Who have been some of the important influences in your own development as a play therapist and how have those impacted you? I think that for me probably three individuals who are kind of seasoned and that would be starting with Louise Gurney and that was the first play therapist I think I ever heard about in my life. family therapy training in a family therapy class and I heard about Bernard and Louise Gurney and the development of filial therapy and so that was the first little hint I had of being attracted to someone.
something that seemed really useful and valuable. And so in terms of impact, I think it really helped me to consider the systemic piece as a cornerstone of any work that I was going to do. So that was a very important association in terms of play therapy.
The second person is Charlie Schaefer, and in particular because he had a very focused... interest in psychic trauma. And that early chapter that he wrote on psychic trauma really made me think. It challenged some of the things that I already knew.
And it definitely really turned my attention to the whole possibility that kids in play could do some of this really important trauma work. So I will eternally be grateful to him for that piece of work that he he did. And also, you know, his prescriptive approach actually is one of the ones that I really have been influenced by.
And I think of what I do more as integrative, but it definitely has a component that is by nature prescriptive. You have to kind of pick and choose the things that you think might be helpful to one particular child or family. And then, of course, Gary Landreth.
And I especially point him out because challenged me once to come and do a one-day training on the relationship in play therapy. And I said to him, I think I have 15 minutes tops on relationship. I don't know what I could say about that. And I was so nervous.
It's the only time I think I remember being that nervous about a presentation. And I did six hours and I couldn't get everything in. And that really made me realize how I took that for granted, how I valued it, how important it was to me. concept of the relationship in the treatment and I think it really allowed me to kind of redirect my focus after that and so those three people in particular in terms of influence and impact have been pretty spectacular. How do you perceive the current state of play therapy? I think that the play therapy field is in the process of growth.
I feel very optimistic about it. I feel that the research... is really being done. I think that people have come together and really made a commitment to getting that research base that supports what we do. I think that the field of neuroscience is also just coincidentally supporting everything that we do and the way we go about doing the things that we do.
And so I feel like it's a pretty robust field right now. I feel people are getting more confident. I think it's amazing that people are choosing to become play therapists versus anything else.
So just the fact that we've attracted so many people and that they think this is valuable. and they think this is something they want to contribute to the kids that they work with, I think is really important. And it's getting much more commonplace out there in the world that people refer specifically for play therapy. So they call and they want to have play therapy as part of what is provided to their children. So I think the education APT has done and the way they've gone about going out to parents and helping them understand that verbalizing things is not the language of the child.
and that we need to give them other opportunities to communicate and other ways to be helpful to them. I think it's been incredible and it's been decades of commitment by the association staff, by the board, by the participants, the members. And I think it's really having a huge impact. And I see it just in terms of the practices that I've been running and the way that people are turning to us.
And again, I think the neuroscience. and the attachment fields, both of them, have really managed to in many ways support the things that we're doing, so I feel really optimistic about it. How would you compare the first five years of your career as a play therapist to the last five years of your work?
When I first started doing play therapy, I think that I was so interested in doing the best possible job I could that I overthought it. I was in my head a lot. I was like, oh my gosh, what is this child doing? And what am I going to say in response to that question?
And, you know, how do I make them feel comfortable? I had so much anxiety about representing. play therapy to the best of my ability, about making the connection with the kid as best as I could, that in a way it interfered because I was constantly thinking about what I was supposed to do instead of, quote, being there. In recent trainings, you've discussed reconsidering some basic tenets of your early training. Please discuss how your thinking about play therapy and child and family treatment has changed over time.
What factors have contributed to these changes in your thinking? I think that in the process of working with people, in the process of trying to be helpful to them, you recognize that there's some limitations in what you offer. So, for example, somewhere along the line, someone decided that the therapy...
was going to be 45 minutes. I don't know how that got started. Well, I'm sure it was with Freud, but in essence we now take that as kind of a rule of some kind. kind that you see the client for 45 minutes, 50 minutes, once a week. There are a lot of families that I work with where I think more intensive treatment might be actually better.
We might have some children that it would be better to see for smaller periods of time but every day and we might have some families where it would be great for them to come in for three or four hour sessions because they can't drive to our offices let's say every week. So I just think that we need to think a little bit out of the box. I think that providing therapy in a home-based setting is a very useful way to proceed in some cases. We need to train play therapists, I think, to be able to bring the sort of sacred nature of the play therapy office into a home where it may be less organized, it may be less structured, but how to set it up in such a way so that there's continuity, so that they're bringing in the same toys, so that the kids... Kids are still getting the benefits you have from a standard therapy office, but you're able to provide it in this new alternative way.
