Playing for world peace, one embodied relationship at a time
Contents
Fiction: Playing for world peace, one embodied relationship at a time
Applications for researchers: What on Earth! Why should research be full-of-play/playful?
Applications for educators: Growing players in ontological security
Introduction
Last time I wrote a full post, we focussed on the Theraplay core concept of cultural sensitivity. It has been fascinating how, in my exploration of deeper understandings of the core concepts, one seems to flow into the next. I suspect, however, that if I were writing other fiction to access the tacit maternal knowing I am curious about in my psychotherapeutic practice, those core concepts could flow together in a different but equally seamless and illuminating way.
This month, in exploring the Theraplay core concept of playfulness, I have realised that in my therapeutic training I have not delved as deeply as I could into the meaning and importance of play in our work. I have fallen, I fear, into a cultural norm of relegating play to something that is a background to, or a vehicle for ‘proper’ work. So my reflections here are about the deadly serious nature of play!
In November, we left Val discovering the impact of the deep cultural insensitivity that those who inhabit a position of privilege can still be consciously unaware of because it is part of the air we have breathed as part of our upbringings. It is in the challenges and discomforts of insensitivities, and in becoming conscious, that we may develop deeper insights into the ways we unintentionally Other people. Graham has also joined the fictional narrative, bringing his own cultural insensitivity. For his pains, he is now in pain, having tripped in Val’s garden and broken his ankle. Our fiction picks up from there.
Fiction: Playing for world peace, one embodied relationship at a time
It was all a bit of a blur. The sound stuck with him. He didn’t even remember the falling, nor a sensation. Just the noise. Like he’d snapped a log over his leg. That sort of sound. Casual, but ominous too.
He was aware of people rushing. Val, probably. And the woman who’d been with her.
“I think I’ve broken my ankle,” he croaked.
He heard their concerned, forceful voices. On the phone, he thought. His thinking, like his breath, was a bit fragmented. Hopefully an ambulance would arrive soon, he thought.
He wasn’t sure if the concerned voices were muttering or if the muteness was because of the pain he was in. Things were put over him. He felt hot, but couldn’t seem to muster the wherewithal to say please take away the blankets and the hot water bottle. This was summer. Surely, they realised he was not cold? He was unaware that he was shaking, which Val had taken to be shivering.
The intensity of pain did settle. If he breathed slowly, and with focus, he could divert his mind. His breathing slowed. He slowed. His thinking slowed. Strangely, it put him back into the place of being a child, lying on the ground staring up through the trees, watching the sunlight glitter, outside the passage of time and outside the pressure of responsibility.
“Is this where you buried him?” He asked. He had no idea if the words came out as clearly as he intended them too. Probably not, as Val’s response was confused.
“What?”
“Viking?”
“Why?”
“Seems like a place…an old cat would like.” His words and thoughts were clearly formed and articulated in his mind, but he still could not be sure how they came out. He looked up at the leaves of the lilac. “Beautiful.”
Val dialled on her phone again, as if his utterance had caused yet more concern.
The ambulance control room suggested giving him paracetamol. Val was astonished that such humble a drug was recommended. How could the ordinary address the intensity of this man's suffering?! They asked her to stop phoning — it just blocks others, we will get there as soon as we can. Only phone if his condition gets worse.
So, here they were, stuck together, nowhere to go. Nothing to do but wait. They waited in silence, preoccupied with their inner thoughts.
Graham liked the silence, Val’s lack of conversation. It gave him space to concentrate. Keep the breathing shallow, lie as still as he could. To try not to move or think because the pain might come back.
There was a smell of hay; the heat of the summer had dried out the grass. It was the background scent to his summers as a child. It made things a bit more okay.
Mostly the pain was like a toothache in his ankle, not massively intense but really nagging and preoccupying. Just so long as he could lay very still and breathe very calmly. He was acutely aware that somewhere underneath him lay Viking. He could feel his head sinking into the ground a little, the softness. Graham’s hips, though, felt as though on rock solid ground. A hint of root impaled his left buttock. He wondered if his head was on Viking, on recently dug earth.
