Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship by Garry L. Landreth

by Garry L. Landreth

Product Description Play The Art of the Relationship is the newest incarnation of Garry Landreth’s comprehensive text on creating therapeutic relationships with children through play. It details the Child-Centered Play Therapy model, which stresses the importance of understanding the child’s world and perspective. This approach facilitates the play therapy process while allowing therapist and client to fully connect. Professors who have taught a course based on the previous edition will be pleased to find the core message intact, but updated with a significant body of recent research. Expanded to cover additional topics of interest, the new edition The Third Edition will feel both familiar and fresh to educators and trainers who have relied on Landreth’s text for years. The guidelines, transcripts, and case examples offered help therapists govern sensitive issues at every stage of the therapeutic process, from the first meeting to the end of the relationship.

Unknown Binding

First published August 9, 2002

Reviews

[Mary Anne Swart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rather repetitive, but a wonderful first introduction into child-centered play therapy. I liked reading the example stories.

Main takeaway:
Play therapy is not just something you do, but rather is an attitude, a philosophy, a way of being. Most of what is learned by children in the play therapy relationship is not a cognitive learning but a developing experiential, intuitive learning about the self. In therapy, I communicate to the child that none of their behaviors or emotions will ever make them any more or less worthy of being accepted or prized as a unique person. “I accept you as you are,” I tell them, just as much on the days they are defiant, moody, and angry as on the days they happy, cooperative, and pleasant.

Another thought: this is very Gestalt. Landreth puts great emphasis on the natural bent of children toward resiliency and growth, mentioning their “constructive, creative, self-healing power.” I wonder how this fits with the theological doctrine that people are inherently evil? This approach seems to imply that the problem is completely external, but my worldview acknowledges that there is an internal problem, too, only solvable through Jesus. I can't quite figure out how to integrate Gestalt methodology with the doctrine of total depravity.

[Jessie Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was required for school