Toys and reasons : stages in the ritualization of experience

Based on the Bodkin Lectures, Harvard University, given by Erikson in 1972 under the title "Play, Vision, and Deception.

Preface. 1 Play and vision. Introduction: From child's play to politics?. The toy stage. Seeing is hoping. Play's end. 2 Life cycle and ritualization. Arenas of interplay. Speciation and ritualization. Infancy and the numinous. Childhood and the judicious. Play age and the dramatic. School age and the formal. Adolescence and the ideal. Adulthood and ritual sanction. Re-ritualization. 3 Shared fisions. Visions on the wall. The dream screen. Einstein's puzzles. A national dream. Shared nightmares. Visions and countervisions

'...Erikson inquires into the nature and the structure of the shared visions which invigorate some eras and seem so fatefully lacking in others. He illustrates the human propensity for play and vision, from the toy world of childhood to the dream life of adults, and from the artist's imagination to the scientist's reason. Finally, he enlarges on the origins and structure of one shared vision of universal significance, namely, the American Dream....'

Hardcover