Play can do just as hard and painful
tasks as work, for what we love is done with whole and undivided
personality. Work, as too often conceived, is all body and no soul,
and makes for duality and not totality. Its constraint is external,
mechanical, or it works by fear and not love. Not effort but zestless
endeavor is the tragedy of life. Interest and play are one and
inseparable as body and soul. Duty itself is not adequately conceived
and felt if it is not pleasure, and is generally too feeble and fitful
in the young to awaken much energy or duration of action. Play is from
within from congenital hereditary impulsion. It is the best of all
methods of organizing instincts. Its cathartic or purgative function
regulates irritability, which may otherwise be drained or vented in
wrong directions, exactly as Breuer[24] shows psychic traumata may, if
overtense, result in "hysterical convulsions." It is also the best
form of self-expression; and its advantage is variability, following
the impulsion of the idle, perhaps hyperemic, and overnourished
centers most ready to act. It involves play illusion and is the great
agent of unity and totalization of body and soul, while its social
function develops solidarity and unison of action between individuals.
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