“You don’t have to wait with me,” he tried to say. He knew he’d misjudged, he wanted to repair. And here he was, imposing even more. He had no idea if she answered, but she didn’t leave.
Graham groaned. At least Val will think it is the pain from my ankle, he thought to himself. The abject shame he was feeling was just as painful, if not more so, than the waves of pain from his ankle, but there was no escaping either. I have nowhere else to go, he thought. We are stuck here, I am stuck here.
It was a long, hot afternoon. Max and Alex, the teenage sons of Val’s neighbours, came along and constructed a makeshift sunshade from the plastic goal they played with in their garden. They went away, talking quietly. It seemed strange to them that Val and the man were just silently sitting there together.
The sunshade brought Graham a measure of relief. The sun had been starting to hit his eyes and all he could do was turn his head to the right. I think I lost a bit of time, lost myself, he thought. I feel myself communicating with Viking. He’s headbutting my head from behind. Go on, he’s saying, go on. To what? I ask, to what?
Val couldn’t believe this was happening. A hulk stretched out in my flowers and no help coming! Max and Alex, the sweethearts, put up a shelter with their goal post. I admire them so much, so young and so grown-up. Do I adore them? Is that allowed, adoring them (in an aunt-like way)? And why, them. Is that because they are young? Do I envy them?
Val shook her head, it was her habit when her inside thoughts started to run away with her, and she lost the thread. The head shake stopped the thoughts in their tracks. Why could she respond so warmly to the boys, to people like Joe, to men like Joe, but when she looked at the hulk in her flower bed — dare she let herself think it — she felt revulsion. Revulsion at the body that lay there.
Graham shifted uncomfortably. Oh God, I need to pee. At least the pain of that distracts me from the pain of my ankle. It is true, you can only feel one pain at a time. This is the pain of shame. I don’t know this woman, but I feel like I do know her because we shared the intimate moment of her saying farewell to her beloved, her cat. To me, it was intimate. I was a fool. I broke rules, coming to her with the cats. She was on the list of people who’d said to contact if there were any cats in need of a home. She’d probably forgotten that. Argh, I need to pee, I can’t…. Do I just wet myself like a baby? Do I ask? Either way. Shame! I only intended to deliver some kittens. I only wanted to see if…
“Val?”
Should I, can I call her that? I can’t even remember her surname. I remember she is a doctor. Just not the sort I need right now. I can feel her move closer.
“I’m really sorry, I need to pee.”
Oh my god, I think he is saying he needs to pee! How can I deal with this? Hang on, woman. What if it was Alex or Max lying there? Their mum or dad not around? What about the young children I’ve worked with over the years, the ones who’ve been so scared they’ve urinated on me in session? I haven’t felt disgust for them! I’ve seen it for what it is — fear. Is he fearful here? I am fearful? Why do I feel it as assault? What if he is scared? Or isn’t? He’s lying there, and he needs his body to do something. He is in need of help!
“Okay,” Val said, but her voice was hesitant.
Graham wasn’t sure what the hesitancy was.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. Val heard his voice clearly.
“It’s okay,” Val said, the openness of his vulnerability and awareness of how it put upon her, meant she really could mean it, and she could also be unsure that she meant it. She wanted to mean it. She wanted to care, that was something she valued in herself. And as much as she couldn’t bear the thought of touching him or seeing him extract his penis, she squirmed even as the word formed in her mind, she just had to make the effort to put it all to one side and consciously care.
“Um,” she said, “can you roll on your side, and I’ll get you a bottle or a bowl?”
Graham made some sort of effort. He tried to roll to his left, away from her, desperately not wanting to impose more on her. To be honest, his inside thinking process was far more coherent than his outside action. He thought he made a big effort to move, Val saw just the slightest twist of his shoulder before he emitted a fulsome and involuntary groan. She could see sweat form on his forehead despite the shade of the makeshift goalpost tent.
“Oh, that really hurt.” She wasn’t aware she said it out loud, it was spontaneous.
“Yes.” Graham responded. The intensity of the pain cutting through the fog. “I just need a moment.”
