Dangers of Playing with the Virtual Other in Mind

Abstract

This chapter contributes to the discussion on worth and dangers of digital role-playing games. With a psychoanalytical approach it focuses on the psyche's abilities provided by entering a game space. Building on the basic axioms of psychoanalysis a set of hypotheses concerning a psychoanalytic view on the act of playing is developed, which is systematically processed in the following. The aim of these deliberations is to outline that playing always means to deal with certain chaos in the sense of an unknown and unfamiliar structure in which the player immerses. The narrow edge between facilitating personality development on the one side and overwhelming - the player's psyche endangering - chaos on the other is worked out. The chapter is a revised part of an upcoming transdisciplinary PhD-thesis in the field of educational science and game studies.