[Xmca-l] Re: Do adults play?

[Lois Holzman]

Here's the attachment again...seems to have been deleted.

Don't forget to check out the latest at http://loisholzman.org and http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/conceptual-revolution

Lois Holzman, Ph.D.
Director, East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy
104-106 South Oxford St.
Brooklyn NY 11217
Chair, Global Outreach for All Stars Project UX 
tel. 212.941.8906 ext. 324
fax 718.797.3966
lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org
eastsideinstitute.org
performingtheworld.org
loisholzman.org
allstars.org
http://esicommunitynews.wordpress.com/







On Oct 24, 2013, at 11:20 AM, Lois Holzman <lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org> wrote:

> A propos this thread, I invite folks to peruse performingtheworld.org and read the attached announcement and call for proposals for the 8th Performing the World conference to be held in NYC October 10-12, 2014—with the theme "How Shall We Become?" The gathering brings together hundreds who are doing/studying (and even theorizing) play and performance with people of all ages. If you want to see adults play, this is one place to do it.
> Lois
> 
> 
> 
> Don't forget to check out the latest at http://loisholzman.org and http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/conceptual-revolution
> 
> Lois Holzman, Ph.D.
> Director, East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy
> 104-106 South Oxford St.
> Brooklyn NY 11217
> Chair, Global Outreach for All Stars Project UX 
> tel. 212.941.8906 ext. 324
> fax 718.797.3966
> lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org
> eastsideinstitute.org
> performingtheworld.org
> loisholzman.org
> allstars.org
> http://esicommunitynews.wordpress.com/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Oct 22, 2013, at 5:49 PM, CAITLIN WUBBENA <cwubbena@gse.upenn.edu> wrote:
> 
>> I agree that play allows us to construct realities (through play, we're
>> able to imagine ourselves in new situations and are then able to construct
>> realities based on that "practice"). I think Vygotsky does a good job of
>> setting that up. Kendall Walton also states that those who play develop
>> better people skills (empathy, etc). I'm looking forward to reading the
>> Luria article.
>> 
>> I'm curious, from that point, how play could be conceived as enabling
>> people to do better work. Maybe there's a way to make a "play as developing
>> human capital" argument. The set up is definitely there and I think we've
>> begun to touch upon that question. But I'm curious if there is more
>> explicit evidence that proves this suspicion I have that people who play
>> more in childhood are more comfortable "playing" with intellectual ideas
>> later in life and, thus, produce better academic products.
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:00 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Greg,
>>> Let's follow your lead or guidance [or invitation]whaen you pose the
>>> question:
>>> Seems like Vygotsky and mead would suggest that play changes over
>>> developmental time. But it seems like vygotskys narrative of the
>>> development of play has the main character, play,going down in a blaze of
>>> glory - sacrificing itself for the sake of the Sacred Symbolic Development.
>>> This question poses *play* as the main *character* in earlier *stages* [?]
>>> of development who then in a blaze of glory leaves the stage for the sake
>>> of *Sacred Symbolic to take over center stage.
>>> 
>>> I would like to bring in Luria's article "The Problem" which Huw recently
>>> attached to explore this entering and leaving the stage [situation,
>>> context]
>>> 
>>> The hypothesis is that the dominance of "graphical-functional" forms of
>>> *knowledge* transform when economic forces of production change [and school
>>> becomes an arena of development]
>>> In Luria's words, "We needed to examine how REASONING processes took place,
>>> whether they were part of the subjects' DIRECT practical EXPERIENCE and
>>> what changes they underwent when reasoning WENT BEYOND graphic functional
>>> practice and into the REALM of theoretical or FORMALIZED [systematized,
>>> sedimented] thought."
>>> 
>>> The next paragraph captures Greg's graphic-functional character exiting
>>> stage left while "Sacred Symbolic" enters the *play*.
>>> 
>>> Luria continues, "The next stage was a study of IMAGINATIVE PROCESSES, THE
>>> REMOVAL OF ONESELF from IMMEDIATE perception [?? M-P would say ALL
>>> perception involves tradition] and operation on a PURELY symbolic, verbal,
>>> and logical level."
>>> 
>>> Now my further question [invitation to dialogue] is to wonder if there is
>>> another *act* on this stage of consciousness??
>>> 
>>> Perception AS *mediated* [not immediate] implies
>>> graphic-functional orienting as involving *traditions*.
>>> "Sacred Symbolic" requires *imaginal realms*.
>>> Is there a need for reflecting on the notions of *knowledge* and
>>> *understanding*.
>>> Knowledge appropriated FROM the external inwards while understanding moves
