This paper presents a sociological analysis of the influence of children's play on socialization processes and on the development of self in childhood, making use of classical authors like Walter Benjamin and George Herbert Mead and some of their contemporary interpreters like Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf, all of whom organised this discussion around the concept of mimesis. In the second part, it analyses two "images" present in Childhood in Berlin around 1900, by Walter Benjamin, which portrays the role of children's play in the development of self in childhood from an autobiographical perspective.
play; game; mimesis; identity; socialization; childhood