The Play of Man

by Karl Groos

Here in the first place we are called upon to apply a psychological criterion to playful activity. Wundt, in his lectures on the human and animal soul, suggests three such criteria: first, the pleasurable effect; second, the conscious or unconscious copying of useful activities; and third, the reproduction of the original aim in a playful one.[672] As I have said before, I do not regard the second of these—namely, imitation—as universally a mark of play. Wundt says that an animal can play only when certain memories which are accompanied by pleasurable feeling are renewed, yet under aspects so transformed that all painful effects vanish and only agreeable ones remain; the simple and spontaneous play of animals being, so to speak, association plays. Thus the dog, at the sight of another dog which displays no unfriendly feeling toward him, just as naturally feels a disposition to the agreeable exercise of his awakened powers as to fight with his fellows.[673] Kittens which for the first time try to catch a moving ball, are not playing according to this view, and only play when the action is repeated for the sake of the pleasure it gives. I shall return to this conception, which includes more than simple imitation in its ordinary sense. I feel that I have not succeeded in conveying all that Wundt means in the passage cited from. However, if I understand him aright, he attempts in the last edition of his published works to explain imitation in quite another way. Thus he gives that name to the play of young dogs, which, without having seen it done, seize a piece of cloth in the teeth and shake it violently, because such play exhibits the playful activity of former generations.[674] This is a hardly justifiable use of the word, and I think it better to admit at once that imitation, as commonly understood, is not a criterion of play.

The case is entirely different with the “apparent aim” or sham activity. It is undeniable that, objectively considered, such play appears to be detached from the real, practically directed life of the individual, and Wundt, too, understands it so. No one plays to attain what is a real object of effort outside of the sphere of play. All the objects of play lie within its own bounds, and even games of chance keep in view the aim to promote strong excitement in the parties to the wager until the decision. Since, then, we must consider sham activity as a genuine projection from earnest life, it becomes a universal criterion. This is not contradicted by the fact that playful activity is of great value to the individual, since the value of the play is not the player’s motive.

The question respecting the illusion-working character of playful activity is much more difficult to meet, if the psychical processes of the playing subject are kept in view, and the inquiry is pressed as to whether the actual sham quality of the play is reflected in his mental states.[675] Here it must be emphasized that actual consciousness of fulfilling a merely ideal purpose, of being engaged in sham occupation, is not at all essential to imitative play, and is wanting altogether in experimentation and fighting plays. Consequently it too fails as a universal criterion of play. Later we shall inquire whether in much play the objective sham character may not influence the psychic condition of the player in another way.

There remain, then, as general psychological criteria of play, but two more of the elements popularly regarded as essential—namely, its pleasurableness, and the actual severance from life’s serious aims. Both are included in cally speaking, in activity performed for its own sake.

I proceed after this introduction to inquire into the character of the pleasure derived from play. It is the most universal of all the psychological accompaniments of play, resting as it does on the satisfaction of inborn impulses. The sensorimotor and mental capacities (of the latter, attention pre-eminently) fighting and sexual impulses, imitation, and the social instincts press for discharge, and lead to enjoyment when they find it in play. To this simple statement of fact we must subjoin the not unimportant consideration which Baldwin has suggested in his preface to The Play of Animals. He distinguishes two distinct kinds of play: one “not psychological at all,” and exhibiting only the biological criterion of practice for, not exercise of, the impulse; and the other, which is psychological as well and involves conscious self-deception.[676] The situation, he says, is like that displayed in many other animal and human functions which are at once biologic and instinctive, as well as psychologic and intelligent; for example, sympathy, fear, and bashfulness. This last statement is unquestionable, but there is room for doubt whether the previously assumed difference exists. Baldwin’s grounds for the distinction seem to me to be inconclusive, in that conscious self-deception is by no means the only nor the most universal psychic accompaniment of play, the most elementary of them all being the enjoyment derived for the satisfaction of an instinct, which makes play an object for psychology, where conscious self-deception is out of the question.[677] But the further question is suggested whether the biological conception of play has not a still deeper grasp than the psychological, and to this extent the proposed distinction is of value.

It may be assumed of young animals, and probably of children, that the first manifestations of what is afterward experimentation, fighting and imitative play, etc., is rarely conscious, and consequently we can not assert with assurance that it is pleasurable. Therefore the biological but not the psychological germ of play is present. It was in this sense that I intended my previous remarks to the effect that actual imitation was not an indispensable condition of play, while repetition possibly could be considered so, since the impulsive movements must be repeated frequently and at last performed for the sake alone of the pleasure derived from them, before play ensues. This marks the psychological limits of play.

