cover image Beyond Love and Work: Why Adults Need to Play

Beyond Love and Work: Why Adults Need to Play

Lenore Terr. Scribner Book Company, $24 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-684-82239-6

Freud's famous contention that the two crucial needs for adults are love and work leaves out a third fundamental need, according to Terr, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UC-San Francisco. She believes that play is an equally pressing human need, and that our culture squeezes play almost completely from our lives as we age. Since Erik Erikson's modification of Freud's developmental stages, Terr argues, psychologists and psychiatrists have accepted the importance of play in childhood while neglecting its value for adults. Having emphasized play as both an end and a process in her research and practice, Terr (Too Scared to Cry; Unchained Memories) writes: ""The lack of play dulls a person--and it may well be that an overall lack of play dulls a society."" Terr reviews research on play in children and teens extensively, despite the titular cue toward adulthood. Not until the final three (of eight) chapters does she directly address how adults can profit from play in their lives, and, more speculatively, how societies can become more dynamic through play. She weaves therapy cases and research results together skillfully and writes clearly and personally. At times the writing is so personal it intrudes on her message, as when she addresses the audience as ""dear reader"" or digresses into the types of flowers she plants or what she orders at restaurants. The overall message, however, is both important and clearly argued. And perhaps even the digressions are consistent with her central plea: lighten up. (Feb.)