Contents
A role-playing game is a way of modeling a psychological situation that develops certain psychological and social skills.
Involuntary role play
Involuntary role-playing games, this is primarily:
- children’s games
“I was driving pan-pan, on the bridge myself …” The child plays the role of pan.
- household manipulation games (according to E. Berne)
According to Eric Berne, everyday games are a set of masks and patterns of behavior that are used semi-consciously or unconsciously, but with a specific purpose. It is “a series of additional transactions with a well-defined and predictable outcome. It is a repetitive set of sometimes monotonous transactions that look quite plausible on the surface, but have an hidden motivation; in short, it is a series of moves containing a trap, some kind of catch. For example:
Seller: This model is better, but it’s more expensive, you can’t afford it.
Customer: I’ll take it! [even if half a month is left before the salary and fifty dollars in your pocket]
A typical «Hi!» — «Hey!» with a continuation about the weather also applies to games, as it follows a well-defined scenario for each culture.
Random Role Playing
The relationship between the actor and the role, the author and the characters of the text or picture, the player and the character is much more complicated than it might seem at first glance. First, it is a two-way process that affects both sides. The mask is not imposed from the side, it organically grows out of the face. No one will ever be able to play this or that role qualitatively without having the traits of the character being played. A player preparing for the role of a character who does not resemble the character in any way will be forced to develop the qualities of this character, since otherwise there is no point in putting on a mask. A mechanically put on mask, no matter how high quality it is, will always be a dead mask, which is unacceptable for games. The essence of the game is not to pretend to be a character, but to become one. Sincerely.
Roles played by actors
The actor chooses a range of roles that he then plays throughout his career. The brilliant actor constantly expands this spectrum and tries completely different roles — this is not a lie and the ability to pretend, but the flexibility of consciousness that allows you to get used to the role. But when you grow a new role in yourself, you not only enliven the role with yourself, but also make it a part of you. About Nemirovich-Danchenko, it seems, they said that when he was preparing to play scoundrels, they were afraid to approach him all day, and not just during the performance.
Sublimation in creativity (writing, drawing, music)
The author creates a gallery of characters, getting used to each of them. The manner of drawing only crooked self-portraits is not even graphomania, these are essays in high school, but to say that this or that author did not draw himself in any work is completely meaningless. The author draws himself in each of the characters, because otherwise none of them can come to life. Even if a brilliant author describes a real person, it will not just be Boris Godunov, Chernyshevsky and Stalin, it will be Pushkin’s Godunov, Nabokov’s Chernyshevsky or Solzhenitsyn’s Stalin — the author invariably brings a part of himself into the character. On the other hand, as in the case of the actor, the author absorbs all the characters, grows them in himself before describing, becomes them. Yes, the author can hate this or that of his character. But — the more dangerous for the author, because it turns into self-hatred. To hell with this character.
Story games (role-playing, reconstruction)
This variety in a sense combines the two previous ones. The player can choose their own ready-made characters, like an actor; he can invent his own, as an author, he can take ready-made ones and change them for himself … As an actor, he gets used to responding to the name of a character, speaking in his voice, using his gestures. The player can take several characters (in the «theoretic» even at the same time), he can take other people’s characters and play them, respecting the character — due to which identification with the character weakens. Reconstruction as a whole gives the same psychological picture.
Role training
The difference between role-playing trainings and other types of games is that they are directional in nature, this is a purposeful work on individual personality traits. Role training is often used to
- identifying latent character traits (including hidden and explicit complexes)
- attracting the player’s attention to certain properties of his character
- development of skills of behavior in situations of this type.
Depending on personal characteristics and on the tasks of role-playing training, the player can choose several lines of behavior during the game.
- The vast majority of players adhere to the first and most natural one: this is a mask of oneself, slightly retouched and improved. It is used by most beginners at the beginning of therapy. In order to form a first impression of a player, the first mask is usually sufficient, although many details and undercurrents remain obscure.
- As the game situation progresses, the player relaxes and feels more and more confident. Continuing to play himself, he gradually develops this mask, in a conditional situation allowing himself more than he would allow in a real one. At this stage, latent and repressed character traits begin to appear. The player endows his favorite characters with those properties that he would like to develop in himself. Therefore, here it is convenient to observe the internal motivation of the player, which can become obvious in his characters. But there is a danger of stagnation: in a significant proportion of cases, the player will not go beyond this stage on his own. The roleplaying of superheroes who beat everyone will begin; the superheroines everyone wants, and combinations of the two types.
- At the next level, the player begins to experiment with roles. He tries characters, more and more unlike the first mask and more and more strange and unexpected. Approximately at the same stage, the understanding that the character is a model of behavior comes. Having worked out behavioral skills for different types of situations, the player begins to combine them in real life, feeling such an application of skills as “acting out” a particular character. In other words, having accumulated a significant number of lines of behavior, the player sees which of them is most convenient for a particular situation (“Yeah, I’d better play this character here …”), which allows him to act with the greatest efficiency. But this process also has a downside. First, the danger of getting stuck in the second stage is fraught with escapism and personality splitting: the player is afraid to transfer behavioral skills from a model situation to a real one. Secondly, it’s quite difficult to determine whether acting out the bastards is «blowing off steam», venting negative emotions — or developing skills. Repeated repetition can bring psychological and social skills to automatism, which threatens with grave consequences if the line of behavior is initially chosen by the player by mistake.