Fantasy Play in the Child of the Oedipal Stage of Development

Abstract

The play that shall be studied here was observed in a local nursery school over a period of six weeks, by one observer. The majority of observations were done on four and five-year old children who were in the "four-year old class". They were observed three hours a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, during their "free play hour," which took place as soon as the children arrived at school. Three-year olds were observed Tuesdays and Thursdays during the same hour. They were not observed for the full six weeks, however, due to the fact that they engaged in less imaginative play than did the four-year olds. Information from twenty-three observations was used in connection with the examples presented in this paper. Observations were taken in a written descriptive form on the basis of the fantasy play Chat was taking place, rather than on a time sampling basis or some other technique. Information concerning the histories of the children was obtained from the teacher in an interview preceding the observations. Another interview with the teacher was held after the interpretations were applied to the observations, and her approval was obtained as to both the nature and use of the observations and possible interpretations. It should be noted that fictitious names were given to all of the children in the examples in the text.