The Intersubjective in-between-ness in Young Children’s Playfulness

Abstract

This chapter presents ways of interpreting and understanding intersubjectivity in young children’s playful communication. This research focuses on the in-between spaces; the area in and between children connecting, communicating and relating together in play. This is a complex area open to a diverse range of interpretations, as alluded to earlier in chapters “ Framing: Young Children Relating and Playing” and “ Research Methods: Observing Experience in Two Projects (Parts II and III)”. This chapter explores the nature of the intra- and inter-subjectively mediated feeling-thoughts that emerge, and are co-created within and between children communicating playfully is a complex focus. Events illuminate processes at play in children’s play. We focus on awareness of conscious and unconscious feeling-thoughts that are co-created, emerge, and change in a range of events (Benjamin J, Psychoanal Q LXXIII(1):5–46. doi: 10.1002/j.2167-4086.2004.tb00151.x, 2004; Kirschner SR, Martin J, The sociocultural turn in psychology: the contextual emergence of mind and self. Columbia University Press, New York, 2010; Ogden T, Psychoanal Q LXX111:167–195, 2004; Psychoanal Perspect 6(1):22. doi: 10.1080/1551806X.2009.10473034, 2009; Vygotsky LS, Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1986; Wertsch JV, Voices of the mind: a sociocultural approach to mediated action. Harvester Wheatsheaf, London, 1991; Mind as action. Oxford University Press, New York, 1998).