So I think some of those changes, just thinking out of the box a little bit, are pretty important. In terms of child and family work, I really have come to the conclusion that some of the attachment-based therapies are pretty necessary. And I was a person who had training in therapy, I'm going to say 30 years. 30 years ago, and it did not take. I thought this is unusual, I can't do this, this won't work with my families.
And now if we fast forward probably about, I think it's now 10, 12 years ago, I retook the training. And at this stage, I just find that it is so incredibly useful and valuable. and necessary to the work that I've been doing.
But I think that introducing the notion of doing some kind of dyadic work, strengthening the attachment bond, and having this different kind of play that's more a use of self, and it's about energy and physical contact. And now I just see it as so incredibly valuable and critical. Circle of Security is the other one. It's an attachment-based program. Anything that has to do with restoring...
restoring or reestablishing or strengthening. the parent-child bond, and beyond that, the whole family system. So I go back to my systems thinking, and I think, you know, whatever it is that's going to happen is going to happen within the context of this family.
So engaging the family members to come forward. I think that in our training, the play therapists, even though they're exposed to dyadic work between parents and kids in filial and CPRT and others, I think their comfort level is to work with the child alone. And in the family therapy field, their comfort level is to work with kids who can talk.
And so there's kind of a bridge there that I think needs further definition, further connection, so that we all get comfortable working with the entire system because I think it's pretty necessary to do. How has trauma-informed practice with children and families evolved? You know, I started doing work with children who'd had trauma in the 70s, and it was interesting. We were all trying to do the very best we could, but there were not a lot of guidelines. And so a lot of it was trial and error.
But I do think that over the years a consensus came together, that it was important for the child to be believed. that kids ordinarily don't make false reports, that sometimes people can misinterpret what the kids are saying, but that just coming from the child, they don't tend to just make this kind of stuff up. That it was important to work with them in combination with their non-offending supportive parent, that the impact of reporting and the system's response could be as difficult to the child as other stressors in their life. So as I was doing that kind of work early on, we felt that it was very important to really focus a part of what we did in therapy specifically on the trauma.
In other words, that it would be important for the child to have a sense of what was going on in their have an opportunity to show or tell some of what had happened to them, to understand it differently, to express their emotions, and overall to have an opportunity to spend some time with the traumatic event itself. So that's how trauma-focused treatment, I think, evolved. And later on, there was a treatment model that was developed and researched very well, and that was trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. And then that became kind of the standard. in terms of approach.
And so it's very important to get that basic training. I think that many of the principles that are suggested by TFCBT, the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Program, can also be delivered in a playful way. And so there are so many play therapists now who are combining the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with play therapy and coming up with something that I think is a little bit more user-friendly. friendly for young children and I think actually promotes the best of both. And so I'm very happy to see that development.
I hope it continues in that direction as well. How have cultural and diversity issues affected play therapy? I think that as play therapists we have been part of the mental health community that has really developed an interest in making sure that whatever services we are providing, we are providing with cultural, ethnic, gender, developmental differences in mind. And the reality is that the families that we work with come from lots of different kinds of cultures with different belief systems and different values. And for example, coming from a Latin culture, I can tell you that in my culture, therapy is not really considered something that you turn to easily.
In my culture, when people think about therapy, they think about serious mental illnesses. So for example, the idea that a child would need therapy is a major barrier to get past. And so we need to make sure that the education is available. available to people of different cultures so they understand what therapy is and what it is not.
Oftentimes the parents that I work with want and need the events that have been traumatic to be put in the past quickly. There's some cultures in which it's a matter of shame to discuss issues like physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect. And so they really have this sense that the sooner you can put that in a different compartment. And also that it's not useful for kids to be thinking about it, remembering it. and speaking about it.
Different cultures have different approaches to how they manage pain and suffering and what is and is not okay to do in terms of expressing the pain that you've that you've had. So oftentimes I think in play therapy we need that kind of training and we need to remain aware that there are these basic differences in how our services can be received and how they can be optimized so that we really are reaching the people who need it. and giving them the help that's really going to be useful to them. So I think it's very important to keep those training programs coming. And I love that at APT, for example, when we're doing trainings, we're asked to always talk about cultural differences and cultural issues so that that's always on people's minds, so it isn't something that gets forgotten.
Or I did a basic training three years ago, so I don't need anything. You have to constantly be exploring that and exploring yourself. and your own biases, etc., etc. How did your latest thoughts develop about integrative play therapy? I have always felt that there is a lot of value to almost any approach that a play therapist will use with a child as long as it's being done purposefully and with respect and in a goal oriented manner.
People are incredibly creative especially in this organization. So every time I come to a conference I'm learning something new and somebody's bringing a new idea to me that creativity is without bounds. And I think we need to be in a position where we can embrace the creativity and at the same time be selective in looking at is this consistent with.
a theoretical framework? Is this something that would have limitations and in what context? So that we can have these dialogues. But to me, this is one of the most exciting things that we have to offer, that there is new and fresh ideas coming forward all the time.
