Play as Imitation of Life: The Relation between Mother, Child and Toy in Little Brother™

Bernard Shaw describes the important role of play in the cultural development of the individual with his famous quotation: “We don’t cease to play because we grow old; we grow old because we cease to play.” On the other hand, Donald Winnicott summarizes his basic thesis claiming that “Cultural experience begins with creative living first manifested as play.” In this study, I aim to analyse how the mysterious interaction between mother and child appears in Bruce Holland Rogers’s story named Little Brother^TM through the lens of Freud’s, Jung’s and Winnicott’s theories.