Learning in Playful Environments

A photo Freud, I think, would have been amused by the photo I took outside his house this summer. Across the road from the Viennese apartment where Freud worked and lived is now a 2 nd hand shop and in the window of this shop is a display of Barbie Dolls. My photo captures the facade of the Freud Museum reflected above a crowd of used Barbie Dolls. It's not hard to imagine what Freud might have thought about Barbie. With her impossibly exaggerated proportions, the Barbie Doll represents an intrusion (extrusion?) of adult sexuality into childhood consciousness. Freud claimed that sexuality in various forms is an inherent part of childhood anyway, but I suspect he might have had a lot to say about the way consumer marketing has used the Barbie Doll to exploit the uncertainties of an emerging childhood identity. What I’d be interested to hear is Freud’s thoughts about the focus of this marketing – is Barbie more marketed to children or their parents? Is the attraction of Barbie’s exa...