Shadows, Spectacles and Forbidden Pleasure: A Few Notes on Why Video Games Have Been Marginalized

“It is therefore fairly surprising that, almost a full decade into the 21st century, video games as a whole continue to be somewhat marginalized in American culture, often perceived as a frivolous distraction at best, a menace to society at worst.” -IntegralLife

“And while much debate exists within the humanities as to the legitimacy of video games as a narrative medium, or even as bona fide art form, it’s hard to overlook the striking similarity between these discussions and the way cinema was received in the beginning of the 20th century.” -IntegralLife

Prejudice against immersion in imaginative activities, or the cultural products of “active imaginations,” actually traces itself all the way back to Plato, whose prejudice against “poetry” or all art in general (which was all seen as “imitation”) was based almost entirely upon this. Plato saw some value in these types of activities for children, educationally, but only under certain important restrictions. These restrictions had everything to do with learning, being taught and fulfilling what amounts to an amber-self and place within society. It was amber because that self and place had, and was seen as having, only one possible definition, predestined and predetermined at birth and even before. There are implications here of class distinction, and class distinction based upon gender and type, occupation, social status and all the rules of a sort which may have been fine or necessary for human evolution into organized society out of tribalism and egoism–and 2,500 years ago–but which are most definitely outdated today. It was “imitation” that was philosophically the big culprit for Plato on two counts. One, because to “imitate” something someone was not (as defined by their worldly predestination) might encourage an individual to actually “become” that which he/she “imitated” or at least cause them to strongly desire to become such.

"Lest from imitation they should come to be what they imitate . . ."

Thus it was a menace to society. A stonemason must be a stonemason and not a soldier, philosopher or statesmen. If so, organized society begins to fall apart . . . Desiring to be what you are not by definition of predestination (etc.) is unhealthy, and eventually pathological. Imitating animals and such, acts, characteristics and characters of a “”lower sort?” All the worse . . . The second count of the treachery of imaginative activities for Plato was spiritual. Essentially it was a compounding of illusion, a compounding of the shadows of the cave, sending humanity further away from the light, further fascinating him only with ever-changing shadows.

Thus, if the history of all Western philosophy is comprised of nothing other than footnotes to Plato, there are still ways in which we have to come to terms with how a very long philosophic, academic, scientific, religious and socio-cultural history has indeed been laced with a longstanding and influential prejudice against focused engagement in imaginative activities (e.g. fantasy) that only very recently–within the last 100 to 300 years–began to fall apart. We fear such engagements, while at the same time, we desire them . . . The other arts –music, painting, sculpture, etc.–which can to some degree stand on their own without necessarily employing the propositional imagination or overt imaginative activity (a reality we can detect when studying autistic children, savants, etc. in whom the propositional imagination appears to be impaired) have all long since risen past the Platonic prejudice against “poetry.” But when it comes to the overtly imaginative, engagements of the imagination and products of the same – fiction, fantasy, theatre, movies, television, video games and an entire cross-section of cultural arts and entertainment human beings obviously love–we must realize, we still have a ways to go. There are some footnotes that still need to be written.

We can’t, however, blame the prejudice all on Plato. While having ideas of his own, his philosophy is reflective of a much wider–and apparently somewhat natural (with a question mark)–human fear of the development and use of focused imaginative activity. There are still cultures in the world today that forbid their children to play games of pretend. But what’s interesting is that in these cultures the children will still play games of pretend, they will just go to lengths to make sure that their parents and other adults don’t find out about it. Strangely, imaginative activity for human beings has, or has developed for some odd reason, a quality of forbidden pleasure . . .

(A post of Corey’s in the “Press Play to Grow” blog was reflective of this: in essence, “you must not find out I am a science fiction geek! But!–be sure to read this totally awesome book!” A post of Chistophe’s was similar: Phew, thank god I managed to pull myself away and attend to “real life.” These, along with a host of others, are cultural attitudes and stereotypes which absolutely have roots in our cultural past, not all the vagaries of which have yet been overcome (perhaps especially in academia). We could and can most definitely do a Foucaultian genealogy on all the associated language, etc. Every associated word also carries with it a potentially negative or derogatory connotation: fiction, fantasy, pretend, pretending, pretense, player, playing, play, game, spectacle, theatre, theatrical, imagination, drama, dramatic, magic, magical, illusion, acting, actor, Hollywood, entertainment . . . But nowadays when we speak of something as "musical," "poetic," like a "sculpture" it means all the more beautiful. And yes, associations with magenta, and later red–either childishness, egoism, or association with pagan activity–have been a big factor.)

