Part 7 - The Fantasy of Connecting the Parents
For years children continue to hope that their parents will again become a couple and that the family’s “wholeness” will be restored. Sometimes they act out problems in school or do other things - anything to make the parents get back together.
The frame story of the game – the split of the islands and setting out on the journey to successfully construct a zipper big enough to be able to join the islands together, is a metaphor for this yearning.
Throughout the game, both hero and player strive for this goal. It is a fantasy of omnipotence, and of course most of the children do not have the power and it is not their task to bring their parents back together again.
The game deals with the unrealistic nature of this yearning through exaggerated paradoxical humor [28]. One example is the episode in which the hero tells the oyster he is going to save the world. The oyster’s reply is: “Pretty big plans for someone stuck on such a tiny island.”
Or in the episode with the piranhas, when the hero tells the fish, his pets, that he wants to join the islands together again, they burst out laughing and say:
“You’re right; it’s a great idea… Will you be doing that before or AFTER you solve the energy crisis and put a stop to global warming?”
Studies show that for families with a history of serious fighting prior to the separation, having the family “fall apart” helps them to adapt more easily to the loss. Those players for whom this is their reality might, in our opinion, not identify with the earthquake at the actual time of divorce, but rather with the period of crisis in their lives that might have occurred years before the divorce itself. Each person and his own earthquake, each person and his own paradise to which he wants to return.
The earthquake creates a new situation characterized by an emotional break, a situation fraught with pain.
Continue reading “Part 8 - Feelings of Guilt and Blame”
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[28] Madness, C. (1984). Behind The One-Way Mirror.(pp. 115-139).
