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 As an educational counsellor and bibliotherapist, I work with children in the elementary school as well as in a teachers’ training college, preparing the students for their therapeutic and educational work with children.
Last year, we Israelis lived through one of the most traumatic periods of our existence. There were many terrorist acts in the country, suicidal bombings that cost the lives of innocent citizens…. Children were also involved: many were badly wounded or maimed, some lost their lives. Others lost their parents, leaving them orphaned. Moreover, many parents of young children who were not directly affected by the bombings became over-protective toward them, transmitting their fears and anxieties onto them. Many of these children could not concentrate on their studies, were restless, and regressed in behaviour. Scenes of acting out were common during this period. To top this, our prime minister, Mr. Rabin, was assassinated by a fellow Jew. This was the last straw. It was even more traumatic for the children, as he was, on the one had, a father figure, while on the other hand, some of the pupils had heard political utterings against him in ther homes. This led to their feeling rather guilty.
As can be very well imagined, it was almost impossible to treat these children. We tried many and various methods. Many of them were almost catatonic, depressed, and would not cooperate. On the spur of the moment, I took out the ECCO cards. I laid them out on the table, face up, and told the children to choose one that reminded them of recent events. Unbelievably, these cards were the only key to their bottled up fears, frustrations, and traumas. Somehow, these cards seemed to enable them to project their feelings onto the abstract forms. My next step was to ask them to find, in the very same cards, some silver lining, something that gave them hope for the future. Each and every child was able to do so.
This gave me a bright idea: I invited their parents for a session, working in the same way with them. I explained that I wanted them to know what their children had undergone. They were to imagine which card their own child had chosen and what he or she had said. Naturally, they also projected their own feelings onto these cards, and after a deep discussion, they were mentally free to help their children.
It goes without saying that my students at the teachers’ training college learned to do the same with their pupils. The ECCO cards are a wonderful help, at all times, in working with children.
Adina S. Flasher, PhD
Kiriat Bialik, Israel
Excerpted from the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, by Waltraud Kirschke.
In the 6th grade grammar lesson we were discussing word order in sentences in terms of subject and predicate, how the subject is always a “naming word” of which one asks, “Who or what is doing something?” and the predicate is always a “doing word.” The children were asked to formulate simple sentences and to name the subject and predicate in them. A game with SAGA images and the OH [original deck] word cards stimulated an “OH!” experience for all of them.
Each child drew one SAGA picture and one OH word card bearing a verb (I had sorted the cards in advance). The picture card was to be the subject and the word card the predicate. Each child constructed the shortest possible sentence with his card set — for example, “The raven takes” — and in doing so playfully and intuitively grasped the concepts of subject and predicate.
Edith Schuette ~ Teacher
Hamburg, Germany
Excerpted from the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, by Waltraud Kirschke.
In showing the children (six years old) MORENÁ for the first time, I was innundated by questions: “Why are there so many ants on these cards?” “Ants are everywhere, but what are they doing?” “Aren’t the people bothered by the ants?” Therefore, before we actually began playing with the cards we exchanged jungle knowledge. Each child told what he or she knows about the animals, plants, and people who live in the tropical forests.
We also talked about what functions and tasks the individual inhabitants of the forest fulfill, what characteristics they have and what they look like. It became apparnet that for many of the children much of the information was completely new. Afterwards, I told them about the importance of ants and other insects to the life of the jungle.
After this exchange of information we began playing with the cards. Our game was accompanied by Latin American music playing softly in the background, which enhanced even more the warm atmosphere.
Robert Doman ~ Teacher
Lublin, Poland
Excerpted from the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, by Waltraud Kirschke.
During my first play with OH cards, brought by a visiting friend, I pulled the combination of “Failure” and a picture of an office desk. Since I’m still trying to remedy the career damage of an extended illness leave a few years ago, my first thought was, “What if I fail at work?” As I sat with that, feeling agitated, a second thought crossed my mind: “What if defining myself by my work is a failure as a person?” OH! I felt enormously better.
University Professor
Canada
 Ofra Ayalon, one of the creators of the COPE deck shares her experience of using PERSONA cards in a peace-training and reconciliation workshop…
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While politicians from the warring sides in former-Yugoslavia were negotiating a brittle peace agreement in Dayton, Ohio, in mid-November of 1995 a group of 28 psychologists from Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro convened in an isolated, snow-covered, hilltop hotel on the Hungarian border to negotiate the psychological prerequisites for reconciliation. Meeting under the auspices of UNICEF and U.K. Jewish Aid, our training team was composed of three Israeli psychologists (Ayalon, Lahad and Gal), experts in issues dealing with war-traumatized populations.
One of the leading themes in this workshop was exploring the archetypes of Shadow and Evil and learning to recognize the projections of internal evil on the image of the Enemy. Our purpose was to show how an “Enemy” attracts “demonic” attributes which “justify” hatred, persecution and annihilation.
The purpose of presenting this theme was to raise participants’ awareness of the duality of “good” and “evil” within the human psyche and to experience and understand the human tendency to project “evil” onto others. By re-owning these rejected parts of ourselves we take the first step toward accepting the “other.” This process of awareness demands increasing the ability to contain opposites — such as good and evil, right and wrong, et cetera — within ourselves and to integrate them into our personalities.
We used PERSONA cards as the trigger for these projections in a process which we called “Me and Not-Me (a Blind Date): a dialogue between the imaginary representations of inner dichotomization.”
The PERSONA images were used in two phases — first, to split, and, later, to integrate projections of the “me” and the “not-me.”
We asked the participants to choose two images from the PERSONA portrait deck, to bring them together as if on a “blind date” and then to create a dialogue between them. The instructions were as follows:
- Choose one image that you like and one image that you don’t like.
- Place them in front of you on a piece of paper. Divide the paper in two.
- Write whatever comes to mind for each image.
- Choose a real or an imagined space where these two people can meet. Who will be the first to notice the other? Let them tell each other about themselves — where they live, how old they are, with whom they live. What are their first reactions, feelings, thoughts toward each other? Let them respond to each other.
- See where this dialogue takes you.
- Sit in couples and share your stories.
- Reflect on the process and on the following questions:
Were you able to bring them closer to each other?
Did your feelings about them change at all?
Can these people co-exist or do they need to stay separate?
The process: Participants created imaginary dialogues with their personified portraits, wrote about them, addressed them directly, role-played and listened carefully to their own voices. These creative activities helped participants expand their self-awareness and acceptance of their inner demons. Later, this process moved from imaginary to the cognitive channel through a re-framing of the process and discussion of methods of bridge-building between polarized ethnic and political groups. The PERSONA cards were found to be very useful for triggering intense emotions (such as love and hate) because the images are portrayed in a way that makes them personal and archetypal at one and the same time. The same process that was used in this workshop for reconciliation and peace work between countries is often used successfully in my clinical work for couples and families.
Dr. Ofra Ayalon, psychologist, couple and family therapist, bibliotherapist
Tivon, Israel
Excerpted from the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, by Waltraud Kirschke.
Lessons from the OH Cards
 I’m constantly reminded by the cards that perception is an interpretation, not a fact. The cards with their images and words are facts but what we see is up to us. Take the clown card. I had one client who drew that card and then gave herself permission to put a smile on her face even if she was not feeling happy. She told me that eventually the act of smiling would spread to her actually being happy.
Yet another client who had insistently reported that all was fine with her, she didn’t really need counselling. Still, every week she made and showed up for her appointment with me. In frustration I used the cards with the hope that they could help her to verbalize whatever was causing her pain. And she drew the clown card. Only then was she able to speak of the abuse she had suffered as a child by people wearing masks. These were not happy memories but a shift had happened and she was ready to work through her pain. We always used the cards after that in our sessions.
And then there was my handsome client who some perceived as arrogant and having everything he wanted in the world. Others claimed he had to be shallow since he seemed to enjoy a life without pain. He drew the clown card and the word card “NAKED.” Smiling, he nodded his head and commented without hesitation, “This is obvious. It is easy for me to be physically naked before others. It is much harder for me to be psychologically naked so I wear a mask.” All I could say was, “Wow!” We have our own answers inside us. And others, books, movies, and yes cards can inspire us to go within and rediscover our own truths.
Dawn Brown, M.Ed. (Counselling) has over 20 years of experience as a psychotherapist, teacher, and trainer specializing in life transitions. In addition, Dawn is an international speaker and the author of That Perception Thing! She heads Perception Shift, a company dedicated to creating a healthy approach to living.
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
It was in fact Saturday – the day had come. And panic swept over me as I began asking myself, “What was I thinking?” I had sent out the invitations and now I had to show up. I continued to create internal dialogue around my lack of expertise in working with the cards. Until I thought, “Okay, what’s really going on here? What do I need to know to move through this?” And I pulled out my OH Cards.
One-Card Spread: Word (Expert) Image (#8 Hand Dealing Cards)
And I knew from this spread exactly what I needed to know in order to move through. In fact, I didn’t need to be an expert. We are each our own expert in receiving the insights available to us. OH is a powerful tool when we understand that the knowingness lives within us and these words and images help draw forth that knowingness by placing it before us using concrete images.
I continued with my plan for the gathering with my family. In attendance were probably sixteen or seventeen people, male and female, and of varying age groups. And we each held one question: “What do I need to let go of in order to move forward?” And the results were astonishing! In the normal comings and goings of life the people in this room hadn’t seen each other in a couple of years, but with the power of OH at hand each of us had been moved to very raw and vulnerable places. Even my grandmother, whose age is still in question, was available to what OH had to reveal to her. The evening went on with each of us exploring what was before us, what we needed to know, and discovering what forward moving action looked like for each of us individually.
Today, I’m most grateful for that then-dreaded day. I saw the power of OH.
Talisa Wisniewski
Chicago
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
Team Training for Leadership
 During the last ten years the “human factor” (that is, acknowledgement of the emotional level) has also gained in consideration in the industrial sector. Emotions, naturally, have a direct influence on achievement as well. It is now acknowledged that a well-functioning team does not hesitate to address conflict and is practised in discussing problems and issues.
We often work with the OH cards in seminars and workshops. Spreading them out on the floor so that everyone can see them, we try to home in on an emotional quality in the participants by asking them each to select a card which corresponds approximately to their feelings at that moment in their current situation. A question at any seminar, for example, could be, “With what feelings did I come here today?” The OH cards present many possibilities in answer to such a question. The associative cards function as a catalyst both for communication and for the experience of closeness among the participants. This feeling of closeness is important because the success of our work as trainers is dependent on the participants opening up during the three or four days they are together – that is, that they reveal themselves more readily than they might in a normal, more formal situation.
Our workshop and seminar participants come from various domains of business, are usually from the industrial or service sectors and are often managers and their assistants – a colourful assortment of people, really, not only from Audi but also from a broad spectrum of the free market economy.
Sometimes I use the SAGA cards as well as the OH cards, especially when the topic is leadership: these images with their figures of highly symbolic characters facilitate a ready comprehension of particular group mechanisms having to do with leadership.
Ralf Linde ~ Trainer for the AUDI Academy
Ingolstadt, Germany
Excerpted from the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, by Waltraud Kirschke.
Storytelling with Children
 To inspire children to give accounts and tell stories – this was the task I was assigned at the youth centre and school in the Rivierenwijk district of Utrecht. Not only should everyday experiences be related but also short pieces of creative composition, such as stories that are found in picture books, stories with a plot, stories that make sense. This process should give the children, especially the foreign children, a fresh impulse for communication.
Out of this task evolved a storytelling club. Each week ten children between the ages of 7 and 9 met with the aim of composing stories and telling them to one another. A suitcase filled with various objects served as the goldmine of material from which to extract ideas. As we handled and examined the objects we would ask ourselves, “To whom could this object belong and what role could it play in the story?”
The children were delighted. They began to create never-ending stories that eventually did end – in nothing. It was the beginning and the end that posed the problem. The children could not come to grips with a story structure – quite logical, actually. To tell a story by heart presupposes an overall and advance knowledge of the story. The teller has to orient him/herself like a bird in flight; otherwise s/he loses track of the path. For many of the children this proved to be an impossible task. Children experience a story like a film – it unfolds word by word. This can be observed in their experience reports. After school vacation it goes like this: “First we drove to … and then … and then we ….” All the experiences are stored in the memory chronologically. The only way to recapitulate it is to tell it in the correct chronological sequence.
 When I realized this, I wondered how I could give them the necessary signposts for orienting themselves within their stories. For this, I got some help from the philosopher of Greek antiquity, Aristotle. In his “Poetica” he stipulated the structure of the story to comprise five main parts:
- introduction
- incitement of the plot
- climax of the plot
- fading out of the plot
- conclusion
I had found my signposts! For the children it would be possible to simplify this somewhat:
- on the way to the incitement of the plot by making introductions
- on the way to the climax
- marching toward the end
I wanted to introduce the children to these points of orientation, but a lesson on the ancient Greeks was out of the question! The subject must be approached in as lively a manner as possible. At this point I considered the possibilities for using SAGA. With only three cards it would be possible to set the decisive milestones for orienting the story:
introduction - plot impetus – on to climax – climax - on to the end – end
It almost worked. Story structure stood tangibly before the children’s eyes. (For me the only thing missing at this point were SAGA images in large format.) They were able to “read” the details directly from the pictures. It was possible to use the picture cards as notes or “cheat-sheets,” so to speak.
 Yet the final image proved to be problematical. Although it was fairly easy for the children to put together a story from the first two images, the last picture restricted them. It represented a prison for the imagination. Although necessary for the structure of the story, in composing stories independently this picture seemed to act as a barrier. Once again, logical: a prescribed ending to a story presupposes an overview. For the children the situation was like a topography: if your task is to get from your own house to Berlin but you only know the streets as far as the town limits, then the rest of the way is like a black hole that can only be filled in by a general map.
The solution to this problem, however, proved to be simple. The final image would be created by the children themselves, after they composed the conclusion to the story. (Author’s note: suitable here are the CLARO cards, which are meant to be designed by the user!) Based on what I have just outlined, we finally developed our approach for the storytelling club. During the initial phase the children practiced creating stories based on objects. In the second phase the SAGA cards were introduced. The children were divided into groups (two to three participants), each receiving two pictures and one object. The pictures were to mark the plot impetus and climax of the story, with the object taking on some significance during its development. The stories, usually short, were written down and the last image painted.
This approach would be practiced several times in varying groups. The main focus, during phase three, was on turning these mini-plots into real stories, to be told in a detailed and understandable way. In order to function as points of orientation for the children, the pictures, in the manner of an “oh! experience,” must stimulate the memory at the relevant points in the story. It was therefore important that these “oh! experiences” be as vivid as possible.
 However, the pictures didn’t automatically stimulate this response. For the children the images were just pictures from the SAGA deck until the necessary connection between picture and story was established by acting out the story, the most important structural points being the plot impetus, the climax and the conclusion. The dramatised scenes were linked to one another by the SAGA images. As soon as the structure became clear, the story would be practised once again, this time with the pictures laid out on the floor.
After practising like this the children would remember the story without having to memorise it. It was even possible to improvise on the story with the structure firmly established in this way. And so with the help of Aristotle and SAGA it was possible for us to animate children to storytelling!
Marco Holmer ~ Storyteller and member of the Utrecht Storyteller Group
Utrecht, Holland
Excerpted from the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, by Waltraud Kirschke.
Card images are from the SAGA deck.
A group of people were playing OH at a centre where workshops on personality development are held. One of the participants was only observing. During a break he commented that OH is too simple. One of the payers suggested that he draw a set himself and find out what it meant to him. He drew the word WAIT and a picture of children at a playground. Without thinking about it he explained that what occurred to him in looking at this card combintation was that he had a wonderful relationship with his sons and that he could hardly wait to be back home with his family.
The next day he spoke again to the workshop participant who had suggested he draw a set, too. He admitted to having behaved rather arrogantly and said that he had not slept well the previous night. He kept thinking about the cards he had drawn. “I do have a good relationship with my sons,” he said. “However, the word WAIT does not refer to ‘wait’ but to another word that sounds exactly the same: WEIGHT. I have been fighting against my excess weight without success for years. I have long since gained the impression that the entire shell of fat I have built around myself is none other than a defense against my feelings. During the night it became clear to me that my being overweight has something to do with the fact that I have a hard time accepting the love and affection that my sons have for me!”
Ely Raman ~ Artist, teacher, creator and painter of the OH, SAGA, and PERSONA cards
Victoria, Canada
Excerpted from the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communitcation, by Waltraud Kirschke.
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