Profiles of Play

Assessing and Observing Structure and Process in Play Therapy

Saralea Chazan

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781846423161
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

Written by a leading child psychologist, this clearly written and practical book provides a template for interpreting change and meaning in children's lives through their play activity. It shows how each child's pattern of play has a distinct profile of measurable features. These can be identified - and can be used to assess the child's development.

The processes of change that a child goes through and the different kinds of play profiles are clearly illustrated with examples from real life. This will be a useful resource for all professionals who work with children and are looking to support their development through a deeper understanding of their inner experiences, including family therapists, educational psychologists, special needs teachers, play therapists and child care social workers.

CHAPTER 1

Structural Analysis of Play Activity

Unimpaired playfulness not only endows events categorized as play; it is so much a part of being active and alive that it soon tends to elude any definition except, perhaps, one that can include this elusive quality. (Erikson 1977, p.42)

The focus of this book is on play activity, specifically play activity in the therapy session: the forms it takes, its underlying structure, and the various functions it serves for the child. In the last chapter, play activity was described analytically and distinguished from other forms of the child’s activity in the session. In this chapter, the structure of the play activity is analyzed into several components: affective components, cognitive components, narrative components, and developmental components. Chapters 3 to 6 then elaborate the functional analysis of play behavior, the coping–defensive strategies that can be seen in a child’s play activity.

The affective, cognitive, narrative, and developmental components of the structure of play activity are separate aspects that work in unison. They can be considered dimensions of play activity to be measured individually, but they always act together to produce play activity. In later sections of this chapter, each of these components will be described in detail, with respect to both its theoretical relationship to the development of a child’s play and its observation in the play activity. First, to illustrate how each of these components can be seen to contribute to the overall play activity, a summary of a session from the therapy of a three-and-a-half-year-old boy is given.

Ben’s Therapy Session

The session described is the second session of Ben’s therapy. He has been referred for consultation because of aggressive behavior at home and in daycare. His parents have recently divorced and share custody of their child. He comes to the session in the company of his nanny. The segmentation of the session is described below.

Segmentation of the Session

Session Segment One: Non-Play Activity #1

Ben lingers outside the door, clinging to his nanny’s hand. The therapist goes out to greet him. Ben smiles a small smile and slowly follows her into the office. He instructs his nanny to wait for him in the waiting room.

Session Segment Two: Pre-Play Activity #1

Ben begins to examine plastic animal models he had been playing with in the previous session. He takes the animals out of the box and lines one up next to the other.

Ben:	(To therapist) Do you remember these?

He grins and talks in a loud excited voice. He arranges the animals in family groupings. He labels them “mommy,” “daddy,” “sister,” “brother,” “baby.”

Session Segment Three: Play Activity #1

Ben runs, grabs plastic knights and throws them to the ground. He recreates a fight scene from the previous session. Ben animates the soldiers with loud “fighting” noises. Ben forcefully smashes the figures into each other and then throws the animals onto the pile. He is breathing heavily and grimacing, making powerful movements with the figures as they smash into each other.

Suddenly, Ben jumps up and grabs a plastic hammer. He announces “the house is broken” and runs to the wall and bangs with the hammer. Given his high level of energy and affect, he is somewhat restrained in his hammering.

Therapist:	Oh, dear...the house is broken!
Ben:	(Yelling, with fear, anxiety, and anger in his tone of voice) Oh dear, the house is broken!

Ben is very agitated. Therapist moves closer to Ben.

Therapist:	I bet the people in the house are upset!
Ben:	Yes!

Ben rushes to the toy tool box and grabs a drill used in the last session as a gun. Ben jumps around the room in different positions, aiming the gun and yelling. Then he drops the gun and runs to the doll house.

Session Segment Four: Pre-Play Activity #2

Ben arranges the doll figures. He puts mommy, daddy, boy, and girl dolls in their own beds. Then he puts the baby doll in the daddy’s bed. Ben describes his actions in a loud voice.

Session Segment Five: Play Activity #2

Suddenly, Ben grabs the doll figures and the furniture by the fistful and throws them out of the house into a heap on the floor. Ben backs away from the characters he is setting up and wanders around the room breathing heavily.

Therapist:

(Animating boy doll) Oh, oh, we’ve fallen out of our house! Help! Help!

Ben tries to toss the father figure back into the house through the doll house window and then tosses him out again several times.

Ben:	(Yelling) He’s trying to fly into the house!
Therapist:	Is daddy trying to get back home?

