Play Therapy

The primary purpose of play therapy is to help troubled children express their conflicts and anxieties through the medium of play in the context of a therapeutic relationship.

The therapist's conscious direction of the child's play gives it purpose, meaning, and value in treatment.

Play therapy:

• Aids diagnostic understanding
• Helps establish the treatment relationship
• Provides a medium for working through the defenses and handling anxieties
• Assists in the verbalization of feelings
• Helps the child act out unconscious material and relieve the accompanying tension
• Enlarges the child's play interests for eventual use outside of play therapy

Each child's situation is unique; therefore the work with individual children will have different emphases, depending on the child's problem situation.