He’d never really believed what people said, that you can only really feel one pain at a time. But the pain in his ankle was so great that he was worried that he’d wet himself, as he had forgotten that for the moment. Val could feel his suffering and so, for the moment, she could put her pain to one side. It was no different to being with the children in her therapy room. He was a person in need.
“Let me roll towards you,” Graham said, thinking it would involve less movement around his ankle.
“Let me get a bottle first,” Val responded, matter-of-fact kindness in her voice.
“A bowl,” Graham said, wondering if he was going red with the shame of this. He didn’t think he’d be able to balance on his side and use his hand at the same time to direct his pee into a bottle. Such basic bodily actions. All consuming. Being literally forced into the open with a total stranger. This was a different intimacy to being with her at the death of her cat. This was like being a boy again, relying on the kindness of strangers after falling off his bike and scraping his knee. But he wasn’t a boy now, even though he was feeling that vulnerability that the world tried to tell him no man should have.
Val came back with a bowl and a big towel. He looked confused.
“I’ll hold it to give you privacy,” she said.
“Oh.” A small word containing relief, appreciation, respect, and much gratitude.
Val knelt beside him.
Viking, you are under us, she thought. I want to care for a human being, and I can’t see this human being for the fact he is a man. Give me compassion.
She felt a tear in her eyes while being aware her face was still. Tears spilled. She had no idea if Graham was able to see them as she knelt beside him. She knew they were powerful tears, but didn’t know what they were for. The raw nakedness of this being together…
“I’m going to put a hand on your hip and one on your thigh to support you.”
“No,” Graham said. “I need to roll from my shoulders and try not to move my leg. I need to undo my trousers first.”
Another wave of emotional pain rolled over Val. It wasn’t shame, or embarrassment. It was deeper, primal, not just of her own experience but of that of all humankind, especially the mankind part of humanity. The neglected vulnerability of men? It was pure pain that squeezed water out of her eyes, regardless of her thoughts and wishes. Human body to human body. To connect or to damage?
“I’ll hold the towel while you do that.”
She did. She sat back and held it up. It was blue, deep blue, and she could see each loop of cotton. She couldn’t see what he’d done but in her mind’s eye she could and even with the towel there she screwed up her eyes, felt her chin pull in, and she swallowed.
“Okay. Done.”
“I’m going to lay the towel over you”.
“Thank you.”
She did, covering him from belly button to knee.
“Right!” They both said at the same time.
“Okay,” they both responded in unison.
He took her hand. “It is okay.”
“It is okay,” she said back.
She nodded and swallowed.
“Okay.”
Then she smiled. It had been a weird, unworded poem.
How erudite vocabulary failed at moments like this! Moments when all you could do was focus on what was before you with as much compassion as you could muster. She thought if it was Max, or Alex, or Joe, she’d smile and be a reassuring presence, but at the moment it was fear she felt, fear that was not of this moment, not of this man. This man, here, was in pain and in need of her care. Something inside her shifted. She swallowed again, nodded firmly.
“Right, here we go,” she said.
She put her right hand on his hip and held out her left. He took this with his left hand, reaching over his own body and pulling.
His out-breath betrayed the effort and the unavoidable wrench to his right ankle, but he was now on his side. He still held on to Val’s hand and his head rested on his right arm. He was breathing heavily, unable for the moment to do anything but wait for the pain to settle. Val waited too, allowing her hand to be claimed by his, and her other hand to remain resting on his hip, now pointing to the sky. He started to breathe a bit more evenly. He released her left hand.
“Shall I put the bowl under the towel?”
“Thank you.”
She slid it under the towel in an approximate direction, and then held the edge of the towel as Graham slid his left-hand underneath for the fine adjustment. She rested the towel down and could hear the urine as it filled the bowl. She was blinking rapidly. Swallowing again. But she could see the relief in Graham. The simple release of a bodily function that somehow eased distress.
He was human.
What a stupid thing to think, but it was also profound to her. He was a vulnerable human who was as at the bidding of his body as she was to hers. Somehow, she had never considered the vulnerability of the male body before, just the reality of how the male body could inflict pain and humiliation and revenge on anyone who thwarted their desires.
