are activated in both covert and overt power struggles among children as well as in the child's internal theater of emotions. Readers will have the opportunity to examine these uses by looking at real-life sociodramatic play scenes. Also, the development of make-believe play and its interface with the child's general cognitive and socioemotional development is traced. This volume enables readers to consider children of various cultures at play, and investigates whether make-believe play and its characteristics are universal or culture-specific. Make-believe play has been investigated across fields including cognitive, clinical, developmental, and social psychology, as well as linguistics, anthropology, and sociology. In this book, a comprehensive, integrative model is proposed, in which all of these approaches are synthesized into a single, coherent whole. The unifying hypothesis behind this synthesis is that make-believe play is a semiotic system, a body of signs and symbols, a language by means of which children express themselves and communicate. This language enables children to regulate and balance both their inner emotional life and their social life. Another central hypothesis is therefore that make-believe play functions as an homeostatic feedback mechanism for controlling the level of arousal around the child's central concerns, as well as the level of interpersonal conflict around issues of social proximity and power. Therapeutic and education applications of make-believe play are derived from these hypotheses and their ramifications. Contents......Page 4 Series Foreword......Page 5 Foreword......Page 6 Preface......Page 10 Introduction......Page 13 1 What Is Make- Believe Play?......Page 16 2 The Cryptic Codes of Make-Believe Play......Page 26 3 Make- Believe Play as a Diplomatic Language......Page 43 4 Mini- Legal Systems Regulating Sociodramatic Play......Page 52 5 Make- Believe Play as an Emotional Moderator......Page 65 6 Make- Believe Play and the Developing Child......Page 78 7 Make- Believe Play in a Cross-Cultural Perspective......Page 96 8 Applications of Make- Believe Play in Education......Page 124 9 Play Therapy......Page 134 Summary and Apologia......Page 156 Appendix: Analyzing a Make-Believe Play Text— Procedures and Heuristic Techniques......Page 159 References......Page 191 Index......Page 209 The Child Psychology And Mental Health Series Is Designed To Capture Dynamic Interplay By Advocating For Strengthening The Science Of Child Development And Linking The Science To Issues Related To Mental Health, Child Care, Parenting And Public Policy. What Is Make-believe Play? -- The Cryptic Codes Of Make-believe Play -- Make-believe Play As A Diplomatic Language -- Mini-legal Systems Regulating Sociodramatic Play -- Make-believe Play As An Emotional Moderator -- Make-believe Play And The Developing Child -- Make-believe Play In A Cross-cultural Perspective -- Applications Of Make-believe Play In Education -- Play Therapy. Shlomo Ariel ; Foreword By Brian Sutton-smith. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [185]-202) And Index. The term make-believe play, as it is used in this book, denotes a genre of play which has been designated by various other names, such as imaginative play, fantasy play, symbolic play, pretend play, "as if" play, representational play and sociodramatic play.