The preschool playground: a young child's experience of entering the emotional field

This paper explores a young child’s experience of entering the emotional field of the preschool playground. Esther Bick’s ideas about primitive mental states are drawn on to consider how psychic holding can occur through the skin in a physical way until the child is able to find containment from the preschool group. The metaphor of a ‘second skin’ is extended to describe the preschool group’s response to the new child. Bion’s idea about ‘a group mentality’ is used to think about unconscious processes occurring in the group as efforts are made to contain infantile anxieties. It is suggested that the capacity to contain feelings and face frustration is the first step towards socialisation of the growing child.