The sound of urine stopped.
“Thank you,” Graham said.
It was such a profound gratitude. So different from her expectations. She became aware of how she may be Othering men, sensitive men, as much as she felt Othered by men.
“I’ll move the bowl and then help you get comfortable again.”
She could feel the warmth of the urine as she carefully pulled the bowl out from under the towel that protected both their dignities. She was unsure what to do with it.
“It’ll make the rhubarb thrive!” Graham said.
Something in Graham felt a lighter comment was now possible. Val couldn’t quite smile, she still felt wobbly and on the edge of tears. The shift in her was currently only visceral, she hadn’t yet integrated it.
“I’ll go to add it to the compost bin, it’ll help more than the rhubarb that way.” And that is what she did.
She returned and supported Graham as he rolled back. She left him with the towel over him to return himself to dignity. She went inside the house and ran some hot water into another bowl, found some soap and a towel, and then a flannel. She returned and gently washed Graham's hands for him, dried them.
She thought, this is like Theraplay, this is nurture.
She turned to look at Graham. He was watching her. This was the woman he’d seen with the cat, who arrested him. He took her hand.
“Thank you,” he said again. All she did was nod.
Applications for practitioners: For Heaven's sake! What has that got to do with play in our practice?
At first read, I found myself wondering what this piece of fiction has to do with play — it is so serious! I can’t see fun, nor frivolity, nor much pleasure in Val and Graham being together. But try as I might to find some other part of my writing to be my mirror exploring play, this is the fiction I kept coming back to. As I said in the introduction, I became aware that I’ve not spent time developing what I understand by play at theoretical depth, so this part of the post is my attempt, as a practitioner, to make sense of what play in our practice could be.
My next step was, therefore, to turn to the texts that are key to my understanding of play in human development: Jenkinson (2001) and Huizinga (1998). Jenkinson does focus on the role of play in childhood, but not on how play helps children achieve this or that milestone. She doesn’t focus on the deterministic or functional aspects of play in creating adults from the raw material of childhood. She focuses more on the creative, explorative aspect of play. In this way, childhood does not become a passing phase that humans have to get through to reach the goal of adulthood. Childhood itself is embraced as being of equal value to adulthood in lifespan development. She doesn’t directly name childism (Ockwell-Smith, 2023), perhaps because that is a new term for Othering of children, the diminishing or devaluing of children's’ experiences. Huizinga’s focus is firmly on play in culture, specifically white western culture, and how arts and play are connected. He links play with ritual and spirituality in quite a direct way.
And, of course, when we are thinking of play we can’t ignore Winnicott and his famous statement that playing is itself a therapy (Winnicott, 1997). Lenormand (2018) is helpful in teasing apart Winnicottian and Kleinian approaches to play. For Klein, play is seen as a defence, a way to manage internal tension, and the use of play in therapy is a technique to make these tensions visible so they can be interpreted. For Winnicott, however, play is a relationship, a meeting at the point where two people can play together and where there is potential for something different to happen because a potential space is created. I’ll refer back to these two positions on play over the course of my writing on applications for practitioners, researchers, and therapist educators.
If we, therefore, approach play as a philosophical engagement with the world, we are moving towards the seriousness of the endeavour that is play!
Huizinga comes up with various necessary components of play — the first is that no one can be forced to play! Compulsion means the activity is no longer play. Although choosing to play is an essential component of playing, play needs to happen with rules. It also needs to remain in the ‘as if’ realm — reality is suspended for the duration of the playing.
As such, play seems to exist outside of time and space: temporality, progression, and outcomes are all suspended to create a space where the players can do things without it really being important, while at the same time, what happens being of utmost importance in the formation or sustaining of a sense of self. It doesn’t have to be nice or fun, but it does have to be ‘as if’ something from ‘real life’ is within the play. Play sits somewhere in a paradoxical space that is as pragmatic as it is profound. It seeks to find novel solutions to conundrums, not necessarily following the norms of expectations of everyday behaviour. While examining the realm of the ‘as-if’, play is also concrete and involves the body, or bodies, being engaged in the play.