Ben drops the dolls, stomps on them, kicks the doll furniture and figures.

Session Segment Six: Non-Play Activity #2

Ben leaves the play space and wanders aimlessly around the room.

Session Segment Seven: Play Activity #3

Ben takes the bucket of Legos to the middle of the room. The therapist moves closer to him. Ben engages in five minutes of focused effort trying to construct a car he saw pictured on the bucket. Occasionally he asks the therapist to help put pieces together. He is much calmer, and the therapist admires his work.

Ben sees a propeller piece and turns the car into an airplane. He becomes frustrated as the pieces do not fit together. He pulls the dump truck over and piles it high with doll figures, furniture, and Lego pieces and then dumps them out. He does this several more times, becoming agitated and louder. Ben jumps up and goes to a table with paper, crayons, and pencils. He grabs a red pencil and begins stabbing the paper, yelling that it is a picture of all the shooting that is going on. Ben attacks the paper with the pencil, making slashes and jabs and yelling “Shoot! Shoot!”

Session Segment Eight: Interruption #1

Ben suddenly grabs the paper, says he is going to show it to his nanny, and runs out the door. The therapist follows and explains to the astonished woman that Ben wanted her to see his picture, as he pushes it in the nanny’s face and runs back into the room. Ben is now very agitated and angry.

Session Segment Nine: Play Activity #4

Ben runs around the room. He jumps into different positions yelling “Shoot the Beast!” aiming first at the Lego construction, then at the wall, then at the door. After each yell, Ben races back to the table, grabs a different pencil, and makes slash marks and jabs at a piece of paper.

Ben:	(To therapist) Are you scared of the Beast?
Therapist:	(Picks up boy doll) That’s a big, scary beast! Can someone help me?

Ben races over and knocks boy doll out of therapist’s hand.

Ben:	(Yelling) Kill the Beast!

Ben grabs the toy drill and shoots at the boy doll. He lunges towards the couch, where he falls onto his stomach. He lies there quietly for a few moments as his breathing slows.

Therapist:	(Goes to the chair next to the couch and sits for a few moments) We have five minutes left in the session.Would you like to build more cars?
Ben:	(Jumping up) No.

Ben runs to retrieve a nerf ball, which he tries to toss into the basketball hoop. Most of his tosses are unsuccessful, but he is very proud of his successes. Therapist praises him. Ben opens the door with a few minutes remaining in the session.

Session Segment Ten: Non-Play Activity #3

Ben greets his nanny, and they prepare to leave. Good-byes are said. The therapist returns to office and hears Ben arguing with his nanny that he wants to stay. After a few minutes, she succeeds in coaxing him out into the hall. They leave the building together.

This session is a very revealing one. Although therapist and child patient have met only once before, the child has a lot to share and his therapist is ready to listen. The sequence of segments consists of play activity interspersed with pre-play and non-play. There are two pre-play segments, four play activity segments, and three non-play activity segments. An interruption reflects mounting tension within the child that cannot be contained within the session.

Ben usually initiates the play activity and ends the play activity segments. The therapist’s main role is facilitative. One exception to this allocation of roles occurs in play activity segment #4, when the therapist animates the boy doll. Although Ben does briefly respond to her initiative, rather than rescuing the boy doll he shoots at him! This last play activity segment then shifts to throwing baskets and is ended by the therapist because the session is ending. Ben cannot depend upon her for closure and leaves a few minutes before the session is to end, only to complain to his nanny that he wants to stay longer.

Most of the play activity of this session takes place within the microsphere, as Ben plays with the doll house, animals, and family figures. When the small toy pieces cannot remain intact, he enters the macrosphere, using paper and pencil as props. Threatening fantasy play then invades his everyday world, and Ben seems mortally wounded as he takes refuge on the couch.

Therapist’s Process Notes of the Therapy Session

The source for the description of Ben’s therapeutic hour was the therapist’s process notes of the entire therapeutic session. These process notes form a data base for segmentation and for deriving ratings of the structure of the child’s play activity.¹ Capturing the content of a therapeutic hour is a challenge to all therapists. The therapist must include in the description of the therapeutic process the sequences of events, the child’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction Observing Play Activity
• Chapter 1 Structural Analysis of Play Activity
• Chapter 2 The Adaptive Player
• Chapter 3 The Conflicted Player
• Chapter 4 The Rigid/Polarized Player
• Chapter 5 The Extremely Anxious/Isolated Player
• Chapter 6 Play Activity, The Player, and Development of the Self
• References
• Name Index
• Subject Index