In an article adapted from his latest work, "Play: A Basic Pathway to the Self,"published by The Strong in 2020, the author offers a wide-ranging review of play studies--and the thinkers, philosophers, and scholars who led to the creation of the discipline. He also reviews and seeks to explain for both specialists and more general readers the great diversity of play itself, which he ultimately considers a "pathway of experience" that resembles other such pathways as ritual, work, and what he calls "communitas"