This feels like a dense set of concepts as I try to unravel what the fiction is showing me about play within my clinical practice of Theraplay and my clinical practice more broadly. Lev Vygotsky talks about children’s play being ‘real’ and play with adults as ‘seriously real’ (Connery et al., 2018).
Huizinga (1998, 1) writes that: “In play there is something “at play” which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action. All play means something. If we call the active principle that makes up the essence of play, “instinct”, we explain nothing; if we call it “mind” or “will” we say too much. However, we may regard it, the very fact that play has a meaning implies a non-materialistic quality in the nature of the thing itself.” He also says that “Play lies outside the antithesis of wisdom and folly, and equally outside those of truth and falsehood, good and evil. Although it is a non-material activity, it has no moral function. The valuations of vice and virtue do not apply here” (Huizinga, 1998, 6).
And while I am risking quoting Huizinga yet further, I think it is helpful to do so as we so rarely in our practice (in my experience) take the time to challenge the white western embedded conundrum where play is diminished in value as being for ‘children’ (who are Othered as lesser than adults) and not as important as the serious stuff of work. If we take Winnicott’s view that the play is the therapy, then play is never ‘just’ play, it is of a whole new order of understanding ourselves in our world and in relationship to others. Play elevates our endeavours to be fully human to the level of the numinous, or at least the ineffable, as Polanyi might term it.
As Huizinga (1998, 19) would say: “The Platonic identification of play and holiness does not defile the latter by calling it play, rather it exalts the concept of play to the highest regions of the spirit…In play we may move below the level of the serious, as the child does; but we can also move above it—in the realm of the beautiful and the sacred. From this point of view we can now define the relationship between ritual and play more closely. We are no longer astonished at the substantial similarity of the two forms.”
If I am relating all of this really serious thinking about play to what the fiction tells us about how to situate play in our practice, I am left wondering about the crisis Val and Graham find themselves in. Can a crisis be a place of play?
That really is a fundamental question we need to ask ourselves as therapists using play for families who come to us at points of crisis. Wright (2022) doesn’t mention play, but what she talks about has some components of play as practitioners manage the challenges of care in over-pressured systems. Instead of being focussed on finding solutions, she focusses on space and being in connection with others, despite the pressures that are inevitable in health care situations that are underfunded and understaffed.
This brings me back again to a position I take quite a lot in these posts: Theraplay, or therapy in general, is not something we do, it is a vocation, a calling — maybe we can call it a mission. Using play in therapy, at its most powerful, is where we lose ourselves to the play and can let ourselves inhabit the liminal spaces, the temporal interstices, and ageless embodiment of being full-of-play/playful. With this, the potential space, as Winnicott would call it, is activated. Our part in that is to have the courage to give ourselves to that space in the service of the other. Crisis and pain then has a route towards transformation and healing.
Why do I think adopting this stance is a contribution to world peace? The fiction takes me to a place where Val has to let go of the rage her fear engenders and turn to the support of her commitment to care, to be able to find a new relationship with a man, to Graham not as a representative male but as the human individual he is. If we relate to human beings, if we care about them, how can their frail human bodies be violated? I still can’t, and at some level don’t want to, get Ukraine and Gaza out of my head, although I feel overwhelmed by both as representative stories of the suffering in the world. What part of my humanity do I abandon if I were to put those images out of my mind, no matter how painful or distressing, no matter how helpless I feel in the face of humans killing humans in the most appalling way?
How can I tear apart another human being? I can’t if I truly know and play with them in that liminal space, where spirituality can be released outside formal religiosity, but remain in the realm of the structure of ritual. This for me is why Theraplay, in addressing one of the most fundamental aspects of human frailty, how the infant is received and cared for by those around them, is potentially such a powerful foundation for individual, cultural, and spiritual healing. By putting play as one of the essential components of the model, by cherishing play and by seeing the deep meaning that is held by a commitment to play-relationships, I think the components of living well together are cultivated. That’s a big claim for small acts of care. What do you think — does such a claim hold water for you and your practice?
