Play in Child Development and Psychotherapy: Toward Empirically Supported Practice (Lea's Personality and Clinical Psychology Series) - Hardcover

Russ, Sandra Walker

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805830650 ISBN 13: 9780805830651

Publisher: Routledge, 2003

Synopsis

Child psychotherapy is in a state of transition. On the one hand, pretend play is a major tool of therapists who work with children. On the other, a mounting chorus of critics claims that play therapy lacks demonstrated treatment efficacy. These complaints are not invalid. Clinical research has only begun.

Extensive studies by developmental researchers have, however, strongly supported the importance of play for children. Much knowledge is being accumulated about the ways in which play is involved in the development of cognitive, affective, and personality processes that are crucial for adaptive functioning. However, there has been a yawning gap between research findings and useful suggestions for practitioners.

Play in Child Development and Psychotherapy represents the first effort to bridge the gap and place play therapy on a firmer empirical foundation. Sandra Russ applies sophisticated contemporary understanding of the role of play in child development to the work of mental health professionals who are trying to design intervention and prevention programs that can be empirically evaluated. Never losing sight of the complex problems that face child therapists, she integrates clinical and developmental research and theory into a comprehensive, up-to-date review of current approaches to conceptualizing play and to doing both therapeutic play work with children and the assessment that necessarily precedes and accompanies it.

About this title

About the Author:

Sandra W. Russ is a professor of psychology and former chair of the department of psychology at Case Western Reserve University.

Review:

This text compliments the author's previous work on affect, creativity, and play in children, and like that text, brings our attention to the importance of emotions and imagination in the child's experience.
—Imagination, Cognition and Personality Journal

An important integration of the literature on the role of play in child development and play therapy. This book will enable those in the helping professions to work better with children.
—Charles Schaefer, Ph. D.
Fairleigh Dickinson University

By integrating developmental research on play processes with clinical perspectives on therapeutic play, Sandra Russ has provided a new, empirically grounded foundation for play therapy. In this model, play takes its place alongside coping and problem-solving as resources for healthy adaptation. This book should lead child therapists and child therapy researchers to reconsider the role of play in child treatment.
—Stephen Shirk, Ph. D.
University of Denver

Play therapy for children has usually been carried out within a narrow, unevaluated clinical domain such as the Freudian, Kleinian, or Rogerian approaches outside the mainstream of basic psychological research. In this exciting new work Sandra Russ brings together current cognitive, emotional and social research on child development and the adaptive role of imaginative play. She thus establishes an empirical foundation for outlining how play therapy can reflect the natural development of children. By linking solid research to practice she opens new research avenues for establishing empirical support for clinical practice. This is a delightful and challenging 'read' for professionals and students.
—Jerome L. Singer, Ph. D.
Yale University

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0805830650
• ISBN 13: 9780805830651
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 194