>>> FROM the internal directed outwards?
>>> I am using the inside/outside as metaphorical to IMAGINE  a graphical
>>> image. In reality experience moves in EXCESS [m-p] of all metaphors and
>>> models.
>>> The move to distinquish knowledge and understanding may return us to the
>>> realm of *play* [Huw's reminder that play is *as if* knowledge and
>>> understanding]
>>> Larry
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 6:49 AM, <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Yes, Doug, you speak to the heart of the CHAT Matter, is the play of
>>>> adults the same as the play of children? Or is there a development or two
>>>> along the way that involves a radical transformation in the possibilities
>>>> of play.
>>>> Seems like Vygotsky and mead would suggest that play changes over
>>>> developmental time. But it seems like vygotskys narrative of the
>>>> development of play has the main character, play,going down in a blaze of
>>>> glory -  sacrificing itself for the sake of the Sacred Symbolic
>>> Development.
>>>> 
>>>> But maybe I've got that wrong?
>>>> Greg
>>>> 
>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>> 
>>>> On Oct 22, 2013, at 2:31 AM, Douglas Williams <djwdoc@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Hi--
>>>>> 
>>>>> I play bridge....does that count? :)
>>>>> 
>>>>> What is play? In all species, a rehearsal; a symbolic enactment echoing
>>>> past and future activity. In humans, a possible world that represents
>>> what
>>>> is, what was, and what could be, in a symbolic form that enables it to be
>>>> shaped through thinking about rules, relationships, perceptions, and
>>>> feelings. Games are the sum of human experience, in a form more available
>>>> for introspection and renovation than the "real" world, precisely because
>>>> they are games. Bridge, for example, is a game of coalitions, of
>>> strategy,
>>>> of psychology, of deception, none of which is so far distant from the
>>> real
>>>> politics of offices and of the streets. On another level, the Duke of
>>>> Wellington famously (and for some, inexplicably) observed that the Battle
>>>> of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. What Wellington meant
>>> is
>>>> that the rehearsal of adversity and courage in sport enabled a beaten
>>> army
>>>> to persevere in following a strategy that enabled that beaten army to
>>> win a
>>>> long and
>>>>> terrible battle. Wellington meant that field sport games, in their
>>> often
>>>> wanton brutality and sudden reversals, prepared his field commanders to
>>>> treat the even more wanton brutality and reversal of war with practiced
>>>> familiarity and undaunted spirit, in the certain belief that as they had
>>>> come from behind to win at Eton, so they would at Waterloo.
>>>>> 
>>>>> We are a symbolic species. We live and breathe symbols. We dream of
>>>> ourselves and each other, and out of our dreams, the world is given form
>>>> and substance. Communities take shape, symbolic interactions begin, and
>>>> towers of iron and concrete expand outward and upward from doodles. And
>>>> sometimes, we just remind ourselves in games of who we are, and where we
>>>> come from. I lay an offering of that kind of play before you.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> http://uwch-4.humanities.washington.edu/~WG/~DCIII/120F%20Course%20Reader/CR5_Geertz_Deep%20Play.pdf
>>>>> 
>>>>> Adults not play? What is the business of minds such as ours, if not to
>>>> dream of the impossible, and make it real? Or, in the words of a Mr.
>>>> Church, who was confronted with similar doubts:
>>>>> 
>>>>> No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand
>>>> years from now, Virginia,  nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he
>>>> will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
>>>>> 
>>>>> ...and I would add, the minds of adults.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Doug
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Monday, October 21, 2013 5:38 PM, "White, Phillip" <
>>>> Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Greg  -  Valerie back-channeled me:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Something quantum physics going on here in a gnomic zen sort of way.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Valerie
>>>>> 
>>>>> and in considering what she wrote, i am now wondering if classical
>>>> mechanical physics isn't being used here in xmca to explain
>>>> perception/consciousness and the distinction between "play" and
>>> "reality"  -
>>>>> 
>>>>> whereas, for our 'mind', in the world of quantum physics, what is
>>>> perceived - regardless theater, performance, movies, television, whatever
>>>> the media - the mind does not discriminate between what we call 'real'
>>> and
>>>> 'imaginary' .  it's all the same.
>>>>> 
>>>>> so perhaps it's a false duality to think of play and real as polar
>>>> opposites, but rather multiple genres of performance would better work
>>> as a
>>>> theoretical framework.
>>>>> 
>>>>> phillip
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>