Applications for researchers: What on Earth! Why should research be full-of-play/playful?
It’s an upside down world. In the application for practitioners, I write about how play can be seen as spiritual and how important that is in our practice. Here, as I think about play, the fiction, and being a practitioner-researcher, I am going to focus on being earthy. No ivory towers for our research here…I am going to unpick how the fiction has made me think about why research is important in our therapeutic practice, holding play in mind as a core concept of practice.
Research is a process of trying to deliberately work out what is going on and then, on the back of that insight, illuminating practice. By unearthing both the processes used to work out what we do in our practice, and the ‘findings’ — what we actually do in our practice — and then sharing that in an accessible way, we can make a difference to colleagues and to the people we are there to serve.
Research is play for me. It is a safe place to explore, wonder, try things out — and share that. Within the play of research I can ask ‘is it like that for you too?’, so you can check out whether or not to play with me in these explorative, researchy endeavours, and then whether or not it is relevant to your clinical practice.
You may be picking up from this process of me writing and you reading that we are philosophising as we go. Knowledge is emerging from my process of grappling with the fiction — the fiction that comes out of me and is born into a world that seems at war with its very self. My clinical practice is caring for those who are at war with themselves. A high level of inner distress comes from such dissonance between the person they feel themselves to be and the person someone or something external expects them to be. Val, as part of her human development, her re-living and re-learning, is addressing a dissonance of knowing she is a person who cares. Her lived experience throws in her face her actions that tell her that she is falling short of that self-identity when faced with maleness and race. The term that has come back to me again and again as I’ve digested and wondered about this month’s fiction is ‘ontological security’.
For R D Laing, ontological security is a sense of feeling at home, a continuous sense of self that comes from loving and being loved (Thompson, 2015). You could connect that with the thinking of Bowlby and Winnicott and term it a good enough experience of secure enough attachment! Where there is ontological insecurity, there is mental ill health or what we might call a mental health crisis.
Outside the world of psychotherapy the term ontological security seems to be very well-used in the realm of global peace making with identity, especially identity that is connected with land, culture, and custom/ritual, being central to understanding what stimulates both the striving for peace and the need to Other leading to violence. In pursuing this thread of thought, one of the books I found helpful was Ejdus’ (2020).
It seems to me that if we take our ontology seriously as practitioner-researchers committed to care, then inevitably our research foci, practices, and outcomes are going to be political (maybe even Political) because in a world that seems to value certainty, clarity, generalisability, and transferability, the notion of individual at-homeness and personal identity growing in connection to group identity via markers of belonging that are illogical and time-consuming seem to run counter to what I feel is being expected of humankind in the white western realm.
I am wondering how much of this is currently accentuated because Covid-19 disrupted so many of the life practices that we thought were immutable: school attendance, the commute to work, attending appointments in person. Our very fabric of life-practice was disrupted as if parts of a jigsaw were thrown into the air, and we are still seeing whether they land in the same place and make the same picture, or whether they land differently, and we end up living a different story. And if we end up living a different story? What then? How do we find our new normal?
I see children being expected to be able to function in schools despite the brokenness of home life due to poverty and insecurity, I see adults being expected to find meaning to their lives when work or not-work reduces them to units of production serving the profit-beast of business, I see people for whom being recognised feels like an aspiration, until it happens and then the objectification of recognition is felt in all its toxic consequences via social media. And these are the things that are made visible in our news and media, while the quiet care and love of people for people continues invisibly and unremarked. Quietly, like Val staying with Graham in the back garden of her house because that is what she wholeheartedly wants to do because it is who she wants to be. Difficult acts of love, changing outcomes, and, more importantly, changing identities.
If we are researching with otology congruent to our therapeutic endeavour and our identities as therapists, then messy, illogical, time-consuming interests in documenting how people can be who they want to be, on their own or in a group, has to be the focus of our research process and what we promote as our research findings. As such, expectations of research leading to ‘an answer’ that can be transferred to all situations is challenged. Such stories are, in my experience, highly valued by fellow practitioners.
