EDITOR'S PREFACE. x i 



of the individual, as I have argued in detail in my vol- 

 ume on Mental Development in the Child and the Kace. 



Going into the analysis of the play psychosis, Herr 

 Groos finds several sources of pleasure to the animal in 

 it: pleasure of satisfying an instinct, pleasure of move- 

 ment and energetic action, but, most of all, " pleasure 

 in being a cause." This last, together with the 

 M pleasure in experimenting," which characterizes many 

 play activities, is urged with great insistence, and 

 properly so. Even the imitative function is said to 

 produce the joy of " victory over obstacles." Yet here 

 again the author is compelled to draw the distinction 

 between the play which is psychological enough to have 

 a represented object, and the instinctive sort in which 

 the pleasure is only that of the instinct's own perform- 

 ance. The pleasure of overcoming friction of move- 

 ment, also, seems very doubtful, since in most games we 

 stop playing when the friction and inertia of the mus- 

 cles come to consciousness as fatigue. Much more, how- 

 ever, is to be said for the pleasure of rivalry, or of over- 

 coming an opponent, in the higher types of play; but 

 Herr Groos scarcely does this justice. 



The second element in the. play or Schein con- 

 sciousness is the feeling of freedom (Freiheitsgefuhl) . 

 In play there is a sense of " don't-have-to," so to 

 speak, which is contrasted both with the necessity of 

 sense and with the imperative of thought and conscience. 

 This idea seems to be part of Schiller's theory of play. 

 So Groos thinks the general feeling of freedom holds 

 in consciousness only while there is a play of motives, to 

 which the agent may put an end at any moment — a 

 sense of " don't-have-to " in the life of choice. This 

 sense of freedom keeps the "make-believe" conscious- 

 ness pure and prevents our confusing the game with 



