Winnicott: Playing and Reality, and Frankel: The Adolescent Psyche

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. Though written in different contexts, both works invite us to reconsider how we understand psychological growth, creativity, and transformation.

At their heart is a shared concern with something alive in the psyche: the space between inner and outer worlds, and the pull toward a future that has not yet been formed.

D.W. Winnicott: Playing and Reality

D.W.Winnicott was a psychoanalyst and pediatrician in Britain. His pioneering contribution led to important developments in how connections between the infants 'inner' world and 'outer' environment (consisting of mother/caregiver) corresponded, are conceived of, and the implications for psychotherapy.

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 more traditionally the core of therapy might be considered to consist primarily of interpretation, explanation, or technique. To say that psychotherapy is fundamentally a shared field of play, casts it in an altogether different light.

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 explorative and creative playing in the session, whether verbally or perhaps through using art materials, the therapeutic environment is intended to allow for the patient/client to make their own discoveries, rather than be force fed them by a well meaning therapist who pretends to know in advance what it is the patient needs to find out.

"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, to simply 'play' with a line, colour, shape.

This all illustrates the point that psychotherapy, when it happens, is not something that the therapist does to the patient, or that the patient does for themselves, but occurs between the two parties who are both participants in a process.

Likewise, Winnicott encouraged the individual Psychotherapist to remain creative, in the sense of rediscovering what others had found before them, rather than becoming a disciple of a particular school.

Winnicott’s vision preserves something essential in therapy: aliveness, spontaneity, and the courage not to know in advance.

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 vision of the future. 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 great aid in my thinking with adults. Combining influences that all too rarely seem to share the same pages, what emerges is something that feels vital and distinctive.

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 toward the future resonates deeply with Winnicott’s emphasis on creativity. Both thinkers protect a dimension of openness, which for Winnicott is the open space of play. For Frankel, it is the horison and potential of coming into existence, which is a lifelong project.

Playing and Reality within The Adolescent Psyche

In bringing Winnicott and Frankel into conversation, what begins to emerge is a vision of depth psychotherapy that honours both play and becoming. From Jungian and Winnicottian perspectives, creativity in psychotherapy is not an optional extra but central to psychological life itself. Adolescence and psychological development are not understood solely as stages to be explained, but as living processes unfolding in the present, shaped by the past yet equally drawn toward an unknown future. In this sense, therapy becomes a space where something new can take form, rather than simply a place where 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.

The first is the creation of a space where play can occur. Without this shared field, psychotherapy cannot begin. The second is an attunement to the future that is seeking expression, especially in adolescence but also in adult life.

When therapy becomes overly certain, overly technical, or overly bound to causal explanation, something vital risks being lost. The patient’s creativity can be eclipsed. The call of the future can be drowned out by the noise of the past.

To work psychotherapeutically is to remain open to surprise. It is to protect the space of play and to listen for what is trying to come into being. Playing and Reality and The Adolescent Psyche can help those working in a wide range of professional capacities with others, or perhaps parents with their own children, to foster a shared curiosity and spirit of enquiry.

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 an HCPC registered Art Psychotherapist, and a visual artist.

If you are interested in finding out about how working together in online Art Psychotherapy could be of benefit to you, please visit the Psychotherapy section of my website.