The psychoanalytic process is often imagined as a deeply reflective and interpretative experience, one in which unconscious conflicts come to light, meanings unfold, and the patient gains insight. However, insight alone is not always transformative. Creativity is a crucial element that allows analysis to move beyond repetition. Donald Winnicott, with his seminal ideas on play and transitional space, offers a way to think about how creativity emerges within the analytic setting.
In this post, I will explore how time, uncomfortable feelings, and playing with reality shape the creative potential of the psychoanalytic process. Drawing on Winnicott’s ideas, I will argue that the analyst’s ability to engage with the patient in a space of play allows something new to emerge, something beyond mere intellectual understanding or symptom relief. It is in playing that analysis becomes truly alive.
The Lived and the Symbolic in Analysis
Time in psychoanalysis is not simply about the scheduled session; it is also about how past, present, and future fold into one another. Freud’s concept of Nachträglichkeit (often translated as “deferred action” or “afterwardness”) suggests that meaning is not fixed but continually reinterpreted over time. Similarly, Winnicott understood time not as a rigid structure but as something experienced subjectively within the potential space of analysis.
In the consulting room, time is often felt most intensely in moments of frustration, boredom, or waiting, when things are not happening as expected. There may be restlessness when an insight does not arrive quickly enough or when there is a feeling of being caught in a cycle of repetition. This discomfort can open up a creative opportunity. Rather than rushing to resolve the uncomfortable feelings, the analytic process invites a different approach: to stay with it, to play with it.
Uncomfortable Feelings as a Path to Creativity
Winnicott placed great importance on the capacity to be alone in the presence of another. He understood that this capacity develops in early relationships where a carer provides a “holding environment,” allowing the child to experience solitude without fear of abandonment. In analysis, this translates to the ability to tolerate silence, ambiguity, and even uncomfortable feelings without immediately trying to resolve them.
Many patients enter therapy hoping to rid themselves of painful emotions, anger, grief. While alleviation of suffering is important, psychoanalysis does something deeper: it allows the patient to experience their feelings differently. Rather than being overwhelmed by emotion or cutting off from it, they can begin to relate to it in a new way through play.
Uncomfortable feelings, when held within the analytic relationship, create tension that can lead to something unexpected. Instead of seeing distress as something to be “fixed,” Winnicott encourages us to think of it as something that can be worked with as raw material for play.
Analysis as Creative Process of Becoming
For Winnicott, play is fundamental to development, and he argued that all cultural life, art, religion, and even psychoanalysis itself, emerges from the capacity to play. In his classic text Playing and Reality, he describes a “potential space”, a zone between the individual and external reality where creativity and transformation occur.
The analytic setting, when it functions well, becomes such a space. It is neither purely internal nor purely external, it is a shared transitional space where meanings can shift, be tested, and be played with.
Consider a patient who rigidly adheres to their narrative: “I have always been this way; nothing can change.” They repeat a story about themselves as though it were a fact set in stone. The analyst, rather than directly challenging this, might introduce an element of play, perhaps by exaggerating a small detail, surprisingly rephrasing something, or allowing a moment of humour. This act of play disrupts the fixed narrative. It opens up a space where new possibilities emerge.
In moments like this, analysis becomes not just about interpretation but about experience, a lived, felt encounter where reality is not imposed but co-created.
The Analyst’s Role As 'Not Just' an Interpreter
Traditional views of the analyst often position them as an interpreter of hidden meanings. While interpretation remains crucial, Winnicott suggests that the analyst is also a participant in play.
This does not mean being lighthearted at all times. On the contrary, playing in analysis requires serious engagement with uncertainty. The analyst must be able to tolerate their own not-knowing, their own uncomfortable feelings, without rushing to provide certainty. This willingness to “not know” creates space for creative discovery.
Consider a patient who feels trapped in despair. If the analyst simply reflects this despair back, the session risks becoming another site of repetition. But if the analyst engages in a subtle act of play, perhaps by introducing a metaphor, using an unexpected word, or shifting the rhythm of their speech, something may shift. This is not about forcing change but about opening a space where something new can appear.
The Risk of Stagnation
Not all analytic work becomes creative. Some patients struggle to enter the space of play. For Winnicott, this difficulty is often rooted in early breaks in the holding environment, moments when play was met with rejection, ridicule, or intrusion.
When a patient cannot play, analysis risks becoming either too rigid (overly intellectualised, stuck in fixed interpretations) or too chaotic (without structure, lacking containment). The analyst must recognise when play is not yet possible and provide the necessary holding before creativity can emerge.
In some cases, the analyst’s own countertransference, perhaps a desire to provide quick insight or to avoid discomfort, can get in the way of play. Recognising this is part of the analytic process.
Why Play Matters in Analysis
Psychoanalysis is not just about insight; it is about transformation. Winnicott’s ideas on play show us that true change does not come from rigid interpretation alone but from the creative potential of the analytic space.
By allowing time to unfold in its own way, by staying with uncomfortable feelings rather than rushing to resolve them, and by engaging in play rather than rigid certainty, the analytic process becomes a living experience. It becomes a space where new ways of being, thinking, and feeling can emerge.
Ultimately, playing in analysis is not about trivialising suffering but about allowing something new to be created from it. In this way, psychoanalysis remains a profoundly creative act, one that does not merely explain the past but opens up new possibilities for the future.