Therapeutic Benefits of Adult Doll Play

Abstract

This study explored the episodic memories and therapeutic benefits associated with adult doll play. Forty adult collectors described a significant interaction they had with their dolls and interpreted the meaning of the episode. They rated both their narratives and interpretations on 7-point scales. Then they completed four questionnaires reflecting on their motivations for joining the doll hobby, the aesthetic and therapeutic aspects of doll play, as well as play and fantasy and self-perception questionnaires developed in an earlier study. Principal components factor analyses were performed on all scales and questionnaires, and the factors were correlated. In addition, the narratives and interpretations were coded and thematically analyzed. Results show that attachment forms with imagined and situated characters during the customization and story making process. This bonding process was critical in creating meaning and rituals within the ball-jointed doll hobby. Implications for the clinical field and AI mediated devices were discussed.

How Racial Matter Comes to Matter: Memory Work, Animacy and Childhood Dolls

“…Yet, our use of memory work with childhood dolls as an experiment for accessing affective embodied experiences of race not only points to important analytical interconnections between body, matter and affect but also elicits possibilities for change, transformation and healing. Research has highlighted the therapeutic benefits of doll play for young people and adults (Ignacio and Cupchik, 2021). Such memory work could therefore be used not only as a pedagogical practice in educational settings intended to evoke analytical understandings of power and race (Khawaja, 2022) but also to affectively heal, move and animate the (sometimes traumatic) embodied experiences of racialised, gendered subjectivities.…”