Olofsson. [Play and the Creative Arts]

Abstract:
The author`s view is that the child's participation in pretence play changes the state of his mind, and plunge him into a kind of a light hypnotic trance. The child’s view seems to become inward-looking, introspective, which allows him to protect his inner world from the surrounding reality. Children are easily controlling the process of transition into the playing state and coming back to reality and they are aware that nothing magical happens to them during the play. At the same time, they are in desperate need of this kind of game protection of their internal world in which reality is creatively transformed by them into something else that has a strictly individual value for each individual child, and therefore extremely valuable for him or her and absolutely necessary for the personal development.