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Those who know how and love it, live easier and manage to achieve more. The game gives pleasure, helps to surpass ourselves and reveals our creative possibilities.
More and more new amusement parks are being built, more and more new computer games are being released, quizzes and other competitions are multiplying on television, someone is fond of historical reconstructions, and someone enthusiastically rides scooters and roller skates …
It seems that over the past two decades, games have decisively taken over the adult world. What is it – a regression to infantile behavior, a desire to please your “inner child” or the desire to get away from too rigid social regulations?
“The mood of play is one of detachment and delight, sacred or festive,” wrote the philosopher Johan Huizinga in The Playing Man. “It gives us a feeling of joyful uplift and allows us to release tension. The game is a powerful source of energy, it is inherently full of positive emotions.
Productive occupation
Those of us who bring elements of the game into our daily work are more successful than those who focus only on the performance of their direct duties. This, in particular, was proved by Dutch scientists, who persuaded the management of one insurance company to allow some employees to sometimes play computer games at work.
It turned out that employees, having played, began to work with greater efficiency and received more satisfaction from work than their colleagues who did not participate in the experiment **. Although the company that would agree to conduct a “game” experiment, psychologists had to look for a long time.
And no wonder – not everyone is convinced that the combination of play and work can increase productivity. Back in the XNUMXth century, any pastime that did not lead to profit was declared idleness. Even Chekhov in The Cherry Orchard contrasted the “loafer” and outgoing nature Ranevskaya and the hard worker, the man of the new Russia Lopakhin. Society agreed to tolerate only gambling – and that because there is a chance to make a profit in them: by chance, the player can get rich.
Important need
“People who have deeply internalized the social model of the industrial age feel it is their duty to look sad in order to be taken seriously,” says social psychologist Hubert Jaoui. “For them, being adults means not smiling, not playing, not crying, not feeling emotions.
In the end, these “realist-rationalists” are overwhelmed by people who are prone to passivity and fatalism. On the contrary, creative people know that reality is flexible and mobile. So they play with it with pleasure, constantly recreating it. If we take life too seriously, then we deprive ourselves of the chance to change it.”
Does this mean that playing is our natural occupation, and not at all a manifestation of regression or infantilism? “This is our need, which is fundamental to maintaining our mental health and creativity,” confirms Hubert Jaouy. – Without the game, our reasoning becomes stereotyped, emotions dry up … “
We know that the game is extremely important for the child, and not only because it allows you to develop imagination, logic, physical dexterity. “In the game, the child symbolically passes into the world of the rules of human relationships,” wrote psychologist and teacher Daniil Elkonin ***.
But what about adults? “The game is the realization of our creative abilities, which in life often remain unclaimed,” explains transactional analyst Vadim Petrovsky. – We achieve those goals that were not in the plans, but they were in our potential.
The game allows unlimited imagination and creativity. Everything can become everything, and we can become everything, here and now. And it’s a huge pleasure.” This is the difference between children and adults: children play to learn their capabilities and build their personality, and we, adults, to forget about ourselves and surpass ourselves.
4 psychological functions of the game
All games, despite their great variety and diversity, the philosopher Roger Caillois divided into four categories depending on whether the game is dominated by competitiveness, chance, simulation or … dizziness.
«AGON. A whole group of games is a competition, a struggle where an artificially equal chance is created and opponents face each other on equal terms, which provide an accurate and undeniable assessment of the victory won. These include both team and individual competitions: tennis, boxing, football, athletics. The same class includes games in which the opponents at the beginning have exactly the same initial resources in number and value. Checkers, chess, billiards can serve as excellent examples.
those. In Latin, this is the name of the game of dice. This word refers to any games that are based on a decision that does not depend on the player and is not under his control in any way, that is, in which it is required to replay not so much the opponent as fate. They not only do not seek to eliminate the injustice of chance, but it is precisely its arbitrariness that forms the only driving force of the game. The purest examples of this category of games are craps, roulette, toss, baccarat, lottery.
