ABSTRACT
This chapter is intended to be a testimony to how much, following a training using the active imagination technique, is favored, in my internal setting, an attitude of active imagination (Adler, 1966). This attitude, inserted within a shared game rule book (the setting), has proved to be fundamental, especially in work with adolescent patients. The following clinical case discussed by the author is, in fact, the representation, on an applicative level, of what he affirms.
This specific attitude, to which Colangeli gave the name Active Imaginal Play, is divided into four phases, explained in detail in the following paragraphs, with examples taken from clinical work. This allows, at first, the therapist to co-construct a play area with the patient, where they can meet each other. Between the anguish and fear of the symptoms, the first emerging images, to which I will refer as Playing Characters and Dramatis Personae, at that point, play together, literally, in the space of the session. They will facilitate, in subsequent interviews, the untying of deep affective knots, managing, finally, to contact and integrate emotions, up to that moment, dramatically represented and acted out, as we will see, in that transition from Masks to Avatars (Phase 4).
