Can You Help Me Be? Commentary on Mr. Mikulka’s Paper “Surviving Destruction and Finding Connection: Play Therapy with an 11 Year Old Boy”

ABSTRACT

In his paper “Surviving Destruction and Finding Connection: Play Therapy with an 11 year Old Boy” Mr. Mikulka describes the treatment of a difficult boy who presented a very contrasting picture – deeply connected to Mr. Mikulka and yet highly provocative and offensive. Mr. Mikulka describes his efforts to make sense of the boy’s acts and to establish limits. In reading his case, one can marvel at his ability to go on despite his provocative statements and sometimes offensive acts to become a steadying presence for the boy, someone who made him feel not just tolerated, but also valued and seen.     

Treating Traumatized Children: Somatic Memories and Play Therapy

Drawing on psychoanalytic theories of infant development and children’s preverbal memories, this article explores the somatic memories in young children who experienced trauma and the level interventions necessary to facilitate the transformation of these traumas from concrete to symbolic representations. The clinical case of a 3-year-old boy who experienced hospitalizations and multiple surgeries prior to the age of 2 is used to illustrate the efficacy of play therapy for traumatized children. We argue that children do remember traumas from their infancy, and interventions geared toward re-enacting the traumas through play are necessary to help these children symbolize their experiences and alleviate their trauma symptoms.     

Finding God in the Silence: Contemplative Prayer and Therapy

In this paper the author shares some of his experiences of using silence in therapy. He presents one of the modes of practicing silence, namely the meditation technique known as Contemplative Prayer, and shows advantages of using this technique in the process of self-purification and self-balancing of the therapist. The author stipulates that silence is a royal way to discovering God. Finding this divine particle within oneself and client changes the whole outlook of therapy. The therapist is no longer alone with the client, but God becomes an active participant in the therapeutic process through His love for both therapist and client.     

Play and Art in Existential Trauma Therapy with Children and Their Parents

In existential family trauma therapy play and art can be utilized during the treatment process to help children and their parents hold, tell, master, and honor their trauma experiences and trauma pain. Clinical material is offered to illustrate this existential treatment process.     

Responsive Parenting in the Second Year: Specific Influences on Children's Language and Play

In two longitudinal studies, relations between dimensions of maternal responsiveness at 13 months and children's language and play abilities at 13 and at 20 months were examined. We characterized mothers' responsive exchanges by assessing the targets of maternal responses (i.e. what child activities mothers respond to) and the verbal contents of maternal responses (i.e. what mothers said when they responded), and we asked whether subtypes of responsiveness would relate differentially to children's language and play abilities. In general, maternal responsiveness to children's vocalizations predicted children's language, and maternal responses to children's play predicted children's play. These findings suggest that maternal responsiveness can be profitably categorized into subtypes that relate to domains of child outcomes in specialized ways. The specific nature of mother–child associations in the domains of early language and play is discussed. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Child-Centered Play Therapy and Childhood Depression: An Effectiveness Study in Schools

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Depression in childhood is a significant mental health concern, impacting cognitive, affective, social, behavioral, and physical domains. Children who...     

Introducing Reality Play Therapy: Reactions and Perceptions From Elementary School Counselors

Many elementary school students lack school relationships required for positive personal, social, and academic interactions. Reality therapy and play therapy both seek to address these relationships through developmentally appropriate and effective interventions. Integrating these 2 approaches has the potential for elementary school counselors to provide students with opportunities to create positive relationships and develop problem-solving skills. In this study, 8 school counselors participated in a series of trainings introducing reality play-therapy techniques to assess this potential. A thematic analysis conducted on feedback sessions following the trainings yielded themes related to the participants’ positive perceptions to the training and possible application.     

Women Surviving an Abusive Relationship: Grief and the Process of Change

The authors briefly survey the literature about women in abusive relationships and discuss key issues about the change process that arise from that work and are consistent with the grieving process. The constructs of depression, guilt, and decision-making difficulty among women abused by an intimate partner are examined and compared with the perspective of the normal grieving of a major loss. Implications for counseling practice are considered.     

The Lausanne Trilogue Play paradigm: Breaking Discoveries in Family Process and Therapy

This article provides a brief history of key developments in the growth of the Lausanne Trilogue Play (LTP) paradigm that paved a foundation for new scholarship featured in the papers that follow. We outline core, foundational elements of the LTP work, highlighting the close interplay between clinical and research applications, the systems orientation in both regards, the dual attention to both top down (metamodel) and bottom up (microanalysis, in particular) frames, and the relevance of transitions from dyad to triad. Next, later developments in methodological refinement and expansion within the LTP’s country-of-origin are described, with closing commentary provided on the path-breaking contributions of several investigations that employed the LTP in five different countries, each illuminating previously under-studied family phenomena. The historical considerations spotlighted in this article, and the lessons learned from new empirical investigations the early work has inspired, are important to consider in tandem as the field begins expanding beyond the LTP’s original foundations and makes increasing use of the paradigm as a research instrument beyond clinical settings.     

Finding Where and Saying Where: Developmental Relationships Between Place Learning and Language in the First Year

The relationship between emergent spatial understanding in different cognitive domains, including navigation and language, has rarely been studied using methods that allow for the examination of individual differences. In this study the authors explored emergent place learning and its relationship to early spatial language, namely prepositions, in 16- to 24-month-old children. Children were tested using a spatial task adapted from the Morris water maze, and the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory. In the place-learning task, children were placed in a circular enclosure and a puzzle was hidden under the floor at one location. Before each trial, children were disoriented and placed in the maze at a different starting position. Their search types and success at finding the puzzle were coded. As expected, older children demonstrated more spatial searches and better place-learning skills (finding the goal), as well as greater overall expressive vocabulary. Place learning and language did not correlate with each other once age was partialled, with one crucial exception: a theoretically predicted correlation between prepositions and goal localization.     

Robustness of Decision‐Making Competence: Evidence from Two Measures and an 11‐Year Longitudinal Study

Decision‐making competence (DMC) is the ability to follow normative principles when making decisions. In a longitudinal analysis, we examine the robustness of DMC over time, as measured by two batteries of paper‐and‐pencil tasks. Participants completed the youth version (Y‐DMC) at age 19 and/or the adult version (A‐DMC) 11 years later at age 30, as part of a larger longitudinal study. Both measures are composed of tasks adapted from ones used in experimental studies of decision‐making skills. Results supported the robustness of these measures and the usefulness of the construct. Response patterns for Y‐DMC were similar to those observed with a smaller initial sample drawn from the same population. Response patterns for A‐DMC were similar to those observed with an earlier community sample. Y‐DMC and A‐DMC were significantly correlated, for participants who completed both measures, 11 years apart, even after controlling for measures of cognitive ability. Nomological validity was observed in correlations of scores on both tests with measures of cognitive ability, cognitive style, and environmental factors with predicted relationships to DMC, including household socioeconomic status, neighborhood disadvantage, and paternal substance abuse. Higher Y‐DMC and A‐DMC scores were also associated with lower rates of potentially risky and antisocial behaviors, including adolescent delinquency, cannabis use, and early sexual behavior. Thus, the Y‐DMC and A‐DMC measures appear to capture a relatively stable, measurable construct that increases with supportive environmental factors and is associated with constructive behaviors. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Karl Marx and Group Therapy: An Old Warning about a New Phenomenon

Marx's classic critique of religion is used to explore the social function of many therapy groups. The manner in which groups can act as a conserving force for the status quo is investigated. The argument is made that the Marxist critique can help promote a more realistic social awareness and a more effective perception of groups. A set of questions is provided for group leaders who want to avoid apolitical, asocial, and ahistorical thinking.     

Race and Ethnicity: An 11‐Year Content Analysis of Counseling and Values

Using the Dimensions of Personal Identity Model proposed by Arredondo and Glauner (as cited in Arredondo et al., 1996 ), the authors reviewed the last 11 years of the Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling's journal, Counseling and Values, specifically regarding the “A” dimensions of race and ethnicity. Twenty‐five of the 235 articles reviewed (11%) contained a multicultural perspective defined in these terms. Other aspects of cultural inclusion, such as authorship and type of study, were also considered.     

Child‐Centered Play Therapy: