Therapist stance in role playing

[MatrixGamer]

Since one of the goals of this forum is to move towards a theory of role playing it is necessary to look back at role playing's roots - in psychotherapy.

The GNS model presented here all looks at hobby games. In other words games played for fun. The players in these games by their nature are volunteers. The goal is to have fun (however that is defined). Not so therapy games.

My old Family Therapy professor nearly twenty yeard ago told "People come into therapy to NOT get better." Freudian insight may sound all nice and dandy but few people really want it. They gain as few insights as they can so they can get off the couch fast. (Actually I've only had one job where I had a couch - darned the luck.)

Since the participants are involuntary or at best unmotivated, the goal of the game is not fun. Instead it is suppose to be helpful/thearputic to the player. Usually this means gaining insight, practicing a skill, or using tha game a communication tool.

My observation has been that clients resist statements that are too direct. These come across as cliched and controlling. Games are one way to be indirect since they give players emotional distance from the process (very much not simulationist). Due to time constrains (and client's patience limits) thearpy simulation games can not tell whole stories. They are fragments that the client has to pull together themselves (that being one of the skills therapy teaches.)

There are many examples of role playing in therapy. The Gestalt techniqu of talking to the empty chair, or switching roles with another person. Transactional Analysis use of moves (Games People play). Psycho drama - for the hard core (this is a very powerful technique that I don't use - it doesn't open cans of worms, it rips them open and crams them down your throat.) Axline discusses "Play therapy" which really just uses play as a language to talk to children with. This often involves playing with dolls in houses and mild story telling and so is role playing. I've used Matrix Games in therapy for 15 years. And the list goes on.

I think that for any model to be complete it should include an understanding of the involuntary player. The challenges of hooking such players to engage are palpable.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[komradebob]

Right,
So, anybody want to talk about sandplay/worldplay and its relationship to narrativism? Kind of interesting to me, since I'm working on some floor games rules...

[MatrixGamer]

LET'S GET BOB DRUNK

This is a Matrix Game I use to teach court ordered alcoholics about family dysfunctions. Each player needs one d6, paper and pencil. On the paper they draw a ligert scale (a line that has Hate on one in and Love on the other.)

Players pick a role of someone around BOB. I try to assign player roles similar to the one they hold in their own families. Since they are not playing themselves they are freed from the embarrasement. The game gives them social permission to act out. The arguments they make are projects of thought in their own minds. This sneaky method shows way more than people think it does.

The game master/therapist introduces Bob. Bob is an average guy, just like the people in the game. He is going to face a series of problems. The players get to act as his collective brain to decide what he does. Then they switch back into their role play characters and argue how they cope with Bob's actions. They are told that if they fail to cope they feel "sad".

Imagine you were a member of Bob's family. Now imagine you are Bob. You're boss just jusmped your case about coming in late again. How do you deal with this?

The players then make a Matrix Game argument about what they want Bob to do. Many will try to make him go drink. A few will try to make him do something smart. As teh arguments are made I rule on their strength. This is a feedback moment since it shows the players what I (an expert) think will happen. They then do a big dice rolling contest. They roll for their own arguments and keep on rolling till only one argument remains. This "thought" is what Bob does.

Next the players switch back to their roles in the family. I ask them to make an argument about how they cope.  Without any instruction at all they make perfect descriptions of dysfunctional roles (hero, scape goat, lost child, mascot). They then mark how happy they are on the ligert scale.

At the end of the game I plot out the ligert scales onto a graph and they see "objectively" how Bob affected the world around him.

At no time are the clients told what to think or what conclusions to draw but it has been my experience that they are able to tell me about dysfuntional familes weeks afterward and can remember playing the game years later.

Therapy games create emotional space for people to work their problems out in.

Chris Engle (MSSW ACSW LCSW)
Hamster Press

[Paul Czege]

Hey Chris,

Interesting. So, the game generates information, and it's up to the player/patient to figure out how to put that information to use in his own life situation? The game exposes the forces acting upon Bob, and the consequences to his family, but it leaves the the player/patient to figure out (in real life, outside the game) effective techniques of thinking about and responding to those forces? Are you aware of any roleplaying games that go beyond creating emotional space for the person to work out their problems, and actually teach ways to think and respond?

Paul

[MatrixGamer]

Are you aware of any roleplaying games that go beyond creating emotional space for the person to work out their problems, and actually teach ways to think and respond?

Paul

Psycho Drama, when it is well run, is suppose to go beyond just dealing with the past, but like I said I don't use it.

Letting the client come to their own conclusions serves two functions. First it makes them practice integration of information skills. Second it is easier on us poor dumb therapists (who don't have the answers anyway). My later supervisor (Steve Greenstein) told me "Embrase your impotence, sometimes it's the only tool you've got."

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[Emily Care]

Psycho Drama, when it is well run, is suppose to go beyond just dealing with the past, but like I said I don't use it.

How close do you get? What's the line that you draw? How would you draw the line in a recreational rpg setting?

[MatrixGamer]

Psycho Drama, when it is well run, is suppose to go beyond just dealing with the past, but like I said I don't use it.

How close do you get? What's the line that you draw? How would you draw the line in a recreational rpg setting?

I think the line I'd draw would be what brought the players together. Therapy groups are pretty specific. If you're in an AA meeting you're there for a reason. If your paying a counselor it is the same. Individulas might run a therapy group on their own but getting people to volunteer private information is a tough sell unless they know why they're doing it. This gets to the idea of informed consent and the Milgram experiment.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[Marco]

Having done some psychodrama, I think that there is a very clear niche for 'therapy' in RPG-play. I would be hesitant to couch it as a stance or put it into a GNS "mode" (psychodrama, like RPG's, has discrete rules and roles that you play--but I don't think GNS is especially adequate to describing it).

I have:
1. Taken conflicts from psychodrama based on how I related to them and explored them in RPG contexts.
2. Held conversations in RPG's that were (consciously, in the begining of the scene) based on psycho-dramatic activities and techniques (i.e. my character was constructed to be appropriate to the action/drama and the NPC was well formulated to be another character in the drama).

Of course things like doubling and role-reversal don't happen in traditional RPG's (although they could ... that'd be interesting).

I think there needs to be a great amount of trust for this to work properly. Far moreso than for other games.

-Marco

[MatrixGamer]

I'm interested in what the rules of psychodrama are. I use the gestalty moves and a mild hypnotic enducing voice but theoretically am very here and now. Too many years of Structual Family therapy training and a swift dose of behaviorism do that.

Psycho drama really does require lots of trust before it is used. Simple gestalt moves don't. Matrix Games require even less because they give players full permision to hide behind their character.

Therapy games can fit in the GNS model (I think) but it remains to be seen how.

Chris Engle

[Ron Edwards]

Hi folks,

All of this seems like a no-brainer to me. "Therapy" represents a real-world social context in which to play - so it would be a major feature of the Social Contract employed by a given group.

All the other stuff - components of Exploration, GNS, Techniques, etc - simply play out from there, probably in a wide variety of possible applications or approaches. I can certainly imagine any of the three Creative Agendas being utilized constructively or non-constructively in a therapeutic context.

The fact that therapy is so dramatically different from the more familiar Social Contract (or larger context) of "gamer with his pals" picture shouldn't be permitted to distract us, or to imply that we're somehow dealing with an automatically difficult version of the ideas.

Best,
Ron

[Gordon C. Landis]

Wow, Ron- here I thought this could be an incredibly complicated issue and you go and simply it almost out of existence.

I'd just add this about the "unwilling" aspect: given Ron's post, I'd say the unwillingness Chris Engle is initially pointing at is an unwillingness to engage with the therapy, as opposed to a reluctance to engage in the play per se.

But since a degree of reluctance to engage with the play itself can show up, well, for anyone and in any Creative Agenda, there might be something applicable to play in general in how unwillingnes to engage in therapy is handled.

Or not - specific Social Contract stuff isn't always useful at the Creative Agenda/Techniques/Ephemera levels.  But that's where I could see an "unwillingness" discussion going,

Gordon

[Grover]

For those of use without psychiatric experience, could you explain what Psycho-Drama is?

[MatrixGamer]

I lifted this off the net. The author is cited at the bottem so credit is given but I did not ask permission to post it here so I expect this will be erased in the not to distant futures. I gound this by googling pyschodrama therapy.

What psychodrama is – and what it is not
By Karen Carnabucci, MSS, LCSW, TEP
Psychodrama is a holistic method that uses action to explore a person's public and private worlds in a multi-dimensional way.

Unfortunately, psychodrama was stained with bad reputation in some circles in the 1960s when the method was used incorrectly and haphazardly by many people – some of them not even psychotherapists – with little or no training in its use.

