Play therapy is an effective means of responding to the mental health needs of young children and is widely accepted as a valuable and developmentally appropriate intervention. The authors discuss the importance of play in development, the therapeutic benefits of play, the rich history of play therapy, and recent research and current issues and…

Describes Adlerian method of play therapy. Claims Adlerian therapy represents an integration of the concepts and techniques of individual psychology into a method of using play to help troubled children. (Author/ABL)

Examines value of using play in counseling. Explores pragmatic ways play is used across life span and in different counseling settings. Discusses limitations of including play in counseling. Reviews premises on which play in counseling is based and some uses of play as therapeutic instrument with children, adolescents, and adults in individual,…

Featuring in-depth case presentations from master clinicians, this volume highlights the remarkable capacity of traumatized children to guide their own healing process. The book describes what posttraumatic play looks like and how it can foster resilience and coping. Demonstrated are applications of play, art, and other expressive therapies with…

Single parenthood as a common psychosocial phenomenon seems to be regarded as one of the most significant issues in the psychological domain and needs to be taken into serious consideration due to emotional, psychological, and social problems created by it. With regard to the rapidly growing population of single parents and their children…

The importance of play in child development and the barriers that individuals with autism face regarding play skills requires us to identify specific interventions which can assist in the development of such skills. Stimulus pairing, which has been documented as a procedure by which an event comes to elicit a response by being paired with an event…

This paper describes the therapeutic journey of Leigh (not his real name), a nine-year-old boy who was referred for play therapy due to the death of his 15-year-old brother. The play therapy was offered through a joint project called "Playing through Loss" and run jointly between a UK university and the local branch of a national…

This study investigated the impact of Child-Centred Play Therapy (CCPT)/Non-Directive Play Therapy on parent-child relationship stress using archival data from 202 child clients divided into clinical behavioural groups over 3-74 sessions in a mental health training setting. Results demonstrated significant differences between pre and post testing…

Following the work of Vygotsky, this paper explores three dimensions of change in play therapy: linear, additive, and emergent pivotal structures. In therapeutic play, the child expresses actions and initiates movements, sounds, and gestures. Then, seemingly "out of the blue," the child shifts such gestures to an episode containing…

Discusses the values that are expressed in play and the role of play in the development of positive values. (JMB)

A description of the play characteristics of mentally retarded children and arguments for the importance of play for these children are presented. A brief critical review of the meager literature on play with mentally retarded children indicates the need for more research on play for this group of children. (Author)

Presents an interview with Eliana Gil, the current director of the Starbright Training Institute for child abuse and neglect, play therapy, and family play therapy in Springfield, Virginia. Gil's publications and experiences have spoken to coconstructing family therapy sessions that effectively integrate the paradigms of play and family therapy.…

Although recent evidence has shown that conversational contexts may be more effective in achieving spontaneous use of language targets, many clinicians continue to employ more structured and less naturalistic contexts for their therapy. The purpose of the current article is to present a therapy approach that is structured, yet incorporates the…

This study examined the effectiveness of child centered play therapy (CCPT) with academically at-risk 1st graders. In this quasi-experimental design, twenty-one 1st grade students were assigned to the experimental group and 20 students were assigned to the no treatment control group. The children in the experimental group received two 30 minute…