Avant-garde Videogames: Playing with Technoculture

and embodied awareness, which establishes the conditions for metaphor, play, imagination, and inspiration. These four conditions are the subjects of the final four chapters. Particularly interesting is the emphasis on play, which in this context extends far beyond the more traditional notions of play therapy, rough-and-tumble play, or even imaginative play. Play here is discussed in a very specific way as an intersubjective and intercontextual play between two people that focuses more on improvisation than structured play of any kind. Play holds an important place in this book because it is one of its ultimate goals and is discussed in the context of the often subtle and complex empathic interplay between two human beings in a particular space and time. This kind of play is intimately linked with intuition, imagination, creativity, and the ability to learn and gain insight from new ideas and feelings. This book offers a significant contribution to the evolving discipline of play studies through its focus on play as both an outcome and a critical aspect of intuitive empathic responsiveness and understanding. According to Marks-Tarlow, the purpose of play in this context is that it “entrains, improvises, paces, synchronizes coordinates, and teaches turn-taking and syncopation to participants; is intrinsically rewarding; makes therapy fun, inspiring, emotionally rich, if not spiritually elevating; grants us the safety to take emotional risks; offers transference-countertransference communications that express social connection (or lack thereof); encourages creativity, discovery and innovation” (p. 142). Clearly written and accessible, the book makes an invaluable tool for not only developing and honing clinical intuition as a skill that enhances therapeutic effectiveness in the actual moment-tomoment work of psychotherapy but also for the continued self-care and personal growth of clinicians and care givers themselves. By paying careful attention to the internal “gardens” of intuition, clinicians will maximize their ability to be fully present for and with their patients, to increase their ability to know when and how to use historical and theoretical information to facilitate their patients’ growth and development, and to play creatively in the intimate relating that is the essence of psychotherapeutic work. As Marks-Tarlow states in the epilogue, “The more of each clinical day we spend immersed in these intuitive right-brain modes of perceiving and responding, the easier it is to attain prolonged states of flow. Here is where we dance in intersubjective space with our patients. Here is where we move spontaneously to the music of a co-created song” (p. 195). This is play as the heart of creative transformative healing.