It is in transforming policy that I see most resistance to shifting to a more relational, culturally sensitive response to need. I see this as part of the headline expectation that equality is about everyone receiving the same thing, not about equality being that people (singular or plural) experience the same process of understanding their individual/group-based needs to enable them to flourish, to feel personally ontologically secure.
Our research needs to focus on processes not outcomes, to be ontologically congruent. This is what is transferable from each place of human functioning to another — when Val realises that if this were a male child before her, she would respond differently, she actively draws on her identity as a person who cares to find the way to respond to the needs of Graham suffering in front of her, despite the fact that he somehow represents an embodiment of the misogyny and Othering she has experienced in her life as a woman. She can set aside the experience of men having power-over women in an un-nuanced and undifferentiated sense by calling on her individual commitment to care. Her ontological security and congruence means that she will be the same in all situations. Her identity means her process is transferable and generalisable, not her technique, not necessarily the outcome.
Why is this about play? Because it is so important. It is too important for it to be held anywhere else apart from in the sacred realm of play, outside of time, space, ideology, and hierarchy.
When our ontological security is challenged, it feels like a crisis. Our human response to crisis is to fight or flee or play dead, but none of those actually resolves the crisis, just postpones dealing with it. That seems a Kleinian response to play (see the practitioner section) rather than a Winnicottian response, a resistance to tension, not a transformation of tension.
In my opinion, we can only really explore the full implications of ontological security in a play space, and in doing so be researchers for new understandings of age-old conflicts, because such a space is outside of liminality, temporality, ideology. It is, however, embodied and at the that most basic place of being together – connection that is forged out of meeting the bodily need of the other via a commitment to using one's power in the service of the less powerful other. In this way we become other-together and avoid Othering. This is the space of mothering.
This puts what we are researching firmly in the realm of tacit maternal knowledge as I expressed it in my doctoral studies — we work on the foundation of not knowing/letting go, dependence/interdependence, and faithfulness. They are our research and practice foundations that establish both ontology and epistemological imperatives in what, why, and how we research with those who are not us in order that we can find our places of commonality. What I am proposing is that the position of practitioner-researcher, using tacit maternal knowing, is to find the points of overlap, the places where we share understanding, not a place that elaborates our differences and tries to rank one or other as ‘right and wrong’.
Researching with a Huizinga-type understanding of the serious and embodied nature of play gives a foundation to explore differences from a position of ontological security to grow points of shared identity. If we can play together in those places of overlap, we are not intellectually managing crises but are earthily falling in love. In playing together outside our homes, and potentially inviting the other back to our home, or visiting theirs (see On being culturally sensitive – you couldn’t make it up!), we are all transformed. We then take that transformation into a network of interconnection that can resist the destructiveness of Othering. Research in the space of play can’t help but be practical and be a cog in the system that works towards peace.
Applications for educators: Growing players in ontological security
In my writing this month, I’ve been making a case that therapy and research that is play-based can make a radical and political difference by addressing violence in all its forms through the cultivation of non-hierarchical relationships based on equality and commitment to care. The central argument is one I feel I am repeating in different ways in different posts: it’s not what we do as therapists that makes a difference to those we are caring for, but who we are. How that identity as a caring professional committed to using our power in the service of the other is expressed in a contingent manner for the unique set of relationships we are working within. We don’t do therapy, we are therapy.
In this post so far this month, I have tried to make the argument that having an understanding of play as something that is outside of everyday time, space, and meaning, that is both not serious and vitally serious, doesn’t mean anything and at the same time is resonant with deep meaning, situates both therapist and practitioner researcher in a position that, to preserve ontological security, requires interdependent and personal engagement with the person before us. That’s a long sentence to say what Carl Rogers says — we prize the people we work with, as colleagues, as co-researchers or participants, and as people who come seeking our help as therapists. This understanding of play as a core concept of our practice as therapists and researchers requires us to accommodate a position that is radical and political as it challenges what, in previous posts, I’ve come to term the manstream.
