Applying the Intelligence of Play
An Invitational Symposium
Play - Evolutionary, Universal & Essential
Stuart L. Brown, MD
Summary
Play is one of life's fundamental principals, as basic and necessary as sleep, vitamins and dreams. Play serves as the grounding core of learning and serves as the "attractor" or organizer which helps shape the developing nervous systems of mammals. Through play children and adults build their basic framework for reality which bridges al that is symbolic, metaphoric, mythical and imaginative in humans. Play is absolutely necessary for the development of empathy, social altruism and other social behaviors needed to handle stress. A lack of spontaneous free-play is a common thread in the profile of violent mass murders and felon drunk drivers.
What is shared by mass murderers, felony drunk drivers, starving children, head banging laboratory animals, anxious overworked students and all reptiles?…They don't play. What do most Nobel Laureates, historically renowned creative artists, successful multi-career entrepreneurs and animals of superior intelligence have in common?…They are full of play throughout their lives.
There is something profound about play, yet the full story of play has not been told. Most of us do not spend much time pondering the subject of play, nor consider it as basic as, say oxygen or sleep. Hold you breath for 45 seconds and your body will tell you of it's need for air. Stay awake for two full nights and every cell will ache with the need to sleep. Try staying awake unendingly for two weeks and it is fatal. But when an adult misses play for a few days about all that seems to happen is that life loses its brightness and sense of purpose or meaning. Be seriously deprived of play in childhood, though, and the consequences are likely to be dire, though delayed. So we do not equate the need to play as belonging in the survival ballpark with food or sleep. Staying alive and play deprivation don't seem directly linked. (Or are they?)
Every child, well-fed and safe, in addition to breathing and sleeping, however, also universally spontaneously engages in play. From the first moments of post-feeding nipple play, to the shared babbling between parent and child, to peek-a-boo and ring around the rosy, any bonded protected nourished child I energized by and finds its waking hours dominated by joyful acts of play.
But where does play fit into the big scheme of things? An evolutionary look at it shows that as it has developed over the eons, it closely accompanies the establishment of a large brain and warm bloodedness. The smarter, more flexible and adaptive the creature, the more they play, and the more they play, paradoxically, the greater is their immediate risk to life and limb. So play is different, more connected to the details of the environment than oxygen or sleep, but just as inevitable - and necessary.
Snow leopards box, kelp-laden sea lions play tug of war, otters do most anything in order to play; bats dabble with their sonar, killer whales tease sea gulls, ravens slide down snow banks on their backs, and given the chance wild wolves and grizzly bears play with each other despite their dissimilarity in size and long carnivorous heritage. And humans - well, we are the champions of play.
Stuart Brown, MD Page 2
Play movements are recognized across species lines, and play signals, such as a relaxed open mouth expression, (the "play face") can be seen in both mammals and birds and is understood by both to mean - no harm will come to you - what follows is play. Thus play, anciently and slowly established during evolution, has established a language which forms the basis for trust of others and forms an action pattern of beginning integrity. Play signals and languages are powerful, and can override more stereotyped communications such as those which frequently precede a fight. We have not learned to utilize these languages fully in our daily dealings with each other.
Play also reduces the social distance between individuals and assists in the development of more intricate intimate bonds. It provides a repertoire of behaviors to alleviate stress and helps the player cope with ambiguity.
Authentic play, which occurs whenever the playfulness itself gives more pleasure than any goal associated with it, is the means by which, regardless of it's forms adaptability and flexibility are added to the players existence. Thus play serves as the grounding core of learning.
My studies of violent anti-social men (murderers, drunken drivers) revealed major play deprivation. Detailed evaluations of other selected comparison populations show the importance of play to their healthy adaptable development. Thus, play seems necessary as an antidote to the development of violent tendencies as well as a partner to effective socialization.
Play and games seem necessary for the development of community which requires mutual trust, cooperation and common goal setting. They are necessary to develop a sense of future optimism and perseverance. Handicapping, the play induced behavior where the strong voluntarily withholds domination in a situation of unequal power, is learned in the crucibles of solitary and social play by all social creatures.
For humans, play is also surprisingly active in the shaping of one's own inner private narratives (actual sense of self), and thus is directly related to mental health and elasticity. It is also the means by which we shape a model world.
Thus it serves as a fulcrum to whatever takes on meaning. The growing virtual world, which is now often being seen as the only reality in which we exist is, at base, a play-imaginary world.
Play also acts as a freeing non-rational action. Play emanates from intrinsic special systems of the organism. Witness a monkey leaping and pirouetting gleefully from a tree into a pond while looking at peers, and play can be seen as art in action. By binding joy, curiosity, exploration and experience together the human brain is uniquely organized as a "play donor and recipients". All we must do is allow its wisdom to be enacted.
Stuart Brown, MD, is a clinician, trained in general and internal medicine, psychiatry and clinical research. Early in his academic career he headed a multi-diciplinary team studding violence, beginning with the Texas Tower Sniper, later including homicidal and fatally injured drunk drivers. One of the predicative background factors associative with these destructive antisocial men was the absence of normal play. Stuart produced a series of films on the life and works of mythologists, Joseph Campbell and, for National Geographic produced a cover story and PBS documentary on animals and play. |  |