The COVID-19 pandemic raised several questions for contemporary subjectivities, one of them being the tension between individual freedom and collective care. From this field of tensions, we proposed an investigation of subjectivation based on what Donald Winnicott named as an environmen-individual set-up. Thematizing the infantile as that which begins from the arrangement between individual and environment, we undertook a theoretical study of the convergences and differences between an environmental plane, articulated to Winnicott s theory of dependence, and a drive plane of subjectivation, inherent in the subject s relationship with their urges and desires. Maintaining a dialogue with freudian metapsychology, we connect this infantile to playing, suggesting that the pursuit of self that is inherent to it can also be thought of as a non-intellectualized practice of freedom that articulates dependence and drive satisfaction.