From: LANDERS123-AT-aol.com
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 19:11:38 EST
Subject: Re:  Re:Re: violence


Fili Houtman,
I think one of the things about play is how it is capable of allowing 
paradoxes without flattening them out and forcing them to be either A or B.  
The therapist as a "playobject" is not entirely a rag doll to whom anything 
may be done, nor is the therapist entirely an agent of action.  Instead, the 
therapist as playobject is like a doll that has a life of its own.  The 
playobject is sometimes an object and sometimes an agent of action.  It's not 
the content of what clients are playing with that makes a session valuable to 
them, but to what extent they are in the playspace, to what extent they 
really are playing.  We wouldn't say of Kafka that he was hopelessly 
bureaucratic, but we could say he played with bureaucratic images in a way 
that set them in motion.  I think it's paradoxical that we humans are bodies, 
but also imagination.  We're matter and we're energy.  To say we are only one 
would be Sartrean bad faith.  Play seems not only to tolerate paradox, but to 
be fed by it.
Fred

In a message dated 12/6/01 9:18:06 PM, selonit-AT-moon.co.jp writes:

<< 

(b) an act of violence is an 

attempt to consolidate 

one's own body as a *subject* 

and another body as an 

*other


'embodied encounter 

in a playspace' Developmental 

Transformations method of drama therapy 

involves an understanding that the 

therapist is a 'playobject' 

for the client to play with, and both the 

therapist and the client are 'broken toys,' 

necessarily breaking into each 

other in their intimate encounter.


dear Fred,


from your description, it seems, violence, and intimacy, are so

similar,

that i wonder about the use to differenciate anything at all?

do you have a third, fourths, 'resolution', to

which your endevedours, come to terms, with?

what's the use of all this, i mean?

are you trying to say me, or whomever,

that, intimacy is asmuch a 'cul'de'sac', an impasse, as violence, as 
following from your description, is?


best regards,


Fili Houtman/*- >>