Connection and Identity

Has anyone ever made a game for a therapist to use in therapy? As Sherry asks? Want to make a game? hmmmmmmm

The therapeutic exchange is a place where the imaginary becomes real.

Erik Erikson - adolescents concretely imagine a future, stressing the importance of visualization in this playful process.

Therapy is a transitional space where childhood development can occur - a creative play space for reenacting the self.

Joanies involvement with a made up character helps her sustain who she wants to be.

Keep the ego ideal realistic so that you do not become too self critical.. (further work)

Games become a ritual in which aggression feels codified and safe. (16 year old sweet/man)

Laurence has a diminished capacity to distinguish reality and fantasy. What gives children this capacity? Would making something in the physical work enrich the fantacy world? Is it a physical digital - or is the nature of fantasy projection of desire anywhere?

Last paragraph: Generalizations about the impact of gaming fall short because adolescents use gaming as a safe place to deal with the surges of desire they have and help organize their inner selves. But at the same time if they can be incited not to master their aggression, but to act upon it. How can we develop games that encourage mastery and development but not extreme fantasy?

Multi-User Dungeons:

MUDs are environments for construction and reconstruction of the self (in a post modern we reinvent ourselves, moving past the notion of progress to a more non linear thinking)

Virtual space as a Dungeon from dungeons and dragons.

What do you mean a "resolutely postmodern context"? (ask) Complex and overlapping perspectives portrayed?

MUD as a "second chance" - life, intentionality, itelligence (what the defnintions are)

-one can develop mastery in a MUD and then transfer that into life?

-Network can serve as an evocative object for thinking about community. Could serve as place to act out social ideas (like world of warcraft)


to remake the self in the game....

-MUD as a vehicle for "working through something" - peter and julie examples.

-Contrast escapism vs. a vehicle for working things out. A parrallel life to try things out...

virtual | (evocative) | real

Contrast of MUD as continuous, not just a weekend thing.

MUDs can be a projection of your inter fantasies, where one may find their voice only through another persona.

Qualities of the cam that contrast from real life:
1) Ongoing - play as much as you want
2) anonymous: be who you want to be
3) invisible: no one knows who you really are
4) be multiple characters

ego ideal - embodying aspects of the self you hate or fear in real life...

In this sense the game becomes a therapist - a safe place to deal with unresolved issues (instead of drinking or suicide)

Identity means one - interesting...

GENDER and COMMUNITY:

social and cultural issues revealed through the games:
gender - by being able to become anyone people learn what it is like to be each gender.
evocative objects to consider gender and community through role playing.
Real and the virtual - evocative spaces are spaces to play and think about the real world.
Robots vs People behind systems.
Build something, be someone - constructionist ethos...

In the end do we become what we play or do we use that play to work through our issues? Thats the big question.

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CyberPlaces:


Matthew hopes to derive something real from an imaginary contact - that is his "trick"
"you may be the same in the game but not in my head" - differentiation between the virtual and the real.
Thereputic process as emergent and provisional - one that constructs itself as it goes along - throw away the book
Blurs the notion of what is real and fantasy just as we do in therapy.



Cell phones:

Enabled her to connect with some part of thier relationship that they were unable to face in reality.
Texting as a way of filling spaces
Her cell phone was her talisman
Object holds some representation of who you were before - associations in the mind...
Ring tones of the old relationship
Sleeping with it near her.
New phone = new her... a new start in some ways..