To make the relation clearer, let us take the grasping movement as an example. The child at first waves his hands aimlessly, and when his fingers chance to strike a suitable object they clutch at it instinctively. From a purely biological point of view this is practice of an instinct, and play has already begun. Psychologically, on the contrary, it is safer to defer calling the movements playful until, through repetition they acquire the character of conscious processes accompanied by attention and enjoyment. This distinction, I think, is a proper one, and it enables the biologist to pursue the idea further than the psychologist would be justified in doing. Therefore I can not recognise any activity as playful in the most complete sense which does not exhibit the psychological criterion as well. Examples of such plays may be found scattered all through the systematic parts of this work, and at the beginning of the section on contact plays.

In examining somewhat more closely the nature of the feeling of pleasure which springs from the satisfaction of an inborn instinct we may assume as a general law that it is threefold: first, there is pleasure in the stimulus as such; then in the agreeableness of the stimulus; and, third, in its intensity. The first is due to the fact that a set of hereditary impulses press for such expression; it is superfluous to attempt to prove that there are special stimuli inherently pleasurable; it is only the third class, then, that need demand our attention, and this we have repeatedly encountered in our excursions into the various departments of play. It would be well worth while to devote a monograph to the investigation of its meaning and grounds in the light of the literature of the past. Probably a variety of causes would be brought to light, among which, however, the influence of habit would be prominent, since attention and enjoyment would need constantly stronger stimuli. The most valuable contribution to the subject seems to me that of Lessing in pursuance of Du Bos’s idea. He says that the violent emotion produced by the feeling of heightened reality is the occasion of the pleasurable effect. But whence comes this feeling? Its origin is sufficiently clear in movement-play, where intense stimulus is connected with the violent exertion of physical powers; but how is it with receptive play? In the eighteenth century it was said, on the ground of Leibnitz’s psychology, that what we regard as receptive play was the soul’s spontaneous activity. The strong emotion resulting betokened a development of force which is always a satisfaction. This view quite naturally lends itself to modern psychological terms now that we can put our finger on the strong internal motor processes involved; yet it is limited by observation, which shows that intensive stimuli taking possession of us, so to speak, in spite of ourselves, are not invariably cherished as pleasures. Only when we voluntarily seek the strong feeling, and gladly yield ourselves to it so that the emotion it produces is in a measure our own work, do we enjoy the result. The conditions are the same as with the pleasure in power displayed in violent movement plays, and they may be treated together.

Among the many inborn necessities which ground our pleasure in play we find again that three is the number emphasized by psychology—namely, the exercise of attention, the demand for an efficient cause, and imagination. As regards attention, I have already said in the biological discussion that it seems calculated to lend a definite meaning to the vague idea of a general need for activity. The examples of practice in attention which were introduced in the section on experimentation with the higher mental powers were chosen with a view to illustrating mental tension, and special stress was laid on the fact that, apart from these limitations, attention is of the widest and most comprehensive significance. Indeed, fully developed play in the psychological sense is scarcely conceivable without the simultaneous exercise of motor or theoretic attention. From the first sensory and motor play of infants, straight through to æsthetic enjoyment and artistic production, its tension is felt, and when the opportunity is not afforded for its satisfactory exercise a pitiable condition of boredom ensues, the unendurableness of which Schopenhauer has so exhaustively described.

The desire to be an efficient cause also has a motor and a theoretic form. We demand a knowledge of effects and to be ourselves the producers of effects, and it is through this motor form that the theoretic, if not exactly originated, is at least perfected. Hence the root idea of causal connection depends on volition, and Schopenhauer, in referring force to the will, has but expressed in his metaphysical way an established psychological fact. This motor impulse finds expression in the joy in being a cause, which I regard as so essential to play, and in conjunction with attention is probably the source of the impulse for activity of which I have spoken. We must bear in mind all the forms of pleasure connected with movement, and especially motor experimental play, where, besides the mere enjoyment of motion in itself, there is the satisfaction of being one’s self the originator of it, the joy-bringing sense of being a cause. Use of the sensory apparatus is a source of the same pleasure, since here, too, a motor condition is involved, and is accompanied with consciousness of its own activity; and when the inner imitation which we have described is also included, the connection with external movement is of course still closer. And in any case joy in being a cause is well-nigh universal, since in play no purpose is served apart from the act itself as impelled by inner impulse, which thus appears in the character of an independent cause more than in any other form of activity.