Psychodrama is not drama therapy – which is a separate and distinct creative arts discipline. It does not refer to current events, movies, television or theater productions that are psychologically intense. Group leaders who use role play are not necessarily using psychodrama although psychodrama theory is the root of modern role play.

Psychodrama, which was originated in 1921 by Dr. J.L. Moreno, is the true forerunner of creative arts therapies as we know them today. It is also an effective way to build community, which is also a powerful healing force, and an important avenue to develop creativity and spontaneity in daily life.

However, psychodrama is more than a non-traditional kind of therapy, and the exercises are not mere techniques. Psychodrama — literally "psyche in action" — is a complex method with a distinct philosophy and theory that is highly adaptable to health, education, theater, business and worship settings.

In psychodrama, participants explore concerns in a safe environment with action rather than simply talking about them. This involves not only exploring the history but also the psychological dimensions that are not normally addressed in conventional dramatic process: unspoken thoughts, encounters with those not present, portrayals of fantasies of what others might be thinking and feeling; night dreams and envisioning possibilities.

Group members — if available — play roles in the enactment with the guidance of the director. The goals of psychodrama are to help people discover their inner truth, express emotions freely, establish authentic interactions with others and experiment with new behaviors.

Parts of this method have been adapted by Fritz Perls in his Gestalt therapy including the "empty chair" technique originated by Moreno; with family therapist Virginia Satir incorporating the action sociogram, calling it sculpting; and Eric Berne identifying the ego states of parent, adult, child in development of Transactional Analysis. In the 1960s and later, many psychotherapists began using a combination of these ideas and others, sometimes using the name "experiential therapy."

Beyond psychotherapy, Jonathan Fox used psychodramatic philosophy to develop Playback Theatre, which combines improvised theater and community building and is now recognized as a method of its own (Read "Improvising Real Life" by Jo Salas to learn how Playback originated). Peter Pitzele has employed psychodramatic ideas in creating Bibliodrama to enliven stories of scripture; he details the method in his books, "Our Fathers' Wells" and "Scripture Windows."

Others have adapted psychodramatic techniques as well as Moreno's sociodrama, a related method, to explore societal issues, for use in business and organizational settings.

Moreno was at odds with the ideas of Freud, who had developed the only organized treatment of mental problems in modern times. He disagreed with Freud's emphasis on pathology and verbal exploration of issues while the analyst remained a "blank slate" to hold the patient's projections and transference.

Moreno saw that humans occupy and move in space, not just talk, and take roles in relationships with others rather than in isolation. He employed the stage as a space for action to take place and collected a group from which issues could emerge. He identified the protagonist as a person who enacts his or her drama with the help of a leader who interacts in a respectful manner rather than staying silent.

Karen Carnabucci, MSS, LCSW, TEP, practices and teaches psychodrama and the use of the creative arts in psychotherapy, education and personal growth. She offers personal and professional development workshops in Racine, Wis., and has written "Whole Person Marketing" for helping and healing professionals who are looking for creative ways to market their practices. She also offers a free e-mail newsletter, Whole Person Practice. For more information, write karen@companionsinhealing.com or see www.companionsinhealing.com.

[Emily Care]

I think that for any model to be complete it should include an understanding of the involuntary player. The challenges of hooking such players to engage are palpable.

Chris, Could you say more about what you meant by this?

edited 1 time to add:

Moreno saw that humans occupy and move in space, not just talk, and take roles in relationships with others rather than in isolation. He employed the stage as a space for action to take place and collected a group from which issues could emerge. He identified the protagonist as a person who enacts his or her drama with the help of a leader who interacts in a respectful manner rather than staying silent.

This mirrors the progression from GM as author to all players as co-authors we've seen in role playing game design.  Also many issues identified in theory & play with respect to Narrativism.

[Sean]

Games used in therapy, with the purpose of aiding the therapy, are Sim in Big Model terms.

While the same game used in other contexts may be more facilitating of Gamism or Narrativism, and while exploring the competitive drive or thematic concerns of a patient might even be the point of playing the game in the therapeutic context, I take it that the ultimate purpose of any RPG used in therapy is going to be to gain a better understandig of the problems or types of problems a patient is confronting in the real world. This is a fundamentally Exploratory aim: the imaginary material is being used to 'confirm' and/or deepen our understanding of various real-world issues relating to the person/people in therapy and those they are attached to. This is a pretty clear case of Big Model Sim in my book.

At least this was the conclusion I came to as a result of my 'social mode' threads about a year ago.

Best,

Sean