1st Edition
Reflections on Play Therapy A Narrative through Training, Theory, and Practice
This book explores an extensive range of questions and challenges within the training, theory, and practice of play therapy, with the aim of providing a stimulating and thought-provoking debate around many of the issues and dilemmas therapists experience.
Drawing upon the author’s own experience as both a therapist and trainer/educator/supervisor, the volume grapples with questions of power, privilege, self-care and mental health. It additionally addresses the wider challenges and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and international conflict upon practice and personhood. Questions around training are explored as well as specific practice challenges relating to managing limits and boundaries within play therapy and working with adopted children. Throughout the book, the author will reflect upon aspects of personal and clinical experience, sharing something of his own developmental narrative through training, teaching and practice.
Reflections on Play Therapy will serve as a core text for trainee play therapists and also a valuable resource for any experienced clinicians working therapeutically with children, young people and families.
1. Wherever you go, there you are: pathways to training and beyond
2. Playful pedagogy: the role of reflective, experiential learning within play therapy training
3. On not trusting the process
4. On not being good enough
5. I walk, therefore I am: paths to self-care
6. Power, privilege and intersectionality: the politics of the playroom
7. A postcard from the edge: reflections on liminality and the role of play as a response to the Covid 19 pandemic
8. A view from the boundary
9. Weather report: the climate emergency and child mental health
10. Taken: play therapy with children in care
11. Autumn leaves: reflections on endings
Biography
David Le Vay is a consultant, supervisor and practising independent therapist within a multi-disciplinary therapy team. He worked extensively for many years as a senior lecturer teaching and developing the MA Play Therapy Programme at the University of Roehampton, London.
"This is the book we have all been waiting for! In addition to being a gripping, entertaining, and evocative read, it addresses a fabulous range of contemporary, and traditional, areas of great interest, tackles assumptions in a thought-provoking way and invites the reader to deepen their clinical practice by making more therapeutic use of self. It is truly a pioneering work and beautifully written. A must read for all child therapists."
-Eileen Prendiville, Director of Academic Affairs at Children’s Therapy Centre, Ireland
"David Le Vay’s new book is quite remarkable in its capacity to reach the heart of the Play Therapy journey. It is a very courageous book as the author weaves his personal narrative into and through play and its therapeutic discoveries. It is also a book of optimism as it both reminds, and convinces us of the power of play, and the essential nature of play for therapy with damaged children. This book should be essential reading for play therapists, as well as reaching far beyond into interdisciplinary relevance in education, social work and clinical practice."
-Dr Sue Jennings, Neuro-Dramatic-Play innovator, Visiting Professor University of Derby
