Magical arts: the poetics of play.

Summary

The paper argues that play and magic are central to British Object Relations psychoanalysis, showing how aesthetic concerns shaped the field. Magical thinking appears from Melanie Klein's play technique and early aesthetic writings, through Susan Isaacs' theories of metaphor, to Marion Milner's clinical work linking primitive rituals to a boy's creativity. Donald Winnicott's transitional object concept elevates play into a theory of culture and private madness. Tracing these non-positivistic, mystical, and poetical elements reveals that aesthetics was not just entangled with psychoanalysis but constitutive of its mid-twentieth-century forms.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The paper argues that links between play and magic in British Object Relations point to the persistence of aesthetic concerns within psychoanalysis. Magical thinking is present in British Object Relations psychoanalysis from its beginnings in Klein's play technique and early aesthetic writings, surfacing elsewhere in Susan Isaac's educational experiments and her theories of metaphor. Marion Milner's clinical account of the overlapping areas of illusion and symbol-formation in a boy's war-games link the primitive rituals of Frazer's "The Golden Bough" with her patient's creativity. In Winnicott's concept of the transitional object, the theory of play achieves its apotheosis as a diffusive theory of culture or "private madness," and as a paradigm for psychoanalysis itself. Tracing the non-positivistic, mystical, and poetical elements in British Object Relations underlines the extent to which aesthetics is not just entangled with psychoanalysis, but constitutive of it in its mid-twentieth century manifestations.