Playmasters at Work: Trauma Processing and the Shared Language of Play in Child Analysis

Therapeutic play is a foundational discovery from psychoanalysis and is now a major contribution to child treatment in all its forms. Underacknowledged derivatives from child's play in adult treatments include: the attention to principles of development; the application of nonverbal relational process; utilization of somatic movement; and above all, the therapeutic engagement with child self-states in the full spectrum of dissociative disorders. This case report describes psychoanalytic play with a therapist/analyst who is schooled in principles of trauma treatment and its dissociative manifestations as well as principles of dyadic, countertransferential attentiveness. The treatment mode - child psychoanalysis - allows for a natural integration of other forms of trauma work while still <i>following the child</i>, in all the twists and turns that her treatment illustrates and which both adult and child psychoanalysis privilege so uniquely.