ABSTRACT

Children are born with phantasies, both conscious and unconscious, which are given expression in everything they do. Their play of repeatedly dropping objects for their parents to pick up demonstrates their need to be reassured that mother and father are reliably present to respond to them. The children's repeated requests for a fairy tale to be read suggest that the imaginative portrayal of love, loss, jealousy, hate, courage, and hope captures the children's emotional experiences which urgently require dramatisation and thinking by the child in the security of the parents' supportive, thoughtful presence. Patrizia Pasquini, the founder of Tempo Lineare, has fully appreciated children's urge to give expression to their emotions through listening to stories, playing with their little box of toys, as well as with each other, and listening to the fairy tales. Tempo Lineare gives credence to the belief that children need the emotional space to discover the well of creative imagination within themselves.