User:Groupuscule/FortDa

The Fort–Da game is a repetitive behavior that Sigmund Freud observed in his young grandson.

The child was playing with a spool attached to a string. He would cast the spool away, saying "o–o–o–o", then reel it back in and say "da!" The boy's mother interpreted the first noise as "fort", meaning "gone" (in German). "Da" means "here." Thus, the crux of the game was the object's disappearance and reappearance.

The fort-da game played a significant role in Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and came to be a major topic in the field of psychoanalysis.