treatment due to violent behaviors at home and school. Her maternal grandmother was given temporary custody four years prior, due to the mother’s substance abuse disorder and the mother’s use of parental alienation through a campaign of denigration against the child’s father. Muriel engaged in contact refusal with her father and his family. At the onset of treatment, Muriel was playing out the unconscious and unresolved conflicts between her parents, especially during their contentious family dissolution. In Freudian   a burden to children.


Muriel was a lucid dreamer, and she enjoyed sandplay; she drew symbols from her dreams and painted them. Symbol work, exploring unconscious drives, is one of the hallmarks of psychoanalytic play therapy (Green, 2012; 2014). Through the engagement of the unconscious via sand, symbol, and dream, Muriel strengthened her ego by replacing maladaptive defenses, symptoms, thoughts, and         completed by the child and father as well, and parent-child contact resumed.


Therapy Goals and Progress Measurement The goal of psychoanalytic play therapy is to help children develop their unique identities and experiences so they can adapt, despite their particular life circumstances, and can meet the goals (i.e., healthy expectations) of family, school, and society. The goal for psychoanalysis is to allow for and support the normal processes of childhood, to allow the ego to work unencumbered to remove  through free association; and in child therapy, this is the play experience itself.


Interpretation is used once the therapeutic alliance is solid.


Interpretation is directed to integrate unconscious/repressed representations in order to make them more consciously tolerable and improve ego strength/coping. The therapist works to strengthen the ego, to help children accomplish developmental reorganization, to address conflicts and defenses, and to make way for the emergence of the Self (Kohut, 1971, 1977, 1978). Progress is measured by a decrease or resolution of presenting symptoms, increased ego strength, ability to make reasonable decisions, and often decreased interest in coming to play therapy.


Therapeutic Powers of Play Essential to psychoanalytic play therapy is to provide a protected space in which the children or adolescents feel free to be themselves. Play comes natural to children, and thus, is the language in which the  psychoanalytic play therapy corresponds to Schaefer and Drewes’s (2014)


therapeutic powers of play in facilitating communication


through access to the unconscious and ultimately through self- expression; fostering emotional wellness through abreaction, the expression and emotional discharge of


repressed emotions and catharsis; enhancing social relationships through the therapeutic


relationship, attachment through the transference, resulting in increased social competence and empathy; an in increasing personal strengths through better self-regulation, increased self-esteem, better problem solving and resiliency.


The ability to play includes the freedom to be spontaneous on both the child and therapist’s part, where the therapist empathizes without overidentifying with or being repulsed by the child’s behavior. Understanding the dynamics transpiring between the child and the therapist, transference and countertransference, can lend further insight into the child’s issues by bridging the child’s inner and outer worlds. The use of ego-strengthening activities related to the developmental age of the child is important (i.e., age appropriate games or play).


Psychoanalytically oriented


play therapy emphasizes symbolic meaning and is focused on


anxieties, defenses and fantasies in order to understand the


underlying dynamics of the presenting symptom(s).


Therapeutic techniques include parallel play, conjoint play, and directed play in which the therapist models a strong dependable ego that can encourage and support development. The therapist uses his/ her own ego to assess feeling states, emotions, and fantasies from within to analyze the child’s play, and intervenes using these insights, always with the child’s presenting symptom and history in mind.


Summary Psychoanalytically oriented play therapy emphasizes symbolic meaning and is focused on anxieties, defenses and fantasies in order to understand the underlying dynamics of the presenting symptom(s). The symptoms are dynamic and diverse, influenced by internal and external experiences. The goal for development is to keep pace with chronological and mental abilities, to free the flow of energy so it is not inhibited by the use of defense mechanisms, and to help children develop their unique identities such that they can adapt to meet the demands of family, school, and society (Punnett, 2016).


References Abraham, K. (1994). A short study on the development of libido, viewed in the light of mental disorders (Abridged). In R. V. Frankiel (Ed.), Essential papers on object loss (pp. 72-93). New York, NY: Brunner/ Mazel.


Blanck, G., & Blanck, R. (1979). Ego psychology II: Psychoanalytic developmental psychology. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.


www.a4pt.org | September 2019 | PLAYTHERAPY | 47


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56