MIMICRY. The type is named so by analogy with insect mimicry. In this case, the game is to become a fictional character and behave accordingly. At the carnival, the masked man does not try to convince anyone that he is a real marquis, bullfighter, red-skinned … but tries to frighten others and take advantage of the surrounding freedom, which itself follows from the fact that the mask hides a social role and releases a true personality. So the actor does not try to convince the audience that he is “really” King Lear …
ILINX. “Whirlpool” in Greek. Includes such games that are based on the desire for dizziness and consist in the fact that the player momentarily breaks the stability of his perception and puts his mind in a state of some sweet panic. Such sensations are caused by various attractions, primarily roller coasters, swings and carousels. Adults have at their disposal a variety of dances – from the politely secular, but also insidious whirlwind of the waltz to various types of frantic, feverishly convulsive twitching. They get about the same pleasure, reveling in high speed, for example, on skis, on a motorcycle or in an open car.
Salvation from everyday life
“We go into the house. The floor is littered with candle stubs, the walls are full of creepy inscriptions. In the light of the lanterns, everything looks unreal. Like decoration. It’s hard to believe that in Moscow, in a large park where children walk during the day and couples kiss in the evening, there is … such a thing, ”says 40-year-old Anna, a participant in the game, the essence of which is racing through the city at night, searching for cherished instructions and … receiving powerful dose of adrenaline.
The game allows adults to escape from everyday life in order to completely immerse themselves in a different environment for a while. And the more we are pressed by social norms, the more we need such an escape.
“The game gives us the opportunity to feel the freedom that we are deprived of in reality,” says Vadim Petrovsky. – Burdened with duties to other people and ourselves, controlled by the authorities, the team, relatives, we often feel like puppets who are pulled by the strings. And the game allows, at least for a while, to stop depending on society and do what is not allowed to us in reality.
Moreover, in the game we can defeat someone, laugh at someone, manipulate someone … If in life we are allowed so little, then everything is allowed in the game. This explains the current success of role-playing games, costumed historical shows or paintball, where teenagers and adults shoot paintballs at each other for hours.
Freedom of the “inner child”
The beauty of the game is that the player has no age. “When I play with my children, every time I admire the opportunity to feel again the same alive, open, emotional,” admits 38-year-old Anna.
This spontaneity is a manifestation of our “inner child”, that state of our “I”, which is sensitive, vulnerable, emotional and self-sufficient at the same time.
“This is a meeting with oneself, with that “I” from which everything begins in infancy,” explains Vadim Petrovsky. – Then in our own eyes we had absolute power, we controlled ourselves and the whole world, which lit up and went out depending on whether we closed or opened our eyes. While playing, we seem to return to those childhood situations where we were happy and certainly experienced pleasure.”
Listening to the “inner child” can be very important in moments of conflict or personal crisis, when a person is unhappy or confused. In this case, the acquired habit of playing makes it easier to restore contact with him and find emotional balance.
“Thanks to their intuition and immediacy, our “inner child” will be able to find the right solutions, while an adult is locked within what is permitted, limited by his fears and prejudices,” continues Vadim Petrovsky. “It is also important that contact with the “inner child” fills our need to feel the integrity of ourselves in the past, present and future, the integrity of civilization, nature and space, our involvement in everything and dissolution in everything.”
Finally, the game also prolongs youth! We age in accordance with the image of old age that we create for ourselves. We become victims of our own stereotypes when we associate it only with illness, weakness, loss of opportunities. But this is not necessarily the case! It turns out that as soon as a person ceases to enjoy the game, he begins to age …
Pass the tests
- Find out your inner age
* J. Huizinga “Homo Ludens. Articles on the history of culture” (Progress Tradition, 1997).
** For more details, see the website of the University of Utrecht (Netherlands), uu.nl
*** D. Elkonin “Psychology of the game” (Vlados, 1999).