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After reading this article you will learn about Play As an Instinctive Act:- 1. Meaning of Play 2. Theories of Play.
Meaning of Play:
Play is an instinctive act, though it is modified by intelligence. It is not an expression of one instinct, but of a number of instincts.
Play is different from work, which is a voluntary action which realizes a definite end. Ball-pickers pick balls in order to earn their livelihood. This action is work. But they play for recreation at other times. Play is agreeable in itself.
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It does not aim at a definite purpose. It is an instinctive expression of energy. Different instincts find expression in different kinds of play. Fighting instinct is expressed in games of football, hockey, cricket, and the like.
The instinct of flight is expressed in hide and seeks the games of football, hockey and the like. The sex instinct is expressed in dancing. The instinct of self-assertion is expressed in flying a kite, balloon, soap bubbles, etc., dancing on a rope, swimming, climbing a tree, etc.
Theories of Play:
The general tendency to play is a result of the general tendency to motor discharge. In little children it is practically identical with the impulse to use the voluntary muscles. It is the free, pleasurable, and spontaneous activity of the voluntary muscles. The child takes playing seriously. Play involves imagination, imitation and ‘make-believe’.
The child constructs houses with damp sand, clay, or wooden blocks. Here he gives play to his constructive instinct. Angell points out that play, imitation; and constructiveness interlace with one another in almost inextricable ways. Conscious ‘make- believe’ of many plays is seldom found in the earlier plays of little children. It is found in plays of later years. Imitation and constructiveness are found together in many plays.
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The boy plays at teaching, fighting, hunting, and the like. The girl plays at cooking, feeding, fondling and nursing a doll, and the like. These involve imitation, construction and ‘make-believe’. The instincts of self-assertion, submission, fighting, escape, exploration, manipulation, laughter, gregarious instinct, social instinct, etc., are satisfied in many kinds of play.
(i) Schiller and Herbert Spencer maintain that play is the spontaneous expression of surplus energy. Dog play in the morning when their organisms are fresh and vigorous and full of surplus energy. Children have little work to do and, consequently, have enough of surplus energy which finds a natural outlet in play.
This theory is partly true. When boys and girls come from school they are fatigued. But still the boys run to the play-ground and play games, and the girls play at hide and seek or play with dolls. So Herbert Spencer’s theory is not wholly true.
(ii) Gross maintains that play is a rehearsal of activities which will prove useful in future life without any consciousness of this purpose. The boys play the soldier, the teacher, the doctor, etc. The girls play the housewife, nurse the sick doll, cook mock food, feed their dolls, etc. These actions will prove useful to them in future. Some plays can be explained by this theory.
The two theories are not inconsistent with each other. Play may be an expression of surplus organic energy, and also a rehearsal of useful activities in adult life.
(iii) Stanley Hall advocates the theory of recapitulation. Playful activities are the repetition of the activities of the past generations. The evolution of the child is a recapitulation of the evolution of the race.
This biogenetic view is not accepted by the modern psychologists. The application of this law to the child’s play is doubtful.