The Power of Play

Fisher Psychology Professor Brings Play Therapy to the Classroom, Workplace

When you think about a room filled with five-year-old children, you can imagine a busy environment full of toys, talking, and imagination. The word, “play,” may even come to mind.

For Dr. Özge Kantaş, an assistant professor in the Psychology Department at St. John Fisher University, she sees play as serious business.

“Play is how children work through their day; it is how they act out their needs, how they explore their feelings. For children, their work is play,” she explained.

A social and personality psychologist and a psychodramatist, Kantaş has focused her research on human motivation and sustainable well-being. At the center of her theory is the power of play.

Kantaş earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the Middle East Technical University in Turkey, and completed her dissertation and postdoctoral fellowship work at the University of Rochester’s renowned Self-Determination Theory Human Motivation Lab. At UR, she worked with the founders of the Self-Determination Theory (SDT), Drs. Richard Ryan and Edward Deci. A well-established theory in the field, SDT posits that rewards are the best way to motivate human behavior and can meet the three universal needs of competency, autonomy, and relatedness. Kantaş sees play as naturally meeting these needs and bringing humans intrinsic motivation, and in her practice as a psychodramatist, uses play therapy to help adults work through trauma to move from ill-being to well-being.

“Play is the characteristic that brings joy and a beam of light to our day,” she explained. “Psychodrama provides us with ways to build a life of playfulness and shows us how can we tap into our own autonomous feelings to play to find healing.”

Of late, Kantaş has begun to teach in the School of Business to promote play as a motivation-based approach to better workplace culture and enhance employee wellbeing. She brings her international expertise into the classroom and teaches MBA students the know-hows of helping companies to design trauma-informed experiences for both internal and external audiences as employees and customers. Play, she said, can empower employees and lead to more productivity, more creativity, and more innovation in and out.

“Some see play as a distraction or contrary to business goals, but daring to be vulnerable and be silly can bring joy and zest to the workplace,” she explained, adding that highly structured, rigid work environments can stifle creativity and spontaneity.  “We spend thousands of hours at work, but our jobs can only be therapeutic as long and until we feel autonomous, related, and competent. Play is one natural way we can satisfy those needs.”

In the classroom, Kantaş often tests her theories with her students. While teaching a class on Social Psychology one day last fall, she noticed her students looking out the window. In LeChase Commons, a group of students were doing yoga … with goats.

“The weather was so nice and the little goats were jumping around. One student said she wanted to go see the goats, so I decided to demonstrate social influence- which was the topic of that class already-  and asked how many would like to go see them,” she explained. Before long, the domino effect kicked in as others were influenced to head outside.

“The education technology I use is great, but I cannot compete with goats,” Kantaş said with a laugh. “So, I led by following. I understood the need to give my students a voice and choice. We could regulate our nervous systems, get fresh air, and accomplish our goals for the class that day.”

Play at Work

Kantaş said it’s all about creating mutual interactions; a common trait of humanity is that everyone loves playing. She encourages businesses and organizations to gamify employee wellness initiatives that spark collaboration rather than competition. After her MBA-level Trauma-Informed Leadership and Organizational Behavior courses, students thought about how these self-reflective and co-creative games shaped a better understanding of themselves and others at work. As an example, for Halloween, Kantaş introduced a therapeutic game of “empty chair” to her students and invited them to confront the “ghosts,” “monsters,” or “demons” that haunt people in their work lives.

“I told them that these might be recurring challenges, internal conflicts, or tricky interpersonal dynamics that they find difficult to manage or ‘exorcise’ in their day-to-day work experience,” she explained.

Among the things that came up were “procrastination monster,” “deadline demon,” the “spirit of self-doubt,” “spooky to-do-lists,” or the “phantom of overcommitment.” Students interviewed their demons and learned more in-depth about their problematic work behaviors compassionately with questions such as Why do you keep showing up?, What do you want me to know?, and What might help you leave for good?, and role-played potential answers. One of the biggest takeaways for students is that they cannot manage others without managing themselves.

Sharing Her Passion for Play

Over the last year, Kantaş has shared her passion for play at conferences and talks across the country. In the spring, she attended the American Group Psychotherapy Association’s (AGPA) annual Connect Summit, running a daylong workshop on psychodrama and motivation science. The workshop explored how to utilize group dynamics, playfulness, experiential learning, internal and external change, and communication during turbulent times to overcome divisions and foster engagement.

An active member of AGPA, Kantaş has been serving on the conference’s DEI Funding and Advisory Board, co-chairing the Organizational Consulting Special Interest Group, and functioning as an integral part of the external marketing campaigns to create social media content for the Community Outreach and Public Affairs committee. In 2025, she will expand her impact as the chair of that committee on a national level.

At the conference, she was also formally awarded the Group Foundation for Advancing Mental Health’s Anne Alonso Scholarship, which is given to a distinguished teacher, trainer, practitioner, or prominent theoretician, in recognition of demonstrated excellence in group psychotherapy. The scholarship recognized her unique application of group psychotherapy in both educational and research settings, significantly enhancing skills for her psychology students at the undergraduate level and MBA students in corporate contexts. With Kantaş on the faculty, Fisher is the only university in Rochester and just one of the two universities in New York state with a full-time tenure track faculty member who is a certified psychodramatist teaching playful group intervention techniques, therapeutic action methods, and experiential assessment tools both in undergraduate and graduate levels.

“I am so glad that my psychology and business students learn that not everything is therapy, but anything can be playful and therapeutic if we design it accordingly,” she said.

As the endowed scholarship recipient, Kantaş had the opportunity to interview author David Payne on the benefits of group therapy. It’s a topic she has explored at length as a psychotherapist.

“Group therapy works as effectively as individual therapy, if not more so,” she explained. “Group therapy is more action-oriented. All of our wounds happen with others, and group therapy shows that they can be better healed with others, too; we are not dealing with our hurt in isolation.”

Kantaş said recent research shows that the United States could save $5.6 billion, reduce the need for 34,473 new therapists, and offer a crucial lifeline to 3.3 million people through the use of group therapy. If just 10 percent of the unmet need for individual therapy were instead addressed through group sessions, the impact would be significant, she said.

She has worked to apply group therapy techniques, such as role playing, into how organizations can function better or heal after workplace trauma occurs.

“Organizational play in groups can help managers and employees better understand each other’s roles, it can solve conflict, and can unpack what is possible for the team,” Kantaş said.

She points to an ice breaker she uses to help companies warm up to the idea of play. When colleagues introduce themselves at her workshops, rather than state their title, she has them describe what item they would be at a potluck dinner hosted by their company.

“Someone might say they’re the champagne, the salsa that everyone loves, or the silverware – no one can eat if they’re not present,” she said, adding that she’ll often encourage them to talk about what ways their dish or item represents their job. “It tells us so much more about their characteristics and the symbolic roles they play within the company than if they just shared their title.”

Contributing to the Research Around Play

Kantaş has engaged in research with colleagues from other institutions on group therapy, and her research teammates were recently given the Council’s Award from the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama (ASGPP). The award recognized their work to substantiate the complex and rigorous methodology of psychodrama to fit APA standards, contributing robustly to dissemination of psychodrama and sociometry research and applications. This recognition continued with an invitation to become the psychodrama column editor for The Group Psychologist, the official newsletter of the American Psychological Association, Division 49.

“I am excited to contribute to this column and share how therapists, educators, researchers, and executives can use the group method and psychodrama principles for individual and societal well-being,” Kantaş said.

Locally, Kantas was also recently a selected speaker for two workshops through the DisruptHR Rochester Chapter. Her talks were inspired by two different courses she teaches at Fisher, Psychopathology and Playfulness, and explored how playfulness is a human-centered innovation strategy at work and in life. DisruptHR LLC, the national think tank based in Cincinnati, Ohio, announced that her talk, “We Are Born to Play,” was ranked among the top five most viewed videos worldwide after its launch. Later she was invited to deliver a TEDx talk about this topic, The Power of Group Dynamics: From Therapy Room to Board Room increasing the broader visibility of therapeutic play in groups for different contexts.

She is currently helping next generation family business leaders by coaching them with psychodramatic issue processing as they navigate family legacies and trauma through Fisher’s Family Business Next Generation Leadership Institute.

Into the new year, Kantas will continue to share her passion for play as an important piece of group therapy and organizational wellness both in the classroom and through conferences and workshops. She will lead another national level workshop at San Francisco at AGPA Connect Summit, this time on Surfacing Hidden Financial Trauma in Group in a Nanosecond with her colleague Rick Kahler, a nationally renowned financial advisor and author.

“As Einstein said, ‘Play is the ultimate form of research,’ and I believe everything is play-it-out-able,” she said. “It’s all about leveraging motivational science and psychodrama to help people to help themselves … through play!”