‘Play and Power’, Edited by Karen Vibeke Mortensen and Liselotte Grunbaum.
What’s it about:
The power of play, explored through psychoanalytic therapy, as a tool to explore and resolve trauma. The book sums up some papers at a 2007 conference.
What Lynn learned:
If a child experiences a trauma, their neural pathways are wired to see and respond to threats others do not witness or notice. Our automatic nervous systems communicate to each other and a child looks to this to learn that they are safe.
Regulated and calming states communicate between therapist and client/patient which a therapist uses to ‘hold’ and share with someone exploring their trauma etc.
Einstein gave adult thinking the term ‘gedankenexperimente’ which means to make new ideas by playing with familiar constructs.
Reminders about the devaluation of ‘women’s work’ in childcare – working with children remains low status due to this.
Fave quotes:
‘Play has the power to transform. It can be liberating, aggressive, sad, satisfying, illuminating, angry, anarchic, funny and beautiful'. (p. 1)
‘There was a quiet determination about Gail as she did this important and painful work’. (p. 9)
‘We, as a community, feel the loss of a nurturing state mother’. (p. 130)
‘The relentless drive is to prefer treatment methods that are perceived as cheap, cost-effective and can be measured and evidenced. We are on all these counts outsiders as analytic therapists’ we need time, we want space and we cannot predict outcomes’. (p. 136)
Why relevant right now:
The wellbeing of children is always in vogue. Also I work part-time with children as a playworker.
Interest factor: 2/5
Coffee table cred: 2/5
Ignorance of external world while reading: 2.5/5
Book cover design: 2/5
Help the existential crisis: 2.5/5
