Play Therapy Through the Keyhole

Play is like a magic. Anything can happen while playing. Play must be real. No pretending. It is like in contact with children. If they like you, they will share a lot of secrets with you. If they do not like you, they will not even talk to you. Children would never come to a psychologist by themselves. Their adult would bring them because he or she has been worried. I do not know of a better way how to be in real contact with children than playing with them. Virginie Axline used the therapeutic potential of play when she formulated 8 principles of the non-directive play therapy based on the Personal Centered Approach or PCA. This PCA approach is very useful especially for children – human beings between the age of 3 to 10. However, anybody older than that can benefit from this approach if he or she is willing to play. 

The author intended not only to introduce the non-directive play therapy, or more precisely the child centered play therapy, but also to describe the daily work of a child psychologist. Besides the play therapy, this case study goes through the dialogues with the mother, it shows how the relationship with the child was established, incl. the indication how playing was used as a tool for communication. In addition, it mentions the consultations with a colleague or the supervision and it elaborates on the contemplation involving both diagnostics and therapeutic procedures that stress the family context. The second theoretical part of the article outlines the principles of the non-directive play therapy, as introduced by Virginia Axline. In the conclusion, the author discusses what the non-directive play therapy means to her personally.