Warm-Up Psychodrama as a tool in Education Training materials - Module 4

Leonardo Da Vinci project – Transfer of Innovation

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INDEX

1. Introduction to Theory ................................................................................. 4

1.1. Warm-Up ............................................................................................. 4

1.2. Tele ...................................................................................................... 6

1.3. Tele and meeting ................................................................................. 7

1.4. Spontaneity .......................................................................................... 8

1.5. Training and spontaneity .................................................................... 10

1.6. How to control spontaneity and make it the basis of creativity ............ 11

1.7. Is spontaneity measurable? ............................................................... 14

1.8. Creativity ............................................................................................ 15

1.9. Creativity and cognitive sciences ....................................................... 16

1.10. Can we measure creativity? ............................................................ 18

1.11. Creativity and psychoanalysis ......................................................... 19

1.12. Freud’s ideas on creativity as an outburst of neurosis ..................... 19

1.13. Jung’s ideas on the creativity coming from archetypes and symbolic function 20

1.14. Arieti’s ideas on creativity: between ordinary and extraordinary ...... 21

1.15. Hillman’s ideas on creativity: soul, vocation, possession ................ 21

2. Introduction to Exercises ........................................................................... 23

2.1. Games theory and Psychodrama ....................................................... 23

2.2. Definition of game .............................................................................. 23

2.3. Structure of game............................................................................... 23

2.4. Theories of game in the development of the person ........................... 24

2.5. Theories of game in psychoanalysis................................................... 26

2.6. Criticism to the theories of game as an exercise for learning .............. 27

2.7. Theories of game as it is .................................................................... 27

2.8. Classification of game ........................................................................ 28

Evolutionary Taxonomy ....................................................................................... 28

Caillois’ typology .................................................................................................. 29

Descriptive categories such as theories of game ................................................. 30

2.9. Function of Warm-Up ......................................................................... 30

3. Examples of Warm-Up Activity .................................................................. 32

3.1. Activities to facilitate the presentations ............................................... 32

3.2. Team building activities ...................................................................... 36

3.3. Activities to do on the move ............................................................... 41

4. Bibliography .............................................................................................. 44

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4.1. English Bibliography ........................................................................... 44

4.2. Italian bibliography ............................................................................. 46

5. ...................................................................................................................... 46

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1. Introduction to Theory

1.1. Warm-Up

To understand what is meant by “warm up” it is necessary to reiterate some key concepts of psychodrama and its application in the training field. The interest for training arose in Moreno from the first experience of the Theatre of Spontaneity. It was, in this context, to train the actor to spontaneity and creativity, to the ability of inventing the role and to be able to face and realize spontaneously the unpredictable situations proposed by the audience.

The main concern was to overcome the “cultural crystallization” (stereotypes and stiffness of role) to reach the condition of spontaneity, that is the premise of the possibility of creativity in the realization of the role. This preparatory work of the actor recalls some of the techniques still used in training and education (simulations and activities of warming-up).

The central feature of psychodramatic modes is definitely to translate into action what might remain rationalization or intellectualism on a narrative level.

Action in psychodrama does not mean, however, neither to act without control nor to act without thinking. We speak rather of “context of action” which means posting emotional and rational contents in a situational context that makes such content perceptible and able to be communicated to others through a direct language.

For example: it is substantially different that a teacher “recounts” his professional relationship with a student, or that in a psychodramatic context takes the role of the student himself and from this point of view describes how he feels and assesses that teacher... In the first case the story and the rational filter prevail, in the second case action – meant as the confluence of spatial, situational, bodily, rational and emotional data – is prevailing.

The context of action is always active and usually precedes the context of verbalization, intellectualization and theoretical systematization that is still taken into account.

There is therefore a continuous spiral that starts from the story to the action and from the action to the intellectualization, to go back to the action again, if it is still necessary…

Directly connected to the concept of action is that of warming-up. On the one hand, the action is “warming-up” or preparation to the emersion of spontaneity and creativity; on the other hand it is necessary in a group to gradually create the conditions (relational and emotional) for the action to be carried out in all its educational and therapeutic potentialities.

Remember

The action is “warming-up” or preparation to the emersion of spontaneity and creativity

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That’s why a warming-up activity comes before and creates the conditions for the working out of the training: in fact, there is an equation that includes spontaneity and warming-up, but also anxiety and absence of warming-up. Quoting Moreno it can be said that: “Anxiety depends on spontaneity. According to our definition, spontaneity is the proper response to the present situation. If the response to the circumstances is appropriate, if there is ‘fullness’ of spontaneity, anxiety decreases and disappears. [...] To start from the negative aspect, from anxiety, would be a dialectical mistake. The real problem lies in identifying the dynamic factor that gives rise to anxiety. Anxiety occurs when spontaneity is lacking: it is not anxiety that appears first and that entails the attenuation of spontaneity because of its appearance”. (J.L. Moreno, 1980: 185-186).

The warming-up is the first part of a session of psychodrama, to encourage communication between group members, to circulate emotions and to promote the spontaneity. Warming-up activity is the conditio sine qua non (precondition) for starting a psychodramatic work with the protagonist and the group. The warming-up is also a process concerning every moment of the session in which it is necessary to activate the spontaneity.

It is the phase in which the group gets organized around a subject. In this phase a member of the group becomes the protagonist while the psychotherapist plays the role of the “supervisor manager”. When it has been decided what to represent, the protagonist assigns roles to other members of the group. In the first stage of warming-up, the goal to aim is to reach a state of a greater spontaneity, allowing energies and personal emotions to emerge; a work is made for the construction and consolidation of the bond of tele settled within the group. These are techniques developed by Moreno and his staff for the purpose of facilitating the spontaneous action of psychodramatic actors, and to encourage both the diagnosis and the solution of the problematic situation.

The warming-up process can be stimulated by body activators (physical movement and body contact), mental activators (images and feelings) and physicochemical activators (artificial stimulations).

Remember The goal of the warm-up is to reach a state of a greater spontaneity, allowing energies and personal emotions to emerge

Through the process of warming-up the individual may experience many roles, including those who he lives in daily life rarely, or never lived. In fact, if the man in the daily routine is limited to a small number of roles, actually his potentials go far beyond.

“We live only a small part of the range of action of our personality; the majority remain unused and without development” (Moreno, 1946, p. 295).

Warming-up techniques, however, are designed to generate the opposite: turning on body and mind, the individual reaches the state of spontaneity necessary to be able to freely express all their potential, even the most hidden, unused, or feared.

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In particular, within a psychodramatic session the warming-up process covers several functions: generate and strengthen the bonds of tele within the group; bring out the protagonist, and prepare him to the representation of his inner world; bring out the auxiliary egos.

The introductory phase of the psychodrama session, therefore, can contemplate physical and expressive exercises that involve all members of the group, or a discussion, or, more simply, the silent wait for someone to propose as a player of the game.

The warming-up makes the group more permeable to the “hic et nunc” (here and now) condition; favours the amalgam between the participants and sharpens their senses; mobilizes the preconscious and unconscious ability to pick up signals emitted by all against all.

Moreover, in this prologue, every individual has the opportunity to get in a deepest assonance with his own emotional state, probing his mood and the availability to the relationship with the director and with the group.

Before introducing the specific techniques for the implementation of the exercises of warming up, it is important to deepen the concepts that underlie the introduction of these techniques.

1.2. Tele

The term tele comes from the Greek τελέ (telé) and means ‘remote’. It indicates the ability of people to relate to each other to reach an emotional meeting. It is reciprocal and bidirectional, unlike empathy which is unidirectional. Tele also differs from transfert, as it relates only to the projective aspects of patient-therapist relationship. Moreno in his observations was inspired by what Aristotle discovered about the catharsis in Greek tragedy. The representation used to cause in the public the activation of a sequence of emotions, which aroused a sense of relief, a sort of “purification” of the soul. This aspect has been taken by the author and others in the early twentieth century, meaning the cathartic event as an emotional component awakened through the action and the meeting. The meeting for Moreno (1947) is defined as: “an I and a You (who) establish a true relation of reciprocity only when each one of them is able to imagine and to feel in the shoes of the other. Thereby they bring about an encounter, that is being together, the gathering, the being in physical contact, to see and to observe each other, the share, the love, the understanding, the intuitive knowledge through silence or movement, the word or the gesture.”

The meeting is the central point of the psychodrama of Moreno, who did not identify as neither theatre nor as psychology but as a new combination of the two: is often called “the psychology of the people, made by the people for the people.” It implies an intense experience where people meet, know each other and binds to the others with a sense of deep gratitude so to create a sort of frame of intimacy that accompanies all the dramatic evolution of the dramatic experience. The atmosphere of familiarity that is created in a psychodrama group in an ongoing term leads to the creation of what

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Moreno (1953) calls a relation of tele, “the simplest unit of feeling transmitted from one individual to another.” Tele is mutual empathy, it is an emotional two-way communication, a mutual understanding, “an invisible correspondence, a kind of heightened sensitivity to each other's inner feelings” (Moreno 1947); tele is a key element of psychodrama.

The quality of the emotion that goes through this invisible bridge, called tele, gives the bond the characteristic of attraction or rejection: a relation of attraction makes us talk about positive tele, a relation of refusal makes us talk about negative tele; the primary condition for realizing a state of spontaneity that for Moreno is an energy that arises from within and work in the here and now: “Spontaneity works in the present, in the here and now: it stimulates the individual towards an appropriate response to a new situation or a new response to a situation already known.” (Moreno, 1953).

Remember The relation of tele is “the simplest unit of feeling transmitted from one individual to another”. Tele is mutual empathy, is a key element of psychodrama.

Considered by Moreno the highest expression of human intelligence, spontaneity would transform reality, it would break the mould and avoid crystallization, stimulating the creativity of the individual. Spontaneity is considered the psychotherapeutic goal of psychodrama, creativity its active result: the one and the other are solicited on the psychodramatic scene. The author will define factor S-C, the key element that measures the expression of the individual and the relationship with the other. According to the theories of Moreno, spontaneity and psychopathology are inversely related: if the first diminishes or disappears, the second occurs and increases.

1.3. Tele and meeting

Developing operationally Max Buber’s philosophical contributions (1923), Moreno locates in the possibility of meeting (defined as the ability of human beings to enter into emotional relationship with his fellows, in an authentic and undistorted way) the key of mental health and balance of personality. The ability of meeting assumes that tele processes are actives.

As already stated, tele means ‘remote’, and indicates the ability that everyone has from birth to relate emotionally with other human beings. Tele differs from empathy, which is a one-way process (a person is empathetic to another, but not necessarily this attitude is reciprocal). Tele can be defined as a double-way empathy, where central becomes reciprocity.

Tele differs from transfert, key process of psychoanalytic treatment. Tele precedes transfert which is the pathological manifestation of it. As tele relationships grow, transfert relationships decrease, and vice versa a wide space to the transfert relationships reduces the possibility of a genuine and deep meeting. Moreno then defines the concept of tele distinguishing it from empathy and transfert. Empathy is unidirectional, a one-way feeling that a person turns to another. Transference is an

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individual psychodynamic phenomenon that also takes on psychopathological meanings. Tele is instead characterized by reciprocity and appears as a basic element of the relationship; it is therefore a social event, rather than an individual psychological phenomenon.

G. Boria so defines the concept of tele: “it is the affective current that binds in an invisible and mutual way one person with another. Tele is the simplest unit of feeling that is transmitted from one individual to another [...] The quality of the emotion that goes through this invisible bridge gives this bond the characteristic of attraction, repulsion or indifference” (Boria, 1983, p. 263).

This concept is useful not only in therapeutic area, but also educational and in professional training, as it allows the teacher to have a tool to understand if he is in contact with the student and how to enter or maintain such contact. It is much more useful than the simple concept of empathy or transfert psychoanalytically derived, because it implies that there is reciprocity in the relationship. Empathy, however, focuses on what the teacher gives and transmits to the student, intended as the subject of the intervention. In this way there is a risk of remaining anchored to a directive, formal and one-way setting of the training approach. The risk is to make passive the learner and drying up the teacher, who feels he has nothing in return by the pupil. Transfert highlights the distortions that the student puts into action in the relationship.

The teacher might interpret too much or not be able to use this particular tool of the therapeutic relationship, with the risk of psychologising, more than it should, the educational context. Shifting the emphasis on the relationship of tele, focuses on the emotional flow that passes through the dynamic of mutual actions-interactions, balancing the training matrix and returning power to the role of student.

1.4. Spontaneity

In psychodrama the concept of spontaneity is fundamental. Moreno chose the theatre of research as a means to achieve the recapture of spontaneity. A setting with strict and defined rules it would have been an obstacle to his goal. This concept has been said and repeated in the course of his work. On psychodramatic stage “[...] it is possible the discovery of the spontaneous man, that is of the spontaneous and creative nature of existence” (Moreno, 1940). It can be said that between spontaneity and psychopathology there is an inverse relationship: if the first diminishes or disappears, the second occurs and increases.

Everyone has the opportunity to act spontaneous behaviour, in relation with itself and with the outside world. But in the process of socialization there is a constant learning of relationships that are destined to repeat in a stereotyped way during subsequent experiences. In this regard, Moreno speaks about “natural conserves”, identifying them in all those activities that continue to reproduce mechanically (‘for inertia’) although are distant in time the circumstances that caused them the first time. So, spontaneity is the ability to act behaviours functional to the real needs of the individual, to the needs related to the present time in an immediate way, free from conditionings. A factor that may hinder the spontaneous self expression is anxiety. If there is a genuine

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manifestation of spontaneity, the individual is free from anxiety; when the individual is in a state of threat and not authentic, is manifested anxiety that can get to the state of panic. Another factor that undermines the spontaneity is too much importance to the opinions of others, especially those of the significant counter-roles, but of society as a whole. Such as the expectations of parents on their child’s success or the imperatives of fashion on the physical forms of women.

Remember

Spontaneity is the ability to act behaviours functional to the real needs of the individual, to the needs related to the present time in an immediate way, free from conditionings.

This implies that people tend to assume forced behaviours, whose sole purpose is to get away from external criticism. But this way of life, carried out daily, ends up exhausting the person: in fact, there is no moment of peace for those who always fear to say or to do something that the others doesn’t like, whoever they are. “It is not pleasant or relaxing the life of those who perpetually wear a mask. There are several situations that disarm us revealing our true self, and, although it may be useful the act of self-control, it is not pleasant or relaxing the lives of those who perpetually wear a mask. How much quiet is the sincere and spontaneous simplicity, not without grace, of the behaviour without veils! [...]. Even spontaneity, however, face a balanced use: there is a difference between living in a truly spontaneous way and in a sloppy and vulgar way” Seneca says in the passage of De tranquillitate animi (On the serenity of the soul) that develops this very topic: the anxiety generated by the lack of spontaneity.

Even Erich Fromm (1941), German psychoanalyst, deals with the concept of spontaneity. In his book Escape from Freedom shows how it can be a way of expression to help people finding their authenticity: “Can freedom exist in a world of masks and automata where ‘the having’ crushes ‘the being’ and lie is the rule of human relationships?” “It is the answer to the problem of freedom”.

Spontaneity is a condition that can be created in each individual, an internal state that can be produced and which forms the basis for the development of creativity. Spontaneity is therefore a catalyst for creativity and one without the other bring negative and not productive consequences.

For Moreno in the concrete act spontaneity and creativity are intimately fused. If the state of spontaneity is missing, creativity remains inert and hidden, whatever its potential size is. The act devoid of spontaneity is the mechanical, stereotyped, repetitive act.

Spontaneity stimulates to transform reality, to break the mould and to prevent crystallizations. It brings to face the risks of change: “The spontaneous activity is not compulsory activity, to which the individual is driven by isolation and helplessness; it is not the activity of the automaton, which is uncritical assimilation of models suggested from the outside. Spontaneous activity is free activity of the ego and implies, psychologically, what the Latin root of the word, sponte, literally means: one’s free will. For activity we don’t mean the ‘do something’ but that creative activity that can operate in one’s emotional experiences, intellectual and sensual, and even in one’s will. A

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prerequisite of this spontaneity is the acceptance of the total personality, and the elimination of the split between ‘reason’ and ‘nature’. In fact, only if the man does not repress essential parts of his own being, only if it has become clear to himself, and only if the different spheres of life have reached a fundamental integration, spontaneous activity is possible” (Fromm, 1941).

Fromm’s words call directly to what Moreno had well identified in the factor spontaneity-creativity.

Moreno distinguishes four different forms of spontaneity: first of all, it is a “surge”, that is a primal impulse of the individual; secondly, it is a “cultural acquisition”, resulting in innovations that can be recorded in the field of art, or at the level of environments, organizations or institutions that strive to stop the automatic succession of events through which perpetuates the tradition; then it exists a spontaneity that is the creation of “a free expression of personality”; finally, spontaneity can be considered as “an appropriate and original response to new situations”.

In this way, spontaneity is also defined as a characteristic ability of the individual to have feelings and behaviours in harmony with their own natural tendencies.

Creativity allows that the natural tendency becomes concrete action, so that Moreno calls S-C factor (spontaneity-creativity) the key element that measures the satisfying expansion of the individual and the relationship with the other. According to Moreno a good balance of the S-C factor is manifested as the ability to “respond appropriately to new situations or in new situations already known” (Moreno, 1940).

Remember Moreno identifies four forms of spontaneity:

1. It is a immediate and instinctive surge of the individual 2. It is a cultural acquisition 3. It is a free expression of personality 4. It is an original response to new situations

1.5. Training and spontaneity

As was stated earlier, when there is no spontaneity, the individual is manifested by anxiety and / or rigid and stereotyped behaviours. Training and being spontaneous in relationships means learning to respond to the needs of the environment in harmony without distorting the requests and reality and to one’s inner instances without defensiveness and bringing out authentic needs and emotions. Moreno uses the concept of spontaneity not only in reference to the psychopathological phenomena, but he is interested in spontaneity especially when he observes the actor on the scene. The concept was further elaborated in multiple situations aimed at training the actor, the individual and the group to act on new roles.

It is clear the usefulness of this concept in training for professions that require a relationship with the group, as the teacher. With this ability the teacher, as well as the necessary theoretical and technical skills, also gained the ability to adapt flexibly to the

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variety of people and work situations with which it comes into contact. Moreno verifies that, in the development of spontaneity, has a central role in the action, the improvised stage interpretation. In assuming two diversified channels of memory operation (the centre of the action and the centre of the content), Moreno emphasizes the learning of spontaneity requires a context of action to be effective (Moreno, 1980b, p. 524). Only in this way, content and actions can find synthesis in the ability to achieve roles and spontaneous behaviour.

1.6. How to control spontaneity and make it the basis of creativity

It is necessary that between spontaneity/control there is a dynamic equilibrium in the work of psychodrama. This dynamic crosses both therapeutic groups that those training, but there are constraints in training much more evident that in psychotherapy. Only a naive view of the psychodramatic intervention may consider the dimension spontaneity as authentically true and the dimension control as a simple limitation. In that regard, Moreno says: “Psychodrama is a method of training to self-control and a method of free expression. The repressive nature of our culture has come to give the ‘expression itself’ a value often exaggerated. Methods such as role reversal or the representation of roles, as they require a limitation, a retraining and/or a reconditioning of excitability, represent a very underestimated and neglected application of psychodrama. Especially the interpolation of barriers (interpolation of resistances) allows the ego to gain more control against an emotion that is often staged in psychodrama” (Moreno, 1987, p. 266).

WARM UP

WARM UP

Figure 1. Canon of spontaneity-creativity: the Moreno view (J.L. Moreno, 1993).

Moreno refers to spontaneity in close relation to the concept of creativity, factor S-C (spontaneity-creativity) is the key element in the expansion of the individual and the relationship with the other.

The interest for spontaneity in Moreno is relating to the theme of the development of creativity, of the creative act.

Spontaneit

Creativity

Cultural conserve

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Therefore, focusing the attention only on the development of spontaneity without the connection to creativity would cause the risk of diminishing the function of the spontaneous act, depriving it of its creative finalization.

Figure 2. Expanded canon of spontaneity-creativity.

In training field, one of the main goals is not the development of spontaneity, but the ability to achieve creative acts, to take on creatively new roles and to transform in a creative way, social and working roles.

Spontaneity to result in creative act needs a medium, which is both a constraint and an expressive opportunity. This medium is the role, the behaviour unit perceptible, observable and modifiable in the interaction with the human environment.

Creativity can not develop if spontaneity is not activated, and at the same time it requires a channel of expression to take shape through the role which, being unfastened from spontaneity and creativity, runs out of its function, crystallizing in a stereotyped way.

Spontaneity without the connection with creativity and role, runs out in a “state of spontaneity” without contact with matter of fact.

In this path of development of creativity becomes central in training, the context of rules, opportunities and perceptual-relational data in relation to which the spontaneity is

High

Spontaneity

state

High

Spontaneity

deficency

Creativit

The product:

Cultural

Anxiety

Non creative product

Uncontrolled

behavior

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stimulated, amplified, or channelled or confronted with barriers (interpolation of resistances), which represent an opportunity for a creative leap forward (new role or insight).

In this process it is important to have a clear focus of the intervention, which will justify the emphasis on spontaneity, or on the development of a new role.

In training it has to consider that in certain phases, the focus of the intervention is the same group of pupils.

This involves having attention to the relationships between the members of the group, the reciprocity of roles and counter-roles that exist between them and the image of group emerging as a unified whole, the group has in these terms a counter-role also with regard to the teacher.

For example, a conflict between two or three class members can influence the climate of the whole group and bring out an anxiety and restlessness that does not allow the smooth running of the lesson.

In this case, to stop the teaching program and to create a psychodramatic training setting, means first of all establish a secure environment of acceptance in which factor S-C can emerge.

The warming-up is functional just to bring participants in a relational dimension in which they feel they can express themselves without fear of being judged by others.

To avoid misunderstandings it is necessary to clarify what Moreno means for spontaneity.

It is not what the common language defines: an unregulated behaviour dumping uncontrolled emotions, thoughts or actions regardless of the needs of the person.

Spontaneity is rather a condition that can be created in each individual, an internal state that can be produced and which forms the basis for the performance of creativity.

The warming-up is functional just to let the participants in a relational dimension in which they feel they can express themselves without fear of being judged by others.

Spontaneity is therefore a catalyst for creativity and one without the other bring negative and not productive consequences.

Moreno defines two extremes in this regard:

the spontaneous moron, the one who in a perpetual state of “spontaneity”, but devoid of creative resources, continuously provides inadequate responses to the environment and dictated only by the needs and internal states;

the unarmed creator, who, full of creative potentiality, fails to create himself a state of spontaneity, remaining paralyzed and unable to externalize the creative potentiality.

It’s important to note that spontaneity can be trained, developed and recreated by a warming-up process.

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The psychodramatic methodology assumes that spontaneity can occur in certain situations (e.g. use of the body, humour, situations of intimacy and contact with the other, etc.) and in all the people, even the most limited or sick.

That's why, methodologically, the phase of warming-up is particularly emphasized in the groups of psychodrama.

From this point of view, what the trainer is called to do, as well as in psychotherapy and in learning situations, is nothing more than a creative response triggered after a period of incubation, in a moment of appropriate spontaneity.

A good balance of factor S-C leads to the ability of providing appropriate responses to a new and unexpected situation and giving a new and creative answer to an old and crystallized situation. It is to accompany the group towards a state of greater involvement with the other hand to one side and to a greater contact with the inner flow, or with the parties unaware of himself. The matter is to accompany the group towards a state of greater involvement with the others and of a greater contact with the inner flow, or with the parties unaware of itself. Those that are usually kept hidden using the processes of logical-deductive.

1.7. Is spontaneity measurable?

The idea of measuring the spontaneity, through a test based on the action was introduced by Moreno in 1944.

The test consists of a series of stage situations that are not necessarily standardized, in which the protagonist answers with improvised actions. The observer categorizes the answers based on appropriateness, originality and speed, in this way the quotient of spontaneity is measured.

A few years ago, some studies on the evaluation of spontaneity through standardized scales have been published.

The first study is Personal Attitude Scale (PAS; Collins, Kumar, Treadwell, & Leach, 1997) composed by 58 items, revised by Kellar and others, PASS-II (Kellar, Treadwell, Kumar, & Leach, 2002) which includes 66 items. From this scale 6 characteristics of spontaneous behaviour emerge: 1) It is new and creative, 2) it is immediate, 3) it is adequate and appropriate, 4) emerges easily and effortlessly, 5) involves the totality of the person, 6) the person has control over his own actions that are not impulsive. (Kellar et al., 2002).

Another tool that measures the spontaneity is the Spontaneity Assessment Inventory (SAI) built by Kipper and Hundal (2005). The ask “How strongly do you have these feelings and thoughts during a typical day?”, the question is followed by 20 items describing feelings and thoughts that characterize the state of spontaneity (such as: energetic, uninhibited, controlling, etc.) to which is given a score through a Likert scale of 6 points.

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In addition, the SAI correlates positively with the measure of well being (Friedman, 1994) and negatively with states and traits of anxiety (Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1983), with obsessive-compulsive behaviour (Foa et al., 2002) and orientation towards the past measured through the Temporal Orientation Scale (TOS; Jones, Banicky, Pomar, & Lasane, 2004). Kipper and Shemer (2007) have produced a revised version of the SAI, the SAI-R, in which the items have been reduced to 18 and the Likert scale has been reduced to 5 points.

The most important aspect that Moreno stressed is that spontaneity is the basis of psychological well-being (Moreno, 1923, 1953).

Although subsequent studies have correlated the spontaneity with mental health, Steitzel and Hughey (1994) have shown how the spontaneity is necessary in order to experience joy and satisfaction.

Maslow (1970) considers that spontaneity is a necessary condition to reach the stage of personal self.

In the most recent study of the SAI-R has been seen how effectively the size of spontaneity is positively correlated with the size of the welfare and negatively with those of stress (Kipper, & Shemer, 2007)

1.8. Creativity

Moreno defines creativity in relation with spontaneity, creating s-c factor. Spontaneity and creativity are interdependent. Creativity is a concrete action, the peculiarity is to fit new situations or new answers to well known or crystallized situations. Psychodrama has the aim to favour the development of more spontaneous and creative roles in individuals and groups.

Art and creativity have been used in group experience as a tool to express feelings, to create empathy, not only to produce something with an aesthetic value (Liebmann, 2004). Creativity is a bridge, an expressive channel to stand out conflicts, emotions and other faces of the personality that would be otherwise hidden. (Liebmann, 2004; Rubin 1999).

Studies show that who have interest in arts have higher empathic capacities of others (Bayam, Simsek & Dilbaz, 1999; Dokmen, 1994). Expressive methods accelerate the arising of associations with emotive experience, as action based, they are exploitable in therapeutic and training field. Global mobilization of the person through action permits to focus now and here and leaves the abstract intellectualization to live the immediate creative experience.

Psychodrama aims to encourage the development of more spontaneous and creative roles in the individual and in groups.

Also, use of the creative medium allows to bring down resistances within the group, because they don’t perceive the mutual judgment. For example, draw to show the own personal trait or a passion, basically helps to be focused on ourselves and on the

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cognitive mobilities, emotive and imaginative skills, then sharing experiences with others it can helps to show and to emphasise specific aspects of the personality of each one, that cannot be showed through traditional logical expressions (Ozcan et al, 2011 ).

With regards to the concept of creativity Umberto Eco (2004) made a collection of definitions that can be found on internet and saw that there are over than 1,560,000 sites dedicated to this concept and that many of them make referring "to an industrial and commercial capacity to solve problems, identified with the innovation concept, the ability to conceive new ideas, and to this ability are dedicated many websites that teach how to become creative and to earn a lot of money (…). But before the era of multinational companies, two were in general sense of creativity. One is Biblical, for which God created the universe from nothing. The second is derived by analogy from the first and recognized artist, who actually brings into being something that did not exist before, almost godlike power. Here then is a proposal that equates the scientific creativity and the artistic one. Like all scientific discoveries to come they should somehow be contained in the algorithms that govern natural events so all the artistic creations should already be contained in the fundamental elements – sounds, letters, rangers, colours, lines and geometric shapes – which our species has.

Creative will not be the one who then drew something new out of nothing but one who has identified, by intuition, by trial and error, by chance – or for that infinite patience that for Flaubert was a sign of genius – from the gang that contained and hid it in our eyes. Rather, the problem is how this combination allow new ways to describe or reconstruct the world, and how these methods can be acceptable" (Eco, 2004).

1.9. Creativity and cognitive sciences

In psychology, creativity has been studied in particular in the field of cognitivism, starting from Giulford's researches of 1950; systematic studies have been conducted to better understand the creativity and how it influences and is influenced by the personality, by social relationships, by cognitive and emotional aspects. Among all studies on these factors one of the most investigated was definitely the relationship between emotional state, mood and creativity.

Among all studies on these factors one of the most investigated was definitely the relationship between emotional state, mood and creativity.

Given the enormous amount of works on this subject, a meta-analysis has recently combined the results of 102 scientific articles that investigated the relationship between creativity and emotions (Baas, De Dreu, Nijstad, 2008).

Talking about emotions the first relevant aspect is their hedonic value or affective tone. In fact, some emotions, such as joy, enthusiasm and tranquillity, have a positive tone, while others, such as anger, anxiety, sadness, have a negative tone. Through neuropsychological evidence was also discovered that the emotional state can be activating (high arousal) or de-activating (low arousal) (Posner, Russell, & Peterson, 2005).

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Combining the two classifications we will have positive emotional states with low arousal, as calm and quiet, and high arousal, such as happiness and euphoria, as well as negative emotional states with low arousal, such as sadness and depression, and high arousal such as anger and fear. The matter, however, is further complicated.

The results of the meta-analysis have allowed to understand that the link between creativity and emotional state is much more complex than it seemed at the beginning because it seems to be regulated by the interaction between hedonic valence, emotional activation and motivation.

The analysis of these complex interactions shows that, in general, positive emotional states are the best source for creativity than the negative ones. However it is not to be forgotten the role that the level of activation or arousal has in this equation: if this variable is introduced, in fact, it turns out that only positive activating states are really able to foster creativity. So only emotions such as happiness can encourage flexibility and speed of cognitive processing, which in turn promote high levels of creativity and originality.

As we said, additional mediators are the emotional states that can promote motivation.

The research found that negative emotions with low arousal are not correlated with an increase of creativity and even the negative ones with high arousal are negatively correlated with it mainly because they drastically reduce cognitive flexibility, thus preventing to find new solutions.

While there are many models for the process of creative thinking, it is not difficult to see the consistent themes that span them all. The creative process involves purposeful analysis, imaginative idea generation, and critical evaluation – the total creative process is a balance of imagination and analysis. Older models tend to imply that creative ideas result from subconscious processes, largely outside the control of the thinker. Modern models tend to imply purposeful generation of new ideas, under the direct control of the thinker. The total creative process requires a drive to action and the implementation of ideas. We must do more than simply imagine new things, we must work to make them concrete realities.

The Directed Creativity Cycle is a synthesis model of creative thinking that combines the concepts behind the various models proposed over the last 80 years (figure no. 3)

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Figure 3: The Directed Creativity Cycle

Let's walk through it, beginning at the 9:00 position on the circle. We live everyday in the same world as everyone else, but creative thinking begins with careful observation of that world coupled with thoughtful analysis of how things work and fail. These mental processes create a store of concepts in our memories. Using this store, we generate novel ideas to meet specific needs by actively searching for associations among concepts. There are many specific techniques that we can use to make these associations; for example, analogies, branching out from a given concept, using a random word, classic brainstorming, and so on. The choice of technique is not so important; making the effort to actively search for associations is what is key. Seeking the balance between satisfying and premature judgment, we harvest and further enhance our ideas before we subject them to a final, practical evaluation. But, it is not enough just to have creative thoughts; ideas have no value until we put in the work to implement them. Every new idea that is put into practice changes the world we live in, which re-starts the cycle of observation and analysis.

Also creative process in psychodrama could be seen as a creative act and it is possible to analyze it with this draft. Actually, in the first phase, the warm-up, we pose the conditions for emerging ideas, emotions, statement, that are translate in action during playing phase and at the end, in the sharing phase, we rework emotions to find new strategies for everyday life.

1.10. Can we measure creativity?

Today it is possible find on Internet many open-source test to assess the creative personality traits, with a scientific validation. One of this is Fast Company with 10 contradictory characteristic of personality coming from the Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, research on “flow”.

Trait are: 1) big physical energy but quiet and rest bent; 2) smartness and naivety; 3) playfulness and self-regulation – responsibility and irresponsibility; 4) imagination and realism; 5) introversion and extroversion; 6) presence of pride and humility; 7) unconventional gender statement; 8) conservatism and revolt; 9) presence of passion and objectivity on work; 10) openness and sensitivity.

Another scale is made by Paul Torrence, it is published on Cre8ng website, and list 52 traits, among which: abstractedness, adaptability, capacity to chance context, combination of ideas and situation, flexibility and future orientation, idealism and independence, originality, passion and prospective, richness in details, sensibility and ability to synthesize, tolerance to ambiguity, capacity of visualization.

Another website on creativity assessment is Inc.com that summarize 7 traits described by Øyvind L. Martinsen are: 1) capacity to easily pass from reality to imagination; 2) need of originality and resistance to rules and conventions; 3) motivation and goal oriented; 4) ambition and needs of reputation; 5) flexibility and ability to observe reality

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from different point of view; 6) low emotional stability, trend to experience negative emotion; 7) low sociability and obstinacy.

Copyblogger invites his readers to find out if they have “11 traits of persons with high creativity”. It reports that creativity and intelligence are not so high related.

Creative persons, as shows Robert Sternberg, have a high level of intelligence, around 120 QI, but not necessarily with elevate peaks.

Indiana University do not produce many traits, but organize them in groups: Product (fluidity, flexibility, originality, elaboration from Torrence); Attitudes (curiosity, imagination, complexity, risk inclination), behaviours (flexible, inventive, unconventional, innovative) and adds a list of cognitive characteristic very important, like metaphoric thinking, independence of judgment and eidetic thinking.

1.11. Creativity and psychoanalysis

Fist modern studies on creativity and is relation with cognitive development dating on second part of the Nineteenth Century, when Broca and Wernicke localized the language areas on brain. Now neuroscience studies brain areas and the way that interact one with each other to trigger creativity process, and in which way creativity is related with language and vision. Results a very complex puzzle. Before neuroscience, psychoanalysis studies first the roots of creativity, with the discovery of unconscious. It is important to say that around the idea of creativity there is a prejudice: the belief that creativity and mental disease are related and that creativity born from mental illness. But, we already see that at the bases of creativity there is spontaneity dimension, and if spontaneity is positive related with well-being and negative with stress, it is clear that also creativity emerge also when there is psychic balance.

1.12. Freud’s ideas on creativity as an outburst of neurosis

Sigmund Freud examines motivation of creativity lighting the unconscious and part psychopathological ones. Freud says that creativity is a positive answer to a childhood unconscious desire; most of them are about sexuality, it is the reason because they are frustrate and then remove from consciousness. However, to remove events and trauma could provoke neurosis. Uneasiness grow up when we put on unconscious distressing that tend to coming out in another manner, as compulsion, tic, obsession, mania, that seem without reason, because it is on unconscious. An alternative at this process is to transform neurosis by creativity. It means that when libido, the emotional tension linked to unfulfilled desire is directed to another object.

The shift gives direction to energy, which are translated in creativity actions. This kind of expression of drive unconsciousness is socially acceptable and it is font of alternative gratification.

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In summary, for Freud creativity is the result of sublimation of energy, which are caused by a frustrating situation. This kind of energy is directed to a more positive direction.

This happens because the reality principle substitutes the pleasure principle. The consciousness we need to accept reality and we can’t satisfy each desire we have.

1.13. Jung’s ideas on the creativity coming from archetypes and

symbolic function

The thought of Gustav Jung (1909-61) is less causal, linear and systematic than Freud. The complexity of his vision and the breadth of its research field can hardly be reduced to a few lines that are comprehensive and faithful. For Jung, the libido is psychic energy, not just sexual. The psyche is a set of complex: that is, systems of representations loaded of energy and characterized by an own affective tone, for example, the mother complex. Even the Ego is a complex, the more solid and stable: it is connected with personality, self-representation and self-perception of the individual.

There is a collective unconscious, that is a basic psychological structure, made of archetypes shared by the entire human race. They are innate patterns, they can be told in the form of myth and individual experience can reflect in it.

It is the dialectical relationship between internalized archetypes and opposites (Animus / Soul, Person / Shadow, etc ...) to generate the psychic dynamics of each individual and to develop the energy of the libido. In particular, the Shadow is the dark side, but not necessarily negative and sometimes bearer of creative energies, that the individual would tend to ignore.

The Person is instead its public mask and respectful of social conventions. Soul (spontaneous, intuitive, maternal...) is the feminine aspect present in the collective masculine unconscious, Animus (logical and rational, wise), the masculine aspect that is in the collective feminine unconscious.

Creativity emerges from the synthesis that makes the symbolic function by relating the archetypes, innate and immutable, with individual and contingent experiences.

It is a transformation that Jung called individuation. It is a dynamic synthesis that occurs when the Ego is able to negotiate with anxiety, ambiguity and ambivalence that are intimately connected with the living because it transcends the archetypal opposites integrating them, and because it is capable of interacting with the world through perception and through thought, intuition and feeling.

It is a process of instinctual character: according to Jung, hunger, sexuality, activity, reflection and creativity are all instincts, and it is creative instinct to differentiate humans from other species by moving towards spirituality and production of symbols. Even psychotherapy is aimed at developing the creative potentials latent in the patient. This means that there is a deep connection between the manifestation of creativity and psyche that is transformed.

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The individual who is able to relate in a mature way with the world also knows how to have relationships and to produce creative visions staying in touch with one's self: the place where the wisdom of the organism can be found, its vocation, its tension to develop its full potential.

1.14. Arieti’s ideas on creativity: between ordinary and extraordinary

The psychoanalyst Silvano Arieti distinguishes between ordinary creativity, able to improve the life of the author making it more full and satisfying, and extraordinary creativity, the one that invents new paradigms and improves the lives of all contributing to progress.

According to Arieti (1976), the individual capable of producing extraordinary creativity keeps a larger than average chance of access to images, to metaphor, to accentuated verbalization and other forms related to the primary process, which is unconscious or preconscious.

Both the dreamer, both the schizophrenic and the creative individual share a facilitated access to the primary sphere, but while the schizophrenic is trapped in it and the dreamer loses his night suggestions when confronted with the logic of the day, the creative individual selects, adopts and adapts primary materials triggering logical thinking and integrated part belonging to the secondary process.

The magic of creative synthesis, the tertiary process, asks a higher dose than the normal of receptive passivity: the one that allows to primary material to emerge suddenly; during meditation, contemplation, daydreaming, relaxation, taking drugs, dreams, but also calls for a higher dose of intentional and aware activity to handle those materials properly.

It is a magic that the creative person is the custodian, a secret that cannot reveal either to himself or to others. What is no longer a secret is the way his creative process takes place, how it reaches its conclusion, and what conditions facilitate its appearance (Rams, 1976).

1.15. Hillman’s ideas on creativity: soul, vocation, possession

The theme of Jungian archetypes also belongs to the psychoanalyst James Hillman (1996), who mightily projects it in a wider therapeutic dimension: it is the archetypal psychology, the therapy of ideas and not of people.

Hillman says that the images that have value of archetype, which are universal and necessary, they are based on myths. Coming into contact with the symbolic structures of myth, the soul can express its energy and recognize its vocation, beyond the social pressures and contingent circumstances. Only by honouring the myth that each one carries within itself, it is possible to reconstruct a balanced relationship with reality, to avoid pathological drifts, to grow in the world, to fulfil its own destiny.

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Creativity is not a special gift, but it is an immense energy whose origin is beyond the human psyche and that drives to take care of oneself through a specific link with the other.

Creativity forces to devotion towards oneself in the becoming trough that connection, and brings with it a sense of helplessness and growing awareness of one's own power and at the same time it is more human and more powerful than its owner. Operating as coercion, force is always excessive. It's a possession that can take various forms. The recklessness of the rebel or of the insane: shadow, destruction, death. It is the success that rewards ambition and leaves the individual trapped in the myth he has created for himself. It is the great mother who welcomes and regenerates. It is the sensual feminine, imaginative and queer, sensitive to the aesthetic experience.

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2. Introduction to Exercises

2.1. Games theory and Psychodrama

Now it's important to introduce and to frame how the function of the game can become a tool for developing the S-C factor during the introduction phase of a psychodrama, namely the warm-up. In fact, during this phase are often realised activities coming from the social animation, like theatre teaching techniques, autogenic training exercises. These techniques have the same capacity to mobilize totally a person, through the use of the own body, to reduce defences and cognitive control on the expression of emotions and deepest experiences. In this way is possible to reactivate the vertical flow, from deep toward external, and the horizontal one from itself and the others.

Game has the specific characteristic to conduct the person in the self-dimension, also typical of psychodrama processes. within how being oneself can expressed authentically and free from the typical patterns of daily life, while keeping the awareness that it is not the real daily life, but a fiction, in which it is possible to use landmarks and rules, otherwise not allowed.

2.2. Definition of game

A peculiar element of Freudian psychodrama is the game, and more specifically the representation game.

Given that in psychodrama there are different types of game, of which we can mention paidia and ludus, in the psychodrama of Lemoine is especially the mimicry (imitation and metamorphosis) that seems to be more and more operative.

With the first term, Roger Caillois, in his book "Man, Play and Games", means the spontaneous play. It is free improvisation, like the child who creates roles in symbolic play through the imaginative capacity. While, for ludus is meant the game with rules, established actions and instructions to be applied to a defined context. Game is intended as a instrument of growth and development of the human being. It consists of antinomies “because the game is both joy and pain, enchantment and seduction, knowledge and ignorance, seriousness and cheerfulness, meet and clash, childish dolls and tragedy; and can also become responsibility and lightness as well as diligence and negligence. Game is a gift that feeds the curiosity and creativity, as well as a mania which discloses to the disease and madness. Game is both victory and defeat. For all above that the playful experience can be considered as a metaphor for existence.” (Di Chiara, 2012)

2.3. Structure of game

Caillois (1958) says that the game is something that produces nothing but himself and leaving no trace of itself, because it is consumed by its making. So, It's complex to find

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a specific document in the civilization history. Under the word Games are enclosed many activities, ranging from those for children like manipulating objects, run, jump, doing pirouettes, sport competitions, and other activities that sometimes are performed by adults, such as gambling or heavy jokes. To come to a definition we must try to identify the common features of the various activities.

Game is:

Free: a player cannot be forced; separate: has limitations of space and time unsure: the performance and the result cannot be known in advance;

unproductive: it does not create richness or assets, except a displacement of ownership within the circle of players;

governed: it responds to its own rules which suspending temporarily the ordinary laws;

artificial: the player is aware on the differences with normal life.

According to these premises Caillois proposes a division of games into four categories, which are to be linked with paidia and ludus categories:

Agon – Game is characterized by competition Alea – Game is characterized by case, luck, chance. We indulges ourselves in a kind of liabilities such as nursery rhymes to make the count, heads or tails, lotteries, dice game, etc. Mimicry – Game is characterized by seeking of simulation, fiction, like in the theater, in games with dolls, in masquerade, etc. Ilinx – Game is characterized by risk seeking, as in the thrill of swinging on a swing, turn on the carousel, ride roller coasters etc.

In the Caillois opinion within each game category it's easy to individuate a passing from paidia to ludus. So in Agon it's possible to go from a sudden and fast ride among children to sport competitions. In Alea from nursery rhymes to make the count to lotteries. In Mimicry from children imitations to theater and in Ilinx from childhood whirling to acrobatics.

So, it's useful to define what is meant for game in the common sense on one hand and in psychology, on the other.

2.4. Theories of game in the development of the person

Enhancement of game activities exists within psycho-pedagogical studies and research for its socializing, cognitive, communicative and affective qualities, which highlight how the game meets the basic needs of human being.

Through games children learn, know, communicates, establishes relationships, and explores processes actively emotions, feelings, conflicts. It is considered a game an action, or a set of actions, driven by an intrinsic motivation, that sometimes aim to

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satisfy a pleasure itself, without any productive result and without the intent to achieve any objective other than to fulfil this action. Freedom, creativity, unproductiveness, gratuity, comfortable and well-being make game a primary resource for learning, knowledge and relationships, through active relationships where child modify reality according to its inner needs, realizes its full potential and reveals himself to himself and to others. Game, a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which substantially eludes definitions, has been a challenge of great interest to all human sciences and is still a subject of deep reflection within the pedagogical knowledge. Vygotsky (1972) says that game is the main incentive for the growth because allows to children to break the childhood barriers and to act taking more into account ideas instead of things. In symbolic games a child acts on the basis of meanings and, even though he still needs an object as intermediary for his imagination, what matters is not the property of the object, but the given meaning. While Piaget (1950; 1952; 1974) says that decentralization appears very late in the game, only with the game selection, Vygotsky assert the symbolic game is from the beginning a mixing of rules and imagination: doesn't distinguish between symbolic game and game rules, because the first contains always rules, and the second imaginary situations. Vygotsky believes that imagination is the transformation of accumulated impressions linked to the language, enriched from the beginning through social interaction. Imagination acting in the games is not a element which creates confusion between reality and fantasy, inner and external world, but the start of growth because it creates the areas of proximal development. While Piaget asserts that in the symbolic game there is no space for education, Vygotsky gives it a core educational value: in the game in fact, like in the area of proximal growth, it plays a fundamental role an expert partner, both adult or child. Interaction with an adult or a more expert partner gives to the child what Bruner (1968) defines scaffolding, i.e. a supporting scaffold, which helps him in building a new cognitive structure. This structure has a regulatory function which consists of information on what the child has to do, for starting and completing an action and what should be the encouragements; scaffolding is offered to the child at early stage, and as a result it is gradually dismantled, then the child becomes able to perform the activity independently. Into practice, at a certain point, learning supported by social interaction with adults is internalized, it becomes part of the growth of each child. An example of activities where a child operates in his proximal growth area is precisely the symbolic game, in which he goes beyond his intellectual capacity, since the activity of the game itself, the material that is available and the presence of others is useful as support. Piaget has drew attention to the value of game in cognitive development but later empirical studies disproved its arguments. In fact, has emerged that in the game the child, stimulated by reality, tends to develop new mental creative structures, rather than repeating the old ones. The game is the time for learning more than to assimilate. Bruner says that the game is functional to the learning especially because allows the free testing of behaviours and problem solving, making easy in this way creativity and unusual correlations.

Also, the game is considered useful for developing the sociality. Empirical researches assert that especially the game fictions facilitate social relations, because are prepared for the roles to be played, making participants more flexible and more tolerant towards others.

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Cultural anthropology sees childish game as a moment in which new generations are socialized to the values of rules and ways of life of the referring culture. In a well-known work on the cockfight in Bali, C. Geertz (1973) shows when the content of a game is against the cultural structures. The Balinese people have horror of the animalistic aspects of life. In cockfighting, the bloodthirsty and cruel show reinforces the values of the culture by contrast, showing the abyss from which is better to stay away.

In ethology they think that the game is an opportunity to exercise in preparation for real life. The animals who play are those that are more flexible in adapting to the environment. For example, the Galapagos woodpecker when full plays to pull out from the cracks of the bark tree the preys without eating them. Kept in a cage, he hiding worms inside cracks and then he take them back with a pointed stick. Anyway, this woodpecker, when he is hungry acquires food in the same way. So, the game is a preparatory exercise for hunting.

2.5. Theories of game in psychoanalysis

From the psychodynamic point of view, instead, is very important the psychoanalytic perspective that explored the emotional dimension of the game. In this perspective, the game is considered as both analyzer of affections, emotions, conflicts through which the child builds his own identity, and as an engine for development as it encourages the development of skills for the management of emotions. Central is the symbolism interwoven into impulses and representations: the game is the theatre of desires, but also re-release of experiences not fully developed and mastered. This aspect is covered by Freud (1920) in the famous episode of his nephew Ernst and the game of the spool with which the child processes and controls the separation anxiety from his mother. In the play frustrating actions, or perceived as threatening, the real situation suffered becomes playful representation acted in person. Through the game the child is active, processes the experience.

The symbolic quality of the game was highlighted in particular by Melanie Klein (1929), who used it as a tool of expression for young patients with functions similar to the free association of the adult. The game in this perspective is the vehicle of unconscious feelings, but it is also an instrument of mediation with reality, of freedom from conflicting tensions for its ability to develop creative experience. Not always the game has this positive value: in certain conditions is obsessive repetition, is stereo, but where mental health and stimulating environment/reassuring meet, the game allows the interest and curiosity for the outside world with regard to the wishes, fears and fantasies of children. The drive towards the game is given by an oscillation between fear and reassurance that has been deepened by the psychoanalyst also infantile D. Winnicott (1971), according to which the playful attitude is the prototype of the creative experience and is the basis of the sense of identity.

The shared experience of the game is the basis for the development of creative ability in which the child finds the self through the discovery of the other, the mother. The good enough mother meets the wishes of the small right in the moment when he is "hallucinating" the breast, helping to establish a sense of omnipotence which

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strengthens the infantile ego and then allows the child to discover his mother as a separate object. The space where happen this process of gradual "acquisition" of reality is an area of experience that Winnicott calls “area of illusion” or “transitional area”, which is essentially “the area of the game”. When the child reaches this space, accept the separation from the mother, and often in an attempt to draw the anguish of separation, uses "objects-bridge", objects that serve to tie the experience of the self to the previous experience of total dependence on the mother, the “transitional objects”.

The transitional object is an internal object, represents the womb. The formation of the transitional object is only possible if the internal object has been introjected as an object, not too present, but not too weak. Through it the child shows his first interest in the outside world: it has something that is different from itself, that is out, but that does not belong exclusively to external reality, which allows him to be an individual separate from the mother, and not to suffer the terror of separation. Winnicott introduces a significant similarity between the transitional object and the area of the game. The sense of identity is built so within a framework playful metaphor of the original one between mother and child, which then is used to treat a Self-upset or sick. With Winnicott, indeed, the therapy becomes play setting and healing is re-appropriation of the playful dimension of experience. The game is a medium of conjunction, it works as a link between two worlds and opens the way to the process of symbolization. Each game has links with the past, is something special, in which there is a sharing of elements old and familiar with other new and unknown. In this sense, the game is like a transitional object, which connects two opposing worlds, that of the “inside” and that form the “outside”.

2.6. Criticism to the theories of game as an exercise for learning

The conceptions of the year were criticized at the root, because they start form the assumption that they are the primary “serious” activities of life and then justify the game ahead of them. Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1939) sets out clearly the limits of the theories of the exercise “They try to define the meaning of the game with explanations that have in common the assumption that the game takes place in function of something else, that serve to a certain biological scope”.

Starting from a different point of view, EH Erikson (1977), captures the explanations of the game as an exercise, have the flavour of rationalizations before something that escapes the usual schemes “For the adult who works the game is recreation.” As says Erikson's theories exercise would argue that children's play is a job unaware disguised as play.

A defect of the theories of the exercise is that place too much emphasis on the positive character of the game. The existence of the bad game is forgot, bad game that has no educational value but has downsides, of profligacy, vice, moral corruption, cruelty, aggression, destructiveness.

2.7. Theories of game as it is

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The first to develop a conception in which the game is not explained subordinating it to something else, but for what it is, was Johan Huizinga (1939), for who the playful spirit is a fundamental trait of man; We play because play is important as to survive and be productive. Huizinga, however, goes further and puts the game in the centre of civilization. When men give birth to civilization they actually play, because you can only in the game the creativity required is possible, so behind art, science, religion, philosophy, the law we find the playful spirit.

Huizinga was thinking about an historical dialectic between creative moments of the game and moments of crystallization and institutional stabilization. Without this constant dialectic, civilizations decay and degenerate. His dialectical view of history is opposed to the evolutionary one, because it excludes the idea that our civilization represents an advanced consolidated stage and introduces the disturbing viewpoint according to whom we would always be in balance between civilization and barbarism. It’s just losing the balance between tradition and innovation, spirit serious and playful spirit that once we slip into barbarism. Huizinga's thesis were taken from the French essayist Roger Caillois (1958), exhibited at the beginning of the paragraph.

2.8. Classification of game

Evolutionary Taxonomy

The best known classifications of the game are inspired by the theories of the exercise. Some fun activities would belong to the early stages of evolution and others to the more advanced stages because the first help to learn the basic skills, while others can be implemented only when a certain level of maturity is reached. We are speaking about taxonomies because they claim to find correspondence in reality and be systematization of the transformations that the gaming experience suffers with the development. The most famous evolutionary taxonomy is the Piaget’s (1974) who distinguished between motor-sense games or exercise, symbolic games and games with rules. In the first ones, characteristic of the motor-sense period (0-2 years old) the child manipulates the world around him, without working with mental representations of reality.

The symbolic game comes with the pre-operative period (2-6 yeas old) and is a witness that the child now has internal representations of the outside world. Now he uses symbols instead of real things.

For Piaget, the evolution of the games follows the development of intelligence from birth onwards and the gradual overcoming of the childish individualism, which gives way to socialize.

Many of the things supported by Piaget, in the light of subsequent empirical research, reveals themselves erroneous. For example, it is not true that in the first two years of life the is a lack of mental representations and the baby establishes with reality a motor-sense contact. It's also wrong the conviction related to the childish individualism, because it seems that children are socially early-oriented and that their first group

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games are socio-centric, rather than self-centered. Rubin, Fein and Vandenberg (1983) distinguish seven types of games that appear in succession in the development:

The game motor-sense. From an initial period of non-differentiation between the self and non-self, in which each child's activity is focused on his own body and his own actions, we come to the issue of repeated signals, and thus the development of communicative exchanges. The child that is about 12 months tries to understand what objects are and start to use them as something different form the self: it emerges a space between the self and the object.

Pretend play. The child is aware of his “pretend” so he will use the “fake” objects, such as a glass – toy for drinking, or a comb – toy to comb. The toys are used for their real purpose, the shares are still oriented towards the self, but now is present the simulation, the “pretend”.

The processing with objects. Between 15 and 21 months, the recipient of the “pretend” is the other, for example girls serve coffee with cup – Toy to Mom or to doll etc. Objects are still used respecting their real function, but now the child is oriented towards the sharing of “pretend”.

Other games of make-believe. Between 2 and 3 years old children use objects that represent different things from what they are: a chair can become a horse, a bottle can be used as a sword etc., It was born in this period the symbolic function and symbolic play. The event of the representation is extremely important on the affective level, since the object (the other) now becomes increasingly elicited during separations, then always present. The child may resort to mental representation of the mother when she is away from her, he is not absolutely fixed on physical presence.

The sociodramatic game. This game appears around 4-5 year-old, children interpret roles, playing mom and dad, cowboys and Indians.

The awareness of the roles. Near the age of 6, children can describe and define the roles they are playing, plan the game for time and assign roles to the participants. Clearly, they developed a greater awareness and intentionality that reflects the emotional and cognitive development.

The games with the rules appear generally between 6 and 11 years. Initially the children will create specific rules for themselves, then use the rules defined by the group.

Caillois’ typology

Caillois (1958) identifies a series of traits that can serve as a framework for different types of play, in his opinion, there are four basic categories: the competition, the fate, the fiction and the vertigo. Each game can be placed in relation to these four parameters. Many games are based on their ability to association. We can therefore find:

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Competition - Case (Agon - Alea) Competition - Imitation (Agon - Mimicry) Competition - Vertigo (Agon - Ilinx) Case - Imitation (Alea - Mimicry) Case - Vertigo (Alea - Ilinx) Imitation - Vertigo (Mimicry - Ilinx)

The combinations Agon-Alea and Mimicry-Ilinx are for Caillois fundamental to define a sociological theory itself, tracing a political and social evolution of society. We have two essential pairs: Mimicry-Ilinx for primitive societies; Agon-Alea for modern societies.

The first societies were governed and ruled by shamans, the masks, and the time of the collective meeting was the party, understood not in the current sense, but in the ritual practices in which the archaic society believed. It evoked the gods and the fears of everyone. The chieftain wore brutal and scary masks, and truly entered into the character. Both the masked that the public truly believed in the event of the incarnation of the chieftain in the of monster-God. All thanks to the complicity of hallucinogenic substances that help effectively lend the illusion that scary. As the world is adjusted, takes over democracy (in ancient Greece in particular), and with the rise of science, numbers and hereditary careers, the advent of merit and chance get determined. Caillois track a political analysis that explains so brilliant that every society, even the most democratic, always oscillate between Alea and Agon. Both the personal merit and the case of the birth will always have their weight.

Descriptive categories such as theories of game

At present time there are no definitive and certain theories about the nature of the game, it should therefore be careful in using the classifications. Maybe the best thing is to remain at a descriptive level. We can also use the concepts and terms introduced by Piaget, Caillois and others, as long as you consider them as descriptive categories to design the common forms of the game. So you can define the motor-sense game to mean the way children manipulate reality provided that you do not make up just for this motor-sense period of Piaget, at his staging of the development and its conception of the game as an exercise.

2.9. Function of Warm-Up

After giving an overview of the main theoretical and methodological concepts underlying the stage warm-up in psychodrama, is easier to understand what is its function.

The warm-up is defined as the time in which we can bring out the factor S-C, necessary to ensure that the psychodramatic experience is truly authentic and bearer of growth and prosperity. The functions of the game warm-up in the field of psychodrama are manifold. One of these is the transformative function, in the sense that participants have the opportunity to develop expertise in a new way than in the

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past. Through the game you produce a visible and concrete action that brings memories, without whose memory, the game would not be possible, but in this action there is the emergence of a new horizon, there is the discovery of parts of the self not proven yet.

It’s in the discovery of parts of themselves that the game is defined as creative. The game allows you to communicate fluidly and freely a succession of ideas, thoughts, impulses that seem disconnected if interpreted with logical-deductive categories.

This "creative act" is therefore possible in a secure environment, in which people trust each other.

The game becomes a tool of communication, it becomes a bridge to create a climate of sharing in the group.

It's important to convey to the group the importance of this step. In fact, there is a risk that if the participants are not aware of the function of the games of warming up, or they don’t understand the meaning and see them as unnecessary time-wasting activities in respect to the “important” ones.

This is necessary because the setting is very different from the psychodrama training contexts in which people are accustomed. The classroom is completely unstructured. There are tables, to chairs are preferred carpets and pillows, you are in a circle and often you moves in space to perform the exercises. The handler uses a relational informal, open, welcoming and non-judgmental style. Some people might be destabilized by such a situation and experience anxiety and frustration that don’t help in having a good climate. It is therefore necessary, that the conductor takes a few minutes to explain the meaning of what will be introduced. This especially in the first meeting, when then there will be subsequent meetings, this will not be necessary. The warm-up will become instead a ritual that helps participants tune with each other to find the climate that facilitates the drivers of the psychodrama, the tele-activated factor S-C.

The exercises that occur are only some that can be used and it is important that the trainer carefully choose which one is more appropriate to use is a function of the characteristics of the group, such as age, cultural background, the number of participants, sex, etc ... both the objective of the course and/or the individual meeting, and the development of the group, initial, in deep knowledge, confrontational, final, etc... in addition, the trainer may decide to change and adapt creatively. But often it can access the same dynamic of the group to transform the game, making it always new and different from himself.

Can be used as warm-up activities even many of the activities presented earlier, it is important for this reason that the handler/trainer insert and contextualizes the game in the perspective of the whole meeting, so that it is aimed to the emergence of those aspects that you want then treat in the central part of the session.

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3. Examples of Warm-Up Activity

3.1. Activities to facilitate the presentations

General aim: knowing each others

When participants meet for the first time, it may be helpful to use an activity that allows everyone to introduce themselves and exchange personal/professional information. One could help to make the participants talk to each other and exchange personal information, another might help to listen and memorize the names of others, and another could be used during a break.

SOCIOMETRIE

The sociometrie in action can be useful activities of warm up. You can ask the participants to stand for example according to the alphabetical order: according to the proper name, or depending on the date of birth. Then to stand more or less distant from the center of the room, which represents the place where you are now, according to the place of birth or to the current residence.

BLOCKED

Participants are stranded on an island. What are the five things that everyone would bring with himself. After a first individual stage, we ask the group to choose only five things for the whole group. If the group is very large, you can introduce an intermediate stage with sub-groups of 4-5 people.

A LIE AND TWO TRUTHS

Each participant is asked to say three things about himself, one of which must be a lie. The group must work together and guess which is the false one.

IF I WERE AN ANIMAL I WOULD BE…

We ask the participants to present themselves saying what animal they would be and explaining why. Is possible to make several variants, for example, which city in the world they would be, or which piece of furniture, which plant, etc.

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I LOOK LIKE YOU

Participants receive a sheet with a circle divided into six quadrants, in each quadrant is written a feature, for example, eye colour, hair colour, favorite food, sport practiced, etc ... each participant writes his answers in the quadrant and apply the sheet on the chest, then he/she moves around the room and looks for others with the same characteristics, when he/she finds them continue to go around in pairs, then in trio and so on, until you create a chain of all the group, made according to similar features.

THE CARDS OF CHINESE EMPERORS

Each participant was given a Chinese paper, and without looking at it they had to hold the paper with a hand on their head, so that the paper was seen by others but not by the owner. With the paper on the head the group members had to interact in consideration of the paper level, and, depending on the modality of interaction of colleagues, each one would have to understand the degree of the paper he had on his head.

Before that participants can see their card, they are asked to divide themselves into three groups: high-grade paper, paper of medium grade, low-grade paper; and according to what they choose a group rather than another, and then verify the correspondence of their own perceptions with the paper held.

The exercise of the Chinese cards allows to reflect and raise awareness with respect to how you live the role, hierarchy, processes of labelling, possible stereotypes. The different groups of interest have agreed that would be interesting to apply it to the conduct of a task, even simple (eg. prepare the coffee break), in which the orientation of the aim, to the success and taking of roles can amplify and accentuate the dynamics experienced.

THE INTERVIEW

Participants are asked to write on a paper three questions they would like to ask to others to know them better.

You put the questions in a box, then one by one each participant extracts the questions and answers.

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A variant may be to separate the participants into pairs and make them answer before and just later in plenary.

PRESENTATION AND ALLITERATION

We ask members of the group to stand up in the shape of a circle. The conductor begins presenting himself through a feature that starts with the same letter of its name, for example, "Yan the Young," or "The Beautiful Betty", "Henry hardworking." In addition to the adjective each participant must associate a gesture. Everyone says his name and feature and makes the gesture, just after, in chorus the whole group repeats the name, feature and gesture.

BALL

With a ball each participant presents himself saying his name and a positive and a negative characteristic of himself, then passes the ball to another, that before present himself as well, has to repeat what the person that has thrown the ball to him said. The ploy helps to concentrate and stay alert, because you can’t know when the ball will be launched to you.

GARBLE THE NAMES WITH THE TANGLE

We use a ball of wool, which is launched as a ball, but each person holds a flap of the wire before launch it, so that at the end a grid of wires is created. In launching you can use the same question used in the game of the ball. Finally the group is asked about how they will rewind the ball. The best way is to let them do the reverse path. Then each persona is asked, while throwing the ball to the person who has thrown it to him before, to say something, such as a feature, an appreciation about the other.

NAME AND NUMBER

While people enter the place where the meeting will take place, they write their names on cards and write a number on the other side of the same. Everybody has the name on his shirt (use transparent tape, for example) and must present themselves to the greatest number of people is possible. After some time, when participants could socialize a bit, ask to everyone to turn the card on the opposite side so that only the

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number is visible to others and not the name. Now give all participants a sheet of paper, and ask everyone to write the names of the other participants beside the corresponding number of each.

PAT ON THE BACK

Ask everyone to trace the outline of their hand on a sheet of paper, and then fix it on the back of each one using tape. You let the group spend a bit of time to socialize and ask them to write on the back of each every positive things this person said.

I NEVER…

Everyone must have some candy in the hand. People arranged in a circle begin to respond, one at a time, to the question: “I never...”. Who is liable to have done what the person asking the question has never done, will give to that person one of his candy. This is a funny way to learn about others things that maybe you would not ever know.

ME TOO

This activity works best with small groups or larger groups that are divided into smaller sub-groups consisting of 4-6 persons.

1. Everybody receive 10 coins/toothpicks/sheets of paper, etc. 2. The first person says one thing he did (for example, "water skiing"). 3. All those who have done the same thing have to admit it and should put a coin in the middle of the table. 4. Then the second person says something else (for example, "I have already eaten ostrich meat"). 5. All those who have already eaten it have to put a coin in the middle. 6. Continue until one of the participants ends the coins.

COMMON FIELD

Even this activity works best for small groups and for small groups seated together creating a team (4-6 persons). Give the group a specific time available (for example, 5 minutes) to write all they have in common. Inform groups to avoid the obvious (such as "we all like to be part of this course"). When the time is finished, ask each group how many things in common they have been able to find. As fun, ask the groups to read aloud the more interesting.

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CRISTAL BALL

In this game each, instead of asking another something, focuses on another member and shares what he imagines: “I imagine that you live alone with two children” ... “I imagine that you're a school teacher, and very strict with the students” ... “I think you're very kind to your family” ... “I think when you were little you were very naughty” ... “I think you read a lot”... Then everyone responds by saying if the things imagined are actually true or not.

MY SELFPORTRAIT WITH A SYMBOL

In this case, we ask the group to make a presentation through a drawing of themselves. The instruction can be to use a symbol, for example: draw the tree that represent you better, or draw the animal, or object, etc...

MY SELFPORTRAIT WITH A COLLAGE

A variant of the previous game may be to provide the group a series of images taken from magazines. So ask the group to make a collage that represents or representing a characteristic of themselves.

3.2. Team building activities

General aim:

These activities can be performed at any time of the life cycle of the group and be used both as initial time of warming up, and later to investigate some issues that raise.

BLIND NUMERICAL ORDER

In this game you can’t speak, eyes must always be blindfolded, a number will be whispered in the ear of each participant. The goal for the group is to arrange themselves in numerical order without being able to speak or see.

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Blindfold the eyes of all the participants. You whisper a number in the ear of each of them (make sure that the other participants do not hear the number). The numbers should be chosen randomly (not just 1-12, etc.). After whispering the number to all the participants, take them in a place. As soon as all participants have received your number they will start. Make sure that no one gets hurt during this exercise.

COUNTING IN A CIRCLE

The willing participants standing in a circle with their eyes closed, have to count in a progressive way, saying each of them a number only once. You can’t say the number more than one time. If that happens you have to start again.

ALL TIED UP

Needed materials: handkerchiefs or strips of cloth, more if needed.

Time Required: 15-30 minutes, depending on the objectives and the number of participants. The aim is to work as a team to achieve the common goal. You participants are standing in a circle looking inward. Ask the group to get their hands on. Tie the members of the group to each other, so that each participant is tied to the wrists of the neighbour. Now that they are "all connected", you give them a job to do together. Such as: make gift packs using wrapping paper, bows and note, eat lunch, make a drawing, etc.

THE BICYCLE

Draw a bicycle on a billboard. Ask each participant to arrange themselves on a piece of the bicycle and to explain why they have chosen that place. You can use other objects, such as a car, a tree, etc.

HUMAN MACHINES

Ask a group of 6 or 8 people to create a machine using other people, trying to mimic the appearance and operation of a machine. In other cases, you may ask to imitate a blender, a toaster, a lawn mower, a photocopier, a lamp or a washing machine, a ship, etc.

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WHISPER THE PHRASE

You create two teams and the conductor make the first competitor of each group to read a sentence, sentence that must then be whispered in the ear of the close companion, and so on until the last competitor of each team, which must then come to pronounce it in front of the public. When the handler will read to the public the initial phrase, there will be funny differences. This continues with other sentences and wins the team that distorts less sentences.

DRAW ON THE BACK

A variant of the previous game consists in let the two teams arrange themselves in a row, so that everyone has his back in front of the companion. The first of the row must draw a word on the back of the persona ahead. The aim of the game is to make the word arrive correctly at the bottom of the row.

RAIN

Ask everyone to stand in a circle, shoulder to shoulder. It is not allowed to speak. The conductor starts the exercise and each person joins when they hear the sound that the person at his side is doing. The handler begins the exercise starting to rub his palms together. The exercise is repeated in a circle until it comes back to the conductor that, at this point, changes the sound (for example, by cracking his fingers, clapping, clapping his hands on his thighs, stamping his feet, and then in reverse order). The sound that is created is similar to the sound of a downpour.

CONSENSUS

This game is divided into several stages. Divide participants into groups of 3 or 4 people, depending on the total number of participants. 2. Ask each group to congregate close to each other and produce sounds and to make the movements for the other groups. 3. After each group has performed twice its demonstration of sound and action for the other groups, the moderator will give 10 seconds to each other group to regroup. 4. The objective is to ensure that all groups produce sounds and make movements simultaneously, and without consult each other. 5. After the group has

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gathered the moderator will count till three, and all groups will have to produce sounds and do the movements at the same time. (It is not necessary that the sounds/gestures are the same as those originally chosen by the group). 6. Continue to group the groups until all groups are in tune and produce the same sounds and do the same movements. Variations: If for some reason the groups can make it at the second or third attempt, divide the participants into smaller groups, and then repeat the exercise.

BALL AND PHRASE

Participants are asked to form a circle, and are said that soon they will be able to improve their communication skills to improvise a speech. Participants at this point will have to pull the stress ball from one to another, saying at the same time a simple descriptive phrase: (“the quiet lake, the young girl, the beautiful skyline of the city, a huge grizzly bear, the stress ball, etc.”). Tell them that since there are no rules, you can’t go wrong by saying a wrong sentence! Tell the group begin to pull the ball from one to another until all the participants start to feel comfortable improvising a sentence (it usually takes less than 5 minutes). When you think that the group has achieved this level of communication, expects someone throws the ball to the conductor which ends the game holding the ball. Draws now the game but must respect a rule, the phrase must follow a logical continuing when stated in the previous sentence. That is, if a person says a sentence and then passes the ball to another, the person receiving the ball will have to say a phrase that refers to the preceding sentence. Start the conductor with a couple of steps.

The fabricated story begins the conductor saying the phase "Once upon a time" then asks the participants to say each a word without thinking about what to say, gradually conductor writes the words that come out, in the end it will be created a fabricated story in a collective way.

THE POSTMAN

Participants are asked to write something that has never said to another member of the group, then put the messages enclosed in an envelope. The conductor that is the postman, brings messages to recipients who read what was written. You can leave free the participants to sign messages, or not, in order to give more freedom to say things.

THE WEATHER MOOD

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On the three sides of the classroom are posted three different signs, which refer to the state of mind associated to weather conditions: clear, cloudy, rain. Participants are placed and then express a brief judgment on their mood and possible motives.

MASSAGES

Participants are invited to start the activity with physical contact, rubbing each other, and heating the interest and curiosity for the next activity.

RELAXATION AND GUIDED FANTASIES

Invites participants to lie down or sit in a comfortable position and to close their eyes. You drive the breathing in a relaxed rhythm and guide the awareness on the body and on the state of tension in the limbs. You can also introduce a guided fantasy that can lead participants to contact an aspect of their history, such as the memory of the first day of school, or when you learned to ride a bike. This according to the subject or target group.

THE KNOT OF HANDS

You have the group in a circle near shoulder to shoulder. Ask them to close their eyes and put all the right hand forward higher and the left hand always forward, but lower. Make them to take a few steps forward until the participants don’t touch each other hands. Make sure that each right hand take another right hand, and the same for the left. The conductor helps make that happen. At this point make them open the eyes and the group must dissolve the tangle of hands without ever leave them.

IMAGINARY BALL

Arranged in a circle, the conductor pretends to hold a ball that goes to the person who is at his right side through the gesture of clap the hands in the direction of the person who is at the right side and everyone continues, then introduces the double clap to change around. When the group is accustomed to the game introduces another change: the launch to the opposite side through a snap. You can introduce several variations, depending on the group's ability to play the game.

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BOSS MAKES US CHANGE

The conductor asks a participant to go out, the rest of the group chooses who is the conductor of the game and make enter the person who has to guess. The “boss” chooses a gesture that everyone else should do while the group repeats it rhythmically saying the rhyme “head let us change, let us change the head, if you do not let us change we will change the head...”. The “boss” must introduce new gestures undetected and if he wants can pass the lead of the game to another, winking at someone who now become the chief and must introduce a new gesture. It goes on until is guessed who the boss is.

THE MASCOT

Standing in a circle. The conductor is holding a stuffed animal, caressing it. He tells the group that this is the new mascot and that everyone will have to make a gesture of any kind to welcome it. Everyone will do something different, you can choose freely. For example, I give it a kiss on the cheek, give it a pat on the back, give it a kick, I give it a hug, etc... Once finished the tour, the conductor says that now everyone must do again what he did to the mascot, to the seatmate.

3.3. Activities to do on the move

General aim:

These activities have in particular the feature of further stimulating the body part of the self. Through the game of movement the group gets energized, is stimulated a positive energy charge, which often passes through the experience of pleasure and fun of the game's entertainment.

WALKING IN THE ROOM

The conductor asks participants to walk freely in the room, gradually asks to do different gaits, slower or faster, asks to imitate the pace of animals or people. Then he asks to seek the gaze of others whenever someone else is met. Asks you to make an expression of greeting, such as a smile, then asks to introduce a gesture, then a word such as "hello". The variants may be

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different depending on the time available and the purpose that you want to achieve. This type of game is the introductory for example to the sociometries in action.

KITTY-KAT

Divide the group into pairs and make them stand arm in arm in the space. With the exception of two which are unrelated to the others, one is the "cat" and the other is the "kitty". The cat has to chase the kitty and takes it making a roar both with his voice and with the gesture. The kitten saves himself by attaching to one of the two couples who are still. The member of the couple that stays outside must release and becomes the kitten until it’s hit by the roar of the big cat or until it attaches to another couple.

THE BRIDGE OF CHAIRS

Divide the group into two and give an equal number of seats to the number of each team. The chairs are arranged in a horizontal line to the wall of the room. The participants will have to get to the other side of the room walking on the chairs, no one can touch the ground, neither you can go back. Each team must therefore find their own strategy and ensure that the chairs become a bridge.

FULL SACK EMPTY SACK

The conductor makes the participants take place in any order in the room. He makes them turn all in his direction: the game is to do exactly what he sets out loud. The key phrases are: super full sack, full sack, half sack, empty sack, super empty sack. Participants must think of be the sacks and then visually represent what was stated by the conductor. The postures that need to be taken are: – super full sack: standing with arms raised; - full sack: standing with arms along the body; – half sack means: standing folded with one hand touching the ground; – Empty sack: on his knees with both hands touching the ground; – super empty sak: completely lying on the ground.

THE GAME OF CHAIRS

Put many chairs in the middle of the playing field. The number of participants must be greater than the number of chairs. The music starts and everybody dance or run around the chairs without touching them, until, once the music stopped, everyone try to

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sit. Players redundancies are eliminated, then the game starts again removing a chair and eliminating a competitor at a time. Wins the last one left.

NAPOLEON

The game starts with Napoleon (one participant) disposed on one side of the field and the other participants distributed in the remaining field inside circles. Behind Napoleon is arranged a prison. At the Go, Napoleon said: “I declare war on...” (the name of another participant) and pursues him. Who runs must try to return to his circle, or to make free the imprisoned companion touching them. Napoleon wins if captures all and brings them in prison.

ALL MIXER AND TOASTER

In this game the participants stand in a circle and one is at the centre. Who is at the centre must “call” some animated statues which are represented by members of the group that gradually are indicated by one in the middle. The aim is to facilitate the mistakes in interpreting the figure. Who has to go wrong should go in the middle. The statues are called: Blender: represented by a person who is still at the centre with the arms raised and the hands closed with the index finger pointing towards the head of the two people to the sides, which must turn in on themselves; toaster: played by three people, who is at the centre bounces, interpreting the slice of bread that comes from the mouth of the toaster, and people to the sides are given hands, personifying the mouth; Elephant: three people, who is at the centre holding the nose with one hand and another arm forward, symbolizing the trunk, the two people to the sides open their arms on the side of the person at the centre, symbolizing the ears; Palm: three people, the person at the centre raises his arms open and stretched, the two people on either sides simulate the Hawaiian dance. You can introduce many other figures, according to the inventiveness of the conductor and the participants.

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Sternberg, R. J., Forsythe, G. B., Hedlund, J., Horvath, J., Snook, S., Williams, W. M., Wagner, R. K., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2000). Practical intelligence in everyday life. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Torrance, E. P. (1980). Growing Up Creatively Gifted: The 22-Year Longitudinal Study. The Creative Child and Adult Quarterly, 3, 148-158.

Torrance, E. P. (1981a). Predicting the creativity of elementary school children (1958 80) and the teacher who “made a difference”. Gifted Child Quarterly, 25, 55-62.

Torrance, E. P. (1981b). Empirical validation of criterionreferenced indicators of creative ability through a longitudinal study. Creative Child and Adult Quarterly, 6, 136-140.

Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock, It. tr. Gioco e realtà, Roma: Armando, 1974.

4.2. Italian bibliography

Boria G., 1997, Lo psicodramma classico, Milano, Franco Angeli. Caillois, R. (1958), I giochi e gli uomini: la maschera e la

vertigine, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gioco - cite_ref-6; R. Caillois, I giochi e gli uomini, Bompiani, Di Chiara A. (2012), Paidia – cenni per una filosofia dell’esistenza come gioco. Il Ramo editore.

Huizinga J. (1939) Homo Ludens, It. tr. (1964), Homo ludens. Milano: Il Saggiatore. Jung C.G.( 1994). La psiche infantile. 1909-61 (1909-61), Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Lemoine G. (1980) Il Gioco: giocare-godere, in Jouer – Jouir, Atti dello Psicodramma,

Anno quinto, n°1-2, Ubaldini editore, Roma,

Rosati, O. (2012). Interpretazione nel gioco e interpretazione del gioco in psicodramma. http://www.rivistapsicologianalitica.it/v2/pdf2/38-1988-discorso_inconscio/38-88-cap12_interpretazione.pdf

Seneca, L. A. (50) De tranquillitate animi, Caput XVII, retrieved on line 14/10/2014

http://www.senecana.it/pdf/de_tranquillitate_animi.pdf

Vygotsky L. S. 1972 Immaginazione e creatività nell'età infantile, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1990

Further information – Web links: http://www.stateofmind.it/2012/02/creativita-emozioni/ http://www.cre8ng.com/ http://www.fastcocreate.com/ http://www.copyblogger.com/ http://nuovoeutile.it/intelligenza-e-creativita-non-proprio-la-stessa-cosa/

5.

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