Donald Winnicott saw play as crucial to the development of authentic selfhood. He argued that when people play they feel real, spontaneous and alive, and keenly interested in what they're doing.
For Winnicott one of the most important and precarious stages of development was in the first three years of life, when an infant grows into a child with an increasingly separate sense of self (in relation to its parents). In health, the child learns to bring his or her spontaneous, real self into play with others; in a false self disorder the child has found it unsafe or impossible to do so, and instead feels compelled to hide the true self from other people and pretend to be whatever they want instead.
Clio is taught, through play, how her face can be used to communicate the thoughts and moods that constitute her “self”.