Taking these points as a starting place, this creates lots of questions for me about how we then educate people to become therapists, how we cultivate that identity. We are not teaching people about play, we are enabling them to become players. We are journeying with them so they become full-of-play and feel at home in that space of not knowing. It feels quite radical to suggest, as I have in the practitioner post, that this borders on a spiritual position as it engages the numinous, liminal, and/or ineffable.
Viewing our education of therapists as sitting in the realm of apprenticeship or situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) gives us a helpful framework, a potential set of rules for the game if we want to look at it through the lens of Huizinga’s understanding of play. Trainees freely enter the play space of learning, but I strongly feel it is our responsibility and duty as educators to develop and articulate a theoretical framework for how we are cultivating their capacity to be in the play space with people who are in crisis and their skill in using play to develop a relationship with that crisis. We can at least tell trainees why we are taking them on a journey of not knowing. We can share our rationale as to why their ontological security will be challenged, and their identities will be changed. When we have a well-developed pedagogy of therapist education with a Huizinga type understanding of play, then we can walk beside trainees and guide them in their individual developmental process.
I am aware that that could sound quite cultish. I would suggest, therefore, that this means that trainees have to feel the people guiding them through their education process are trustworthy, but not that they are always right. It also suggests to me that we need small learning groups for such trust to develop and for trainees to be able to develop a personal relationship with those who are educating them.
If we are committed to play, and to using our power in the service of the less powerful other, then as part of the legitimate peripheral participation of therapist education, that progression from the outer edges of learning the trade to the more central position of ‘being a therapist’ must involve the capacity to challenge the master. Within the safety of the play space a trainee needs to be able to mess with the rules, apply the components of the model in weird and unexpected ways, to trample on a few sacred texts. This is part of therapy and therapists evolving. This is supporting the development of ontological security so that high quality healing practice is transferred from child to child, family to family, human to human.
After such play, as the players re-enter the realm of the everyday, the elements of the play that are transformative come with them, not as concrete ‘things to do’, but because their being has changed and this changes practice. This is the experience of high quality supervision. When a supervisee brings something that they don’t understand and both supervisor and supervisee enter a realm of not-knowing together and play with the material without memory or desire (as Bion might say), all are transformed by the process. Have all of you had that experience? Where you are really stuck with someone you are working with, and you have a supervision that makes a difference, but you don’t know what that was, and your supervisor hadn’t told you anything to ‘do’? You go off to the next session all bushy-tailed and excited, ready to impart your new-found insights, only to find it was as if the person you’d been working with had sat in on the supervision themselves and had moved on before you could ‘do’ something! Such is the ‘magic’, the numinous, ineffable, or liminal nature of play in therapy.
The skills of the educator are very similar to those of the therapist. The difference is that it is an apprenticeship, and not all apprentices make it from the journeyman stage to the master stage of practice. The therapist educator has to take on that responsibility of (ideally) enabling the trainee to know their limits and, if they can’t take on that responsibility, to lay the boundary down firmly. At that point, play leaves the as-if realm and action does become concrete.
As educators, we, therefore, need to be clear on, and secure in, our identities, our values, and our positions so that we are ready to accept, listen to, and engage with our trainees as they probe and question those identities. This is how they will learn the most powerful parts of being therapists. They are the future of humanising relationships in therapy. We want them to build on the work we have already laid down, but we want the profession to grow and change with the needs of the world as it is now — not losing connection to the tacit maternal wisdom we have brought to the work nor the connection to earth and heaven (or however you might wish to word a holistic view of individual and groups based interdependent living and growing). Our students must know what the profession has been in order to let it evolve.
To do that, we need to create play spaces where our most important beliefs can be rendered unimportant so they can be manipulated and changed and reformed, like working a piece of clay to see just how far the rules can be taken without breaking, or Val finding she is letting go of her long held view of man-kind. This is not a comfortable space for either educator or educated! But it can be fun, exhilarating and ultimately is about how the profession progresses without losing its sense of direction and its connection to being a caring profession.
Maybe as educators (and therapists and researchers) our motto could become this quote from Glory Edim’s Well-Read Black Girl:
“Be thoughtful, then go out and do the work of changing the form, finding your own voice, and saying what you need to say. Be fearless. And care.”
Bibliography
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