I think we were talking yesterday a little bit about how some of these ideas are being applied to one problem specifically and some of the ideas are being applied to general areas. like how to promote attachment. So we are as a group very diverse, we're I think very creative, and there's a lot of innovation going on.
And I think we therefore need to have this approach that invites and welcomes those things. I've always felt, for example, people ask me what kind of play therapy do you do? And I always respond, I do the kind of play therapy that the child needs me to do. So that means that I'm really attuned to the child's If this is a child who comes into my office and starts doing the work they need to do and telling me how they feel and what they're thinking, then I'm pretty non-directive. You know, I can just sit back.
But if it's a child that's avoidant, that is having all kinds of behavioral problems, but they're not presenting themselves, I may actually get a little bit more directive. So I think we need to just give invitations to people and see what works for them. And if you only do one thing... there's going to be some issues you won't work with.
There's going to be some particular family types you won't work with. I think we just need to broaden our repertoire. And I think that the person who actually is integrative is a person who's more well-informed. Because we're not working kind of by the seat of our pants, as they used to say in terms of being eclectic. We actually recognize the strengths of a particular model or approach.
And we're using... them and selecting them on purpose. So I think to be integrative means that you're, again, welcoming whatever is innovation, whatever might actually work in a different way to promote some of the goals that you have. And I have always felt comfortable doing that. So I don't have a lot of rigidity.
I think I think of myself as a very flexible person, and I value the creativity of others. What metaphor would you use to define the field of play therapy over the last 15, 20, or 30 years? This question of a metaphor is a really important one and a challenging one. And the first one that came into my mind was butterfly, of course.
That we were somewhat isolated, somewhat small, a select group of people. And then slowly but surely it formed into this caterpillar that was comfortable within its confines. And suddenly it broke open.
And then there was this butterfly. And the butterfly is now spreading its wings and visiting different nations. I had this image of flight, but also coming back home.
You know, also landing and taking stock of where you are and sort of breathing in the changes that have happened. progress that's been made. So I think the butterfly is good. I also thought about eagle because it was just a more sturdy animal, but an eagle taking flight, something proud, proud of what we've done, you know, accomplished, strong.
So I like that metaphor. So it went from some kind of a more fragile butterfly to a more sturdy and kind of powerful, taking its place and being recognized for the place. that it holds.
Something about dignity, something about strength. So I like both of those. What do you hope to leave as part of your legacy in regard to the field of play therapy? I think that most of the time the feedback that I get has to do with people commenting that they feel that I'm genuine, that I'm authentic, that I am a real person.
And if that's true, if I've managed to convey that, then I'm a real person. that or if people feel that when they're with me, that to me would be a beautiful memory for people to have of me. That I try so hard to be present with whoever I am. It's very easy for me.
I am very interested. I am curious. I like to be fully here when I'm here.
And so I value honesty. I value integrity. And if that's what's come across, which is what the feedback is, then I'm really a happy camper.
And I can, you know, rest easy knowing I've done that piece. What do you imagine will be a major focus for the field of play therapy in the next 15 years, and what suggestions do you have for play therapists in the future? Well, I think that as I look ahead, I think that the question of integrating is going to continue to be a very important one to do.
For example, I think the field of neuroscience is actually validating the work that we do. You know, as people study more the impact of trauma on the brain and how kids function and how to be of service to them, I think that play therapy comes sort of to the top as a viable productive solution to some of the difficulties and vulnerabilities that children feel. I think that the field of attachment, which sometimes has felt to me separate, like the attachment workshops and the attachment conferences, the attachment literature, it so much really feeds into what we do and what we value.
So I think this just continuation of integration is going to be really important. Obviously, I think the research base needs to continue to grow. And there's just such a tremendous energy around that right now.
I feel like people are ready to contribute in that way. And I would just suggest to play therapists in very small private practices and without a lot of resources that there's still some little research that they can do, too. So even if it's a pre-and post-test, even if it's one standardized instrument. that measures attachment, and you do it pre and post play therapy.
That in and of itself is a research project. It may not be a methodologically robust one, which other people can do, but that we should always be trying to contribute. I think also that the qualitative research is underutilized, and I think we can learn a lot from doing phenomenological studies and learning from individuals, what's the impact of this work on you? And I'm very... very happy to see the students doing a lot of this work because I think that the children and the parents, if they could just kind of go out and tell people what it's like to be in a good play therapy, family play therapy situation, they could do wonderful kind of education in terms of just people learning about it and learning that yes, it has a therapeutic component or yes, it helped them make changes in their families or yes, people now see each other.
and interact with each other in a much safer and positive way.