La relation entre l’attachement et la représentation de la figure paternelle dans le jeu symbolique du garçon d’âge préscolaire
This research was inspired by the work of John Bowlby on infant attachment and the psychoanalytic writings of Freud and Winnicott on the father figure. Three objectives were formulated for this exploratory study; a) Will the young preschool boy spontaneously project his paternal representations in the context of a series of symbolic free play sessions? b) If so, what is the nature of the paternal representations? c) Is there a relationship between the type of attachment as evaluated with a standardized instrument and the paternal representation projected into the free play sessions? Ten four year old boys were filmed in their own homes and in the daycare setting during an average of four sessions each for a total of two and a half hours. The type of attachment was evaluated with the Attachment Story Completion Task. The results showed that all of the boys were capable of projecting paternal representations onto the father figures. All of the children perceived these figures as a source of protection and eight out of ten verbally expressed their attachment to them. One insecure boy (type A) did not invoke the father figure in his play and in real life his father was rarely at home. The remaining insecure boy (a very angry type C) showed consistent negative interaction with the father figure throughout the sessions. It seems that the symbolic play allow the child to project adequatly the representation of the father figure. These representations are linked to the attachment type that the children possessed at the moment of the evaluation.
Attachment story completion task Internal working model Father-son relationship Father-son attachment Internal representation Symbolic play Attachment story completion task