It was the advent of the orange self that began to change all that. (And note that it is not just orange cognition but what appears to be orange self, which would follow the advent of cognition. Using the psychograph, and the WC-Lattice, this seems to be the only way to account for Plato and for other philosophers who would echo his views, sometimes quite violently. It also could be either amber in the imaginative-fantasy line and/or ultimately outright repression of that line for a number of possible reasons.) The first writings that suddenly expound a wholly new and different view on imaginative activities can be found beginning in the Renaissance. Proteus, the symbol of ever changing form, the antithesis of the amber world and Platonic self in society was now suddenly beginning to be seen as the very definition of humanity. Mankind’s accomplishment, and gift, was that he, unlike all of the other creatures in existence, had a choice in what he could be and what he could become. Humanity could dream, humanity could transform itself into anything that it wanted. And we can all note this idea, which was a major shift in thinking, in our own Western cultural conditioning as well. You do not have to be what your parents were, or do what your parents did; you are not bound by class-distinction, occupation or economic background, etc. You can discover and follow whatever your own dreams and aspirations are, and we, and our culture, generally now encourage our children to realize just that. In an important sense, the Renaissance shift was also a new embrace of the Descending Current, the plentitude and bounty of the manifest Kosmos, and its continual change–now more increasingly seen as growth–as opposed to the immutable, unchanging nature of the transcendent. In Di dignitate hominis, Pico della Mirandola writes:

O supreme generosity of God the Father, O highest and most marvelous felicity of man! To him it is granted to have whatever he chooses, to be whatever he wills. Beasts as soon as they are born . . . bring with them from their mother’s womb all they will ever possess. Spiritual beings, either from the beginning or soon thereafter, become what they are to be for ever and ever. On man when he came into life the Father conferred the seeds of all kinds and the germs of every way of life. . . . Who would not admire this our chameleon? It is man who Asclepius of Athens, arguing from his mutability of character and from his self-transforming nature, on just grounds says was symbolized by Proteus in the mysteries. Hence those metamorphoses renowned among the Hebrews and Pathagoreans.

Suddenly, along with the advent of this new way of thinking was suddenly re-advent of certain forms of art which had been overtly suppressed, in ways most people–even artists and scholars–might not realize, for well over a thousand years (although prejudice can be traced well before that), such as theatre and fiction along with a much more positive attitude toward the value of entertainment and “pleasurable” activities. Piaget describes this shift almost identically with the advent of formal operations in adolescence, where

. . .the subject succeeds in freeing himself from the concrete and in locating reality within a group of possible transformations. This . . . fundamental decentering . . . whose principal characteristic is a . . . liberation form the concrete in favor of interest oriented toward the non-present [e.g. imaginary world] and future [e.g. imagined possibilities]. This is the age of great ideals and of the beginning of theories . . . Indeed the essential difference between formal thought and concrete operations is that the latter are focused upon reality, whereas the former grasps the possible transformations and assimilates reality only in terms of imagined or deduced events.

(My emphasis.) The propositional imagination does not emerge at this stage, it just suddenly takes on a whole new significance.

And hence today, toward play, toward Plato’s “imitation,” we now find attitudes like this from Howard Gardner:

Through talk, pretend play, gestures, drawing and the like, the young child tries out facets of the roles of mother and child, doctor and patient, policeman and robber, teacher and pupil, astronaut and Martian. In experimenting with these role fragments, the child comes to know not only which behavior is associated with these individuals but also something about how it feels to occupy their characteristic niches. At the same time, children come to correlate the behavior and the states of other persons with their own personal experiences: by identifying with what is positive or negative, anxiety provoking or relaxing, powerful or impotent, youngsters effect and important step in defining what they are and what they are not, what they wish to be and what they’d rather avoid.

It is the last sentence that is reflective of the entirely new post-orange perspective. The child is free to discover who she is in potential or who she might be, without the restriction of predestination, occupation, class, type, etc. The child is free to discover who she is by her own nature and choice. But understanding this history, it was really only in the late 1800s that play began to receive serious inquiry and much of this inquiry was motivated by maturation of this new shift in attitude, based on the intuition that play, imaginative activity, etc. was something important and not being properly seen as such. One of the first investigators into play was Stanley Hall whose ideas have long since been largely discredited (outside of, say, advocating sports for boys), but it was a start . . . It was Karl Groos who made the first significant and highly influential advance in our cultural thinking about play and his accomplishments influence even the common household with children (and pets!), and common attitude toward children’s playing, to this day. As Piaget wrote:

The importance of the ideas which as long ago as 1896 K. Groos opposed to the accepted views on play cannot be exaggerated. In spite of the prophetic visions of the great educationists, play has always been considered, in traditional education, as a kind of mental wasteland, or at least a pseudo-activity, without functional significance, and even harmful to children . . . K. Groos saw in play a phenomenon of growth, growth of thought and of activity, and he was the first to ask why various forms of play exist.

Although he does not specify, one of the great educationists Piaget may have been referring to was the otherwise brilliant Maria Montessori (who actually influenced his own work). As the contemporary developmental psychologist Angeline Lillard explains, “on most of her major points, Montessori's ideas were correct” based upon the cumulative findings of empirical research into how children learn. However, “The one major exception, which has to be considered in its socio-historical context, is her negative appraisal of pretend play.” While science has continued to validate nearly all of Montessori’s progressive ideas, it also continues to prove that previous cultural attitudes toward pretend play (imaginative activity), which can be traced back to as recently as less than a hundred years ago, were incredibly wrong. Far from a mental wasteland, it continually proves empirically to be one of the most powerful drivers of cognitive development. And there may be many reasons to still discover and argue as to why this actually is . . .

For Groos, play was the pre-exercise of skills to be used in the rest of life. It was the result of an abundance of “surplus energy” created by the very presence of these skills in potential. Human children, even more so than any other animal, are born with a wealth of such potential acquired by the species through evolution. (e.g. "On man when he came into life the Father conferred the seeds of all kinds and the germs of every way of life. . . ." ) Thus children will naturally, through impulse, seek to explore and realize such as a vital and important aspect of growth and development into adulthood. But if we can acknowledge that development can continue past physical (or societal) adulthood, then we can certainly acknowledge that Groos thesis does not necessarily ware out, especially from a perspective of self-actualization–as both a stage (teal) and as a continual, endless process (turquoise, indigo). Abraham Maslow would seem to concur. “People with intelligence must use their intelligence, people with eyes must use their eyes, people with the capacity to love have the impulse to love and the need to love in order to feel healthy. Capacities clamor to be used, and cease in their clamor only when they are used sufficiently. That is to say, capacities are needs, and therefore are intrinsic values as well.”

“Press Play to Grow” is an idea that can be seen as exactly in alignment with Groos’ thought, and an idea he may very well have been proud of. In play is a phenomenon of growth, growth of thought and of activity. But we needn’t associate this growth only with children, and the fictional-imaginary line (and perhaps gaming line?) needn’t be confined to the magenta level. It too, can continue to develop and mature–and quite arguably with all of the same cognitive benefits, even more since more can increasingly be done with it, put into it, come out of it . . .

Even Piaget did not realize the extent of this, keeping his assessment of play within the realm of the individual, the logical-mathematical and offering it little consideration past the age of five to seven. But give a child Piaget’s traditional “three mountains” test and they will indeed fail. Give the same children the same test and use instead imaginary characters such as Grover, Cookie Monster, Simba from the Lion King, . . . and they strangely pass. In order to understand another’s perspective, we must be able to propositionally imagine what it is, or cognitively construct its possibility, within a mind-frame alternate to our own innate perspective. Perhaps with Grover and Simba the child is automatically put within the correct frame of mind, something which will eventually be integrated into a much wider cognitive expanse. And this is where the most current research begins to gain increasing importance . . .

Piaget clearly differentiated pretend play as a distinct form of thinking, implicitly, a distinct frame of mind: “divorced from belief,” (e.g. my own present consciousness) but also to be differentiated from dreams, delirium and (importantly) magical-religious symbolism, all of which consciousness is usually fully identified with; which means, in other words, consciousness does believe. But it was not until the late 1980s that significant progress was made in understanding that the propositional imagination is in fact a distinct cognitive faculty which can indeed, it appears, be selectively impaired. Autism is now almost wholly defined as a deficit in this function, which profoundly affects development in all others. On the flip side, it is arguable that the advent of greater understanding and encouragement of children’s pretend-imaginary play in the West (and imaginative activities in general-hence Grover, The Lion King) is a very sound and solid reason why greater numbers of individuals actually develop to the orange level, and beyond. Nearly ever researcher from Piaget, Fein, Fischer, Vygotsky, etc. has concluded that there is some kind of a direct link between pretend-imaginary play activities and the later development of formal-abstract thought. The ability to “sever thought from object,” perform “transformations,” reason counter-factually, the ability to use one’s "imagination . . ."

The Trojan Horses of development in many respects are actually already there. To create fictional worlds requires all of the lines of development applicable to apprehending this world. To create a virtual reality, including an interactive gaming reality, requires all lines of development with which we apprehend this reality. There was an old saying of the theatre (drama) “this younger of the sister arts, there all their charms combine” (although it wasn’t actually younger, just suppressed from development for thousands of years) or as Wagner saw in opera the uber-art (i.e. there all their charms combine). This is because fictional worlds, virtual realities–the results of imaginative activities–by nature activate every intelligence within the spectrum of human cognition: linguistic (which includes narrative and event structuring), spatial, musical, kinesthetic, mathematical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist, dramatic/comedic (expressive prosody), perspective-taking and add to this the aesthetic line and just about any other line you can think of. This is why producing video games employs actors, writers, designers, computer programmers, etc. in the same way that film production employs all of the same. (Is there a genuine “gaming” line of development? I think it’s at least arguable, when all of the evidence is condisered, that there is. Perhaps associated with planning, problem-solving, success-strategy, conflict resolution, motivated by the building of self-esteeem, growth of thought and of activity, eventually teamwork, etc.)

But the vagaries of the anti-imagination prejudice do still effect all of our thinking and attitudes, even at higher altitudes. Case in point, it is neither found on the Integral Psychograph or in the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. This is, of course, partly do to lack of necessary research, but the lack of research is due, it appears, to two things. One, it’s so fundamental to human (and scientific, philosophic, theoretical, etc. etc.) functioning (past the age of roughly 1 ½ to 2 years) that it seems to have been wholly taken for granted. (Piaget, in fact, denied that imagination was a distinct faculty, despite, say, Gross’ intuitions to the contrary.) But the other seems to have been that there is a strange lack of academic interest in the entire cross-section of cultural arts and entertainment that obviously utilizes it, excel in it–and exercise our own–in an overt way. It is interesting to consider what exactly our prejudices against video games are. Because if we look closely, it appears they are all of the same mind as the Platonic prejudice against poetry–which we will not usually ascribe any longer to the other arts.

A third Platonic count of prejudice does indeed have everything to do with the “mesmerizing hold” such activities appear to have upon us. A fourth would be that these “imitations” elicit emotion. This last has been as profound as any–perhaps the most profound. St. Augustine writes a deep confession to God for the shame he felt over reacting emotionally to the fictional-imaginary world (of theatre), empathizing with a fiction-imaginary character and situation, and also for enjoying it! This constituted a grave sin. In Hamlet, Shakespeare writes a famous wrestling with this aspect of human nature as well, incorporating into it all of the prevailing cultural attitudes and stereotypes.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?

The third Platonic point might be the easiest to see regarding video games–and the most readily prevalent, reflected very much still in our educational conditionings. Both the mesmerizing hold and the emotional reaction are sources for why focused involvement in imaginary activities works to . . . make us stupid . . .

But the fact of the matter is that we are not really very good, non-empirical, judges of the types of cognitive activity that are occurring amidst the “mesmerizing hold” (or the emotional reaction). We use words such as “trance” and “hypnosis” and generally assume that in this state the television, the movie or the video game, the “spectacle” is now doing all the thinking for the person. They’ve lost all sense of themselves and reality. (They’ve entered into Hell, into the compounded and compounding shadows of the cave, never to find their way out.) Yet, not a one of us has any experience or memory of that fearful moment when the same thing happened to ourselves–when, while watching TV or playing a video game, we suddenly found ourselves on the edge of oblivion, Lucifer smiling behind the screen, ultimate illusion and suffering now about to completely take hold of our mind, soul, consciousness, forever . . . Nor do we remember having to work very hard to pull ourselves back out of increasingly impending mental-retardation once the "spectacle" is finished . . .

But still, consider the reasons given as to why video games are marginalized, bad, a meaningless pseudo-activity as best, a mental wasteland, a menace to society at worst. They will fry your brain, or at least too much of them certainly will. They are alright for children, but it’s time for you to “grow up.” They waste your time, are a frivolous activity. Too much of this type of entertainment is just . . . unhealthy–though why exactly we are never able to say and there is no seriously compelling empirical study to demonstrate rationally how or that this is the case. There is no research concluding that, indeed, brains have been fried, brain cells denigrated and biologically pathologized by focused and sustained involvement in these imaginative activities. Okay, but still, if you get too involved in these things they are . . . . . . the haven of weirdoes, nerds, geeks, anti-socials, and if you’re not careful, indeed even criminals. Most of all, they, like Dungeons and Dragons (and actors in theatres and audiences to spectacles of the past) will influence you to become the characters. You wont be able to tell the difference between the characters and yourself, between fictional-fantasy "reality" and real life. You will come to be what you “imitate.” You will "act out" the stories in reality, the disreputable actions, the degenerate activities, they are surely the causes of crime, linked to murders, the occult, and we must take this seriously, etc., etc.

From the Church Fathers to the Puritans it was strongly, readily and continually declared that all “spectacles” were the work of the devil. Creators were damned; forbidden the sacraments of the church and not lawfully to be buried in hallowed ground. (This is reality, not fantasty.) Participants, spectators, were in need of repentance, remorse, even counseling. (Once again, socio-cultural historical reality, not fantasy.) Offspring of the damned were to be treated likewise. Clergy were forbidden to attend. Among the first laws enacted in the thirteen colonies of the United States were those that forbade any and all “spectacles.” Imagine the horror of the Puritans today discovering that every home has at least one electronic “spectacle” box, usually several, and often with several separate channels/inputs for various different types of “spectacle.” Spectacle boxes are in cars, on desks, in doctor’s waiting rooms, in grocery line checkouts, and in people’s pockets. Indeed, how Lucifer has infiltrated every corner of the civilized world! And strangely the fear of this emerges even within the domains themselves. The Puritans feared and decried the building of theatres, the theatre feared and decried the building of movie houses; all of them decried the advance of television and now the great culprit of “spectacles”–cheap, egocentric, antisocial entertainment, not art–is the DVD, and . . . the internet . . .

Piaget differentiated games of pretend and games of other kinds that children play. Most video games now are actually an integration of the two–a game with tasks and an objective that takes place in a fictional-imaginary world, almost like an interactive movie (if not, in reality, an interactive movie, a play, audience-interactive piece of theatre, etc.). One might argue, in fact, that they are better and healthier for growth and development than movies or fiction novels because the “audience” is an active participant in the unfolding, deetermining the outcome, etc. I don’t think this is necessarily true, however, because different types of cognitive activities take place in the mediums of film, theatre, fiction novels and video games–though all of them are a part of the same extraordinary, distinctly human, frame of mind and products (and desires) of the same. That a fictional-fantasy–and even a gaming–capacity and line of development exists is, essentially, beyond question. The question is, what constitutes their healthy and continual growth and integration? Historically, for whatever reason, we have long tended to want to keep them surpressed and toward the realm of the pathological, and shadow. Not shadows of the cave, but shadows within my own person, my own humanity, knotted into the realm of forbidden pleasure . . .

(Interesting Note: I myself actually live these days in “sin city.” That is, that historical den of iniquity and crime that is Las Vegas, where gaming (for adults) has long been legal . . . In the past laws actually worked to keep such on the egocentric and sub-or-anti-social level, much as was the case for actors and theatre in the past. It was only a few decades ago that legislation was changed so as to allow corporate ownership of “gaming facilities,” as opposed to just private ownership. (Gaming must be controlled. It will infiltrate society, cause it to fall apart . . . ) And with this orange advance, how the entire landscape began to change. The quality, the customer service, the attitude; the population exploded from less than 500,000 to over 2 million, over two hundred schools were built, a library system that rivals that of any other major city. No longer just the hack, seedy lounge act, but Elton John, Pavarotti. Suddenly people were even bringing their kids with them and “sin city” started to become a “family town.” (Don’t get me wrong, that transformation has been far from complete.) A personal fantasy of my own is the green, post-green Integral Casino Resort (or gaming retreat center?). Environmentally friendly and humanely sustainable, Integral entertainment suited to human life and soul. Like Paul Newman’s pasta sauce, all profit from gaming after taxes would go directly–not to criminals, not to “corporate mongers”–but to a variety of needy causes. Thus, if you lose your money on game-x, the money goes not to me, but, happily, to deprived children in Africa. You could actually choose which cause you might want to play for. And if you win, don’t worry, rest assured statistically that those needy children–like those criminals and “corporate mongers” before them–will have secretly earned plenty. A formula the Catholic Church figured out a long time ago . . . and has been derided for ever since . . .)

The main point: it is interesting to consider the fears, prejudices and marginalizing factors surrounding "the video game." They appear to be all of the same longstanding fear, bias and cultural-shadow tradition.

Video gamers will become like the characters they enact in the game.
Video gamers will enact in life the violent and elicit actions they enact in the game.
Video gamers will soon not be able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, if they are able to tell the difference at all, from the beginning.
Video games are addictive, thus unhealthy, and/or prompt too much time being spent on frivolous and meaningless leisure and/or cheap “entertainment.”
Video games will make you stupid, lead you to a mental wasteland, are at best a pseudo-activity that will eventually “fry your brain,” at least if you’re not very careful.
They are mesmerizing, as you sit and stare into the “spectacle” and as we watch from the outside somehow this just cannot be good . . . Certaily not educational, academic, important . . . They are capturing your soul . . .

Q. Okay, okay, but perhaps one of the last implicit dangers: sitting at video games discourages physical activity. Like that electronic “spectacle” the television, they are going to make people out-of-shape, and fat.

A. But isn’t it funny how if someone were to spend all day playing music, painting, doing pottery or sculpture or reading books we would be far less likely to say the same thing? Sitting at a piano hardly encourages physical activity, much less so reading a book all day, much less sitting six hours at a desk in school focused on math and science with only 10 minutes of recess! In the last we also strongly encourage the kids to “concentrate,” that is, maintain what we would presumably like to be a “mesmerized hold” upon the teacher, and what we are teaching them–and often without success. Why the fear then against sitting down for this particular activity?

Q/A. Okay, well, sitting at a computer, television or video game ruins our eyes, will give us carpel tunnel syndrome and other problems! But it is a well-known fact that violinists, pianists and musicians of all kinds develop such conditions from lifetimes spent playing instruments, such dangers certainly exist form holding pencils and typing on keyboards and scholars and scientists do generally wear glasses. (Okay, sorry for the stereotype.) The fact of the matter is that we will find any and all kind of reason to discourage sustained and focused play and imaginative activities in ways that simply wont bother us for other types of activities. And why?

It would be interesting indeed to debate the subject within an Integral context and/or within the Integral community. To bring out every last commonplace attitude or idea about why these activities are so bad or so dangerous, or potentially so, and press the issues as far as they will go, and really find out if they indeed have any rational basis or basis in reality. That is, other than cultural-historic hold-overs and biases and a possible quirk in human development, or simply commonplace shadow–all, again, of ultimately one and the same thing.

Personally, I haven’t had much interest in video games (or many other types of games) myself, since my own later childhood. But I am of the mind that more often than not, if not always, the rational conclusion we will arrive at are going to be somewhere much closer to the latter.

You are free to be fully human . . .

And perhaps in this way, we should begin to allow ourselves to be too.

References:
Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice, 1981
Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, 1993
Karl Gross, The Play of Animals, 1898
Karl Groos, The Play of Man, 1901
Mendel Kohansky, The Disreputible Profession: The Actor is Society, 1984
Angeline Lillard, Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, 2005
Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, 1998
Jean Piaget, The Psychology of the Child, 1969
Jean Piaget, Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood, 1969

Plato, The Republic