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Pathological Play

Women’s and Children’s Hospital, North Adelaide, Australia

Play is critical to human physical and cognitive development, and disturbance in play can express itself as a distinct and specific form of psychopathology, pathological play. Play becomes pathological when it deviates from healthy play in one or more of three characteristic qualities: the relationship between playing and reality; the player’s experience of the play; and the relationship of the player to the objects of play (including self and other people, as well as inanimate objects). Healthy play accommodates to the real needs of self and others; pathological play avoids reality, through a narrow-minded preoccupation that allows individual needs to be subjugated to the creation of a pretence or narrative.

Key Words: child abuse • child development • play • pretence • psychopathology

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