Rules and Freedom: Games as a Mechanism for Ego Development in Children and Adolescents

A NEW PHASE of Part I begins with this chapter by Layman Allen. The chief difference between the earlier and the later chapters lies in an emphasis first on play, then later on games. Allen summarized the proceedings of a Rules and Freedom conference that had been set up by Dr. Eli Bower with the intention of bringing together professional people having a wide variety of backgrounds. In many cases practitioners in one field did not know about the interest in and uses by practitioners in another. In a situation conducive to free exchange of orientations and objectives, the assembled professionals expressed their own positions and explored the implications of positions held by the others. In each case the emphasis was on games as devices to achieve some goal for the participants. It became clear that the game referrents themselves varied considerably, but an even greater variety of views of games and play were held by the professionals of different disciplines. Some of the variety arose from the use to be made of the games-in-situation by the child-participants who were to be treated, taught or simply entertained. Definitions of game and play occupied the conference at some length, and the role-playing that characterizes both emerged as a third entity in its own right in some orientations. Allen noted that the group recommended an empirical study should be undertaken to describe and predict the effects of adult intervention on games and game participants. Such study could be directed toward a better understanding of the game-play continuum as it changes over the developmental sequence. It was emphasized that it was not clear at what level of skill or maturity it would be appropriate to initiate the next level of the sequence. However, it seemed clear that the participant\u27s relationship to rules was central to development and emerging maturity. For example cheating seems to precede negotiated changes in the rules. The urgency of a user\u27s need for the knowledge that such research would yield was highlighted by the conference members\u27 concern for the effects of any new intervention that they might undertake and/or the effect of their usual procedures with different populations or ages of children. They wanted guidelines as they ventured out to improve the welfare and maturational development of children through each child\u27s game-play life. The three following chapters represent efforts to fill the need for descriptive and predictive research findings. —Editor