How do Couple Therapists and Social Process Designers play? How do their views of play differ from each other? What can we learn from them about adult play?
To answer these questions we are designing a qualitative study where leading couple therapists and designers will be interviewed. We are interested in how each of these practitioners approaches the concept of play and how are their views of play differ.
Why did we pick these practitioners? Both of these professions value play. Both forms of practitioners draw on the notion of play as a way to be creatively responsive to their clients. But how do the define play? And how do they think of their play? And how do they “mark” or “punctuate” what is play is of interest to us? Additionally, do their notions of play include Bava’s notion of co-creating, emergence and presence as part of play? Lastly, is play contagious? Do they find themselves being more playful in their personal lives due to their professional lives?
Additionally, we are interested in what do leading Couple Therapists have to say about what aspects of couple’s play do we need to study? Why? Based on their experience, how can we promote play among couples? And how can we promote play in couples therapy? These findings will help us to design our next inquiry which will be focused on couple’s play.
