How Play Leads to the Development of a Larger Sense of Self

Maturation, fully living the pattern of development, leads to a growing sense of self. The play on the symbolic field must eventually lead to something durable and vital. Play aims at coalescing into a work, an “opus.” The structure that emerges in play is the sense of our self as a “self.” If I may suggest this subtle distinction: play, if followed to its true development, evolves in a game. In the end, play imposes a set of rules. It begins to develop into a way of life, which is to say, a myth.

D. Stephenson Bond, Living Myth