The Psycho-Analytic Play Technique: Its History and Significance

Published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry in April 1955, this paper is Melanie Klein's late retrospect on how she came to analyse children through play. She traces the technique from her first child cases in Budapest and Berlin to her later work, and describes its setting: the playroom, and the small toys kept for each child alone. She treats the child's play as material on a par with the free associations of adults, to be interpreted as they are, the negative transference included. She also sets out how the play technique led her to her theory of early anxieties, of internal objects and of the positions.