Major Contributors to Play Therapy
Major Contributors to Play Therapy
¢ Major Contributors to Play Therapy
Resources
¢ Attributes and Evaluation of Discussion Contributions.
¢ Professional Communications and Writing Guide.
Choose two major contributors to the field of play therapy from the list below. Compare and contrast their theoretical perspectives. Discuss how their perspectives or
theories reside in the spectrum of directive and non-directive play therapy. Discuss how the perspectives and theories begin to inform your developing theoretical
perspective on the practice of play therapy. For this discussion, refer to the interactive graphic Major Contributors the Field of Play Therapy in this unit’s study.
¢ John Allan.
¢ Virginia Axline.
¢ Donald Dinkmeyer.
¢ Anna Freud.
¢ Richard Gardner.
¢ Haim Ginott.
¢ Bernard and Louise Guerney.
¢ Dora Kalff.
¢ Gary Landreth.
¢ Melanie Klein.
¢ Terry Kottman.
¢ Margaret Lowenfeld.
¢ Clark Moustakas.
¢ Carol and Byron Norton.
¢ Violet Oaklander.
Resources
¢ In Introduction to Play Therapy, read:
o Chapter 3, Models of Play Therapy, pages 4868.
¢ In Play Therapy, Part 3, The Principles of Non-directive Play Therapy, read:
o Chapter 11, Recognition and Reflection of Feelings, pages 93100.
o Chapter 12, Maintaining Respect for the Child, pages 101112.
o Chapter 13, The Child Leads the Way, pages 113118.
o Chapter 14, Therapy Cannot be Hurried, pages 119121.
o Chapter 15, The Value of Limitation, pages 122129.
¢ In The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally, read:
o Part II: Play, Learning, and Development, Introduction, pages 8788.
o Chapter 5, Misunderstandings about How Young Children Learn, pages 89118.
o Chapter 7, It Isn’t Only a Game: The Role of Play in Becoming Social, pages 145168.
Optional Readings
In the Capella library, read:
¢ Green’s 2004 article, Therapeutic Alliance, Focus, and Formulation: Thinking beyond the Traditional Therapy Orientations, from the Psychotherapy.net Web site.
¢ McCalla’s 1994 article, A Comparison of Three Play Therapy Theories: Psychoanalytical, Jungian, and Client-centered, from International Journal of Play Therapy,
volume 3, issue 12, pages 110.
Multimedia
Major Contributors to the Field of Play Therapy
Launch Presentation | Transcript
Anna Freud
18951982
Anna Freud, youngest child of Sigmund Freud, followed in her father’s footsteps in becoming a psychoanalyst. She contributed substantially in her own right to the
field of child and ego psychology. In Vienna, she developed a school where teachers and children were seen in treatment, including Erik Erickson, the first American
child psychoanalyst. She studied children in the residential and day treatment, at the Hempstead Child Therapy Clinic which she also founded. Anna integrated play into
treatment with children and promoted the practice of using play in therapy with children.
Freud proposed that children’s symptoms could not be viewed in the same way as the symptoms of adults. She suggested the symptoms were often connected to developmental
stages and could often be transitory in nature. She anticipated the development of attachment theory by pointing out how important consistent and secure relationships
were in the lives of children. She recommended that siblings be placed with siblings, and that residential treatment caregivers were assigned specific children to care
for over time, with as little change as possible. Anna authored a number of texts that reported on her research and methods of therapy. The clinic she founded is
Richard Gardner
19312003
Richard Gardner served as a clinical professor of psychiatry in the Division of Child Psychiatry at Columbia University from 1963 until his death in 2003. Dr. Gardner
was known for coining the term parental alienation syndrome (PAS) in 1985. His proposal that this was a viable diagnosis was controversial and was never formally
identified as a diagnosis. He published more than 40 books and more than 250 articles in a variety of areas of child psychiatry. He also operated a company, Creative
Therapeutics, Inc., that marketed materials based on his theories.
Dr. Gardner developed a number of highly creative and directive techniques to be used in play therapy with children, including the mutual story-telling technique where
the child tells a story and the therapist tells it back, with adaptive features.
Gardner was a prolific writer and published the following books:
¢ The boys and girls book about divorce, with an introduction for parents
¢ Doctor Gardner’s Modern Fairy Tales
¢ The Parental Alienation Syndrome
¢ Protocols for the Sex-Abuse Evaluation
¢ Psychotherapy With Sex-Abuse Victims: True, False, and Hysterical
¢ Sex-Abuse Trauma?: Or Trauma from Other Sources?
¢ Books
Axline, V. M. (1964). Dibs in search of self. New York, NY: Ballantine. ISBN: 9780345339256.
Axline, V. M. (2002). Play therapy. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone. ISBN: 9780443040610.
Badenoch, B. (2008). Being a brain-wise therapist: A practical guide to interpersonal neurobiology. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN: 9780393705546.
Cattanach, A. (2003). Introduction to play therapy. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN: 9781583912485.
Elkind, D. (2007). The power of play: Learning what comes naturally. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Books. ISBN: 9780738211107.
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