PLAYING AND TRAGEDY IN PLAYING AND REALITY BY WINNICOTT

We usually retain an optimistic version of Winnicott's theory of play : that playing designates a creative experience which makes it possible for the subject to discover a novel relationship to the world in an immanent way and through transference. In this manner, playing itself proves to be "therapeutic". Without disputing this dimension, there is another, less "luminous" aspect of play which is considered here. After recalling how much the positive experience of playing dialectically supposes the negativity of the experience of formlessness, this article aims to study two plays which, in Playing and Reality, constitute impasses to the theory of playing : first, that of the boy with a string and then that of the woman playing patience. A tragic dimension with undeniable effects on current clinical work with children thus finds its place again in Winnicottian thought.