Promoting Child-Parent Symbolic Play to Repair Early Trauma

Profectum’s Endowed Speaker

Alicia Lieberman, PhD

This talk will describe the use of dyadic play in Child-Parent Psychotherapy for the expression of the child’s trauma narrative and the co-creation by the child and the parent of a protective narrative that promotes child safety and corrects pathogenic beliefs involving the traumatic events. Clinical vignettes will illustrate the integration of child free symbolic play with therapeutic interventions that enable the parent to become a partner with the child in repairing ruptures in trust, fostering age-appropriate object constancy, and restoring a healthy developmental trajectory.

Profectum’s first endowed speaker supported by
The Profectum Educational Endowment Fund
Honoring Serena Wieder, PhD

The Power and Limitations of Symbolic Play in the Individual Psychotherapy of Children

Linda Gunsberg, PhD

There are different models available for psychotherapeutic intervention that employ symbolic play. This presentation will focus on the use of symbolic play in a psychodynamic context for the treatment of emotionally based difficulties such as anxiety, fear, sadness, loss, problems with anger, conflicts and attachment disruptions. These are particularly significant in the contexts of adoption, parental separation, divorce, and parental alienation. In play therapy the therapist considers when and whether or not to comment on the play itself, its underlying symbolic meaning, and its application to the child’s emotional life. The therapist’s reflection on their own feelings aroused in the play provides insights to understanding the child’s play and what is happening in play. There are various ways in which the child therapist involves the parents, sometimes in the sessions with the child and sometimes collaterally.

A Forward Journey/Pathways in Development

 Serena Wieder, PhD and Gilbert Foley, EdD, IMH-E

Children with ASD and other developmental differences have inner emotional lives that can, in many cases, be accessed through symbolic play to advance emotional development and climb the developmental ladder. Working within the Developmental, Individual Difference, Relationship-based Model (DIR®) and examining the impact of auditory, visual spatial, movement and sensory processing challenges on play, this presentation discusses the use of symbolic play to promote regulation, anxiety management, reality testing, and the attainment of the hierarchy of symbolized affects in a parent-mediated model integrated with other therapies. Further, it explores unique challenges often encountered with children on the spectrum including being stuck at pre-symbolic play levels, using regressive symbols, borrowing symbolic themes, and progressing at their own pace. However, in spite of developmental roadblocks, many children on the spectrum can reach unexpected heights of emotional and cognitive development.

Round Table Discussion: Similarities and Differences in Using Symbolic Play in Treatment

Alicia Lieberman, PhD; Linda Gunsberg, PhD; Gilbert Foley, EdD, IMH-E; Serena Wieder, PhD; Mona Delahooke PhD; Connie Lillas. PhD, MFT, RN

Children with ASD and other developmental differences have inner emotional lives that can, in many cases, be accessed through symbolic play to advance emotional development and climb the developmental ladder. Working within the Developmental, Individual Difference, Relationship-based Model (DIR®) and examining the impact of auditory, visual spatial, movement and sensory processing challenges on play, this presentation discusses the use of symbolic play to promote regulation, anxiety management, reality testing, and the attainment of the hierarchy of symbolized affects in a parent-mediated model integrated with other therapies. Further, it explores unique challenges often encountered with children on the spectrum including being stuck at pre-symbolic play levels, using regressive symbols, borrowing symbolic themes, and progressing at their own pace. However, in spite of developmental roadblocks, many children on the spectrum can reach unexpected heights of emotional and cognitive development.