La triple temporalité du transfert dans la médiation thérapeutique par le jeu de rôle

Objectives

Following on from our research into mediation through role-playing games, we are investigating the ways in which transference is expressed given the characteristics of this medium which combines game activity and collective narrations. From this perspective, we hypothesize that it mobilises a specific form of transference at the origin of particular therapeutic movements.

Patients and method

We met with two groups of adolescents (7 adolescents altogether) in a therapeutic mediation through role-playing games, conducted by a psychologist and an educator in an adapted educational institution. We proposed a grid for identifying transference movements, making it possible to characterize the nature of these movements and to differentiate their scene of emergence between group and narrative. We studied the transcripts of all the workshop sessions to highlight the emerging processes and their evolution.

Results

Our results showed that the transference was initially generalised and marked by massive tendencies to express aggression, denial or rejection of the other and the group. Over time, the mode of relationship to the object seemed to evolve, drawing on the transference enabled by the psychologist and the educator and by the link between relationships at the actual and narrative levels.

Discussion

The role-playing game reveals itself as a place of projection of the relational dynamics and representations of the relationships. The medium then reveals the pitfall in the creation of a bond and the recognition of the object's place, and the underlying anxieties. However, it also becomes a transformer of relationships because it allows the emergence of a transference that is first diffracted in the narrative envelope, which secondly authorizes a movement of recovery and a relief of group relationships.

Conclusion

The role-playing game offers spaces for projection that takes account of the suffering linked to the situation of encounter within the group. It is also a place where relational dynamics can unfold, protected from the destructiveness of acting through the prism of narrative and a three-stage transfer that contributes to the process of historicization.