Winnicott: Playing and Reality, and Frankel: The Adolescent Psyche
Updated: Oct 5
What does it mean to play in psychotherapy? And what does it mean to become, especially in adolescence?
Two books that have shaped my clinical thinking in profound ways are D. W. Winnicott’s Playing and Reality and Richard Frankel’s The Adolescent Psyche. Although they were written in very different contexts, both invite us to reconsider psychological growth, creativity and transformation, and both leave room for something that cannot be known in advance.
At the heart of both books is an interest in what is alive in the psyche: for Winnicott, the space in which play and creativity can emerge; for Frankel, the movement towards a future that has not yet been formed.
D.W. Winnicott: Playing and Reality
D. W. Winnicott was a British psychoanalyst and paediatrician whose work made important contributions to our understanding of the relationship between an infant’s inner world and the facilitating environment provided by the mother or caregiver. These ideas later became highly influential in psychotherapy more broadly.
Central to Winnicott’s thinking is the idea of play as the ground of psychotherapy itself. He writes:
"Psychotherapy takes place in the overlap of two areas of playing, that of the patient and that of the therapist. Psychotherapy has to do with two people playing together. The corollary of this is that where playing is not possible then the work done by the therapist is directed towards bringing the patient from a state of not being able to play into a state of being able to play."
This is a radical statement because it places play, rather than interpretation or technique alone, at the heart of psychotherapy. The therapist is not simply applying knowledge to another person, but entering into a shared space in which something can be discovered.
Winnicott was clear that "if the therapist cannot play then he is not suitable for the work."
Playing, for Winnicott, is not trivial, rather it is the condition of creativity and of selfhood:
"It is in playing, and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self."
In exploratory and creative play within the session, whether verbally or through the use of art materials, the therapeutic environment can allow the client to make discoveries rather than being handed interpretations by a well-meaning therapist who assumes they already know what needs to be found.
"The patient's creativity can be easily stolen by a therapist who knows too much," and does not refrain from advertising it.
When using the materials in a session, I find it useful to encourage clients to begin without having an image in mind, or an idea about what will happen, and simply to play with a line, colour or shape.
This illustrates something important about psychotherapy: it is not something that the therapist does to the patient, nor something the patient accomplishes alone, but something that occurs between two people who are both participants in a process.
Winnicott also encouraged psychotherapists to remain creative in their own thinking, in the sense of rediscovering what others had found before them rather than becoming disciples of a particular school.
Winnicott’s vision preserves something essential in therapy: aliveness, spontaneity, and the courage not to know in advance what needs to emerge.
The Adolescent Psyche and the question of becoming
Where Winnicott focuses on play as the space of discovery, Richard Frankel turns our attention to adolescence as a psychological event that cannot be reduced to childhood history.
"I am seeking to explore the implications of envisioning adolescence outside the domain of developmental psychology....
...With adolescent clients who have a history of trauma, our attention is naturally drawn to the past; the client's childhood history announces its relevance in the course of treatment. But what about those adolescents who experience the transformations of puberty in a stormy and tumultuous manner after having passed through a rather undramatic childhood? Is looking back causally the only direction from which to approach their current state of suffering?"
Much therapeutic work understandably looks backwards, tracing present suffering to earlier wounds. Yet adolescence is not only a return of the past. It is also a movement towards the future, towards possibilities that have not yet taken shape. James Hillman’s profoundly creative work is referred to by Frankel and offers an alternative to a primarily developmental outlook.
The Adolescent Psyche by Richard Frankel helped me a great deal when I worked with children and adolescents, and it remains a valuable aid in my thinking with adults. Frankel brings together influences that all too rarely seem to share the same pages, and what emerges is something that I continue to find both distinctive and useful.
Frankel reframes adolescence as becoming:
"The past is important, but equally important is the future: adolescence as becoming. To what future is an adolescent being called?"
This orientation towards the future resonates deeply with Winnicott’s emphasis on creativity. Both thinkers protect a dimension of openness, although for Winnicott it is found in the potential space of play, while for Frankel it is expressed through the horizon of what might come into existence. In both cases, something remains unfinished and therefore capable of becoming.
Playing and Reality within The Adolescent Psyche
Bringing Winnicott and Frankel into conversation produces a vision of psychotherapy that honours both play and becoming. From Winnicottian and Jungian perspectives, creativity is something central to psychological life. Adolescence and development can therefore be approached as living processes unfolding in the present, shaped by the past but also drawn towards an unknown future. Therapy becomes a place where something new might take form, rather than simply somewhere that something old is analysed.
Taken together, Playing and Reality and The Adolescent Psyche invite us to hold the tension of movements towards both past and future.
One movement is the creation of a space in which play can occur. Without this shared field, psychotherapy cannot begin. The other is an attunement to the future that is seeking expression, especially in adolescence but also throughout adult life.
When therapy becomes overly certain, technical or bound too tightly to causal explanation, something vital can be lost. The patient’s creativity can be eclipsed, while the call of the future risks being drowned out by an excessive attention to the past.
To work psychotherapeutically is therefore to remain open to surprise. It is to protect a space in which play remains possible while listening for what is trying to come into being. Winnicott and Frankel can help therapists, and perhaps parents too, to foster a shared curiosity and spirit of enquiry rather than assuming that development can always be understood in advance.
Both Winnicott and Frankel, in different ways, remind us that psychological life is not merely something to be explained. It is something to be lived, discovered and created.
Andrew Phillips is a psychotherapist and artist in Newport, south Wales, UK.
Psychotherapy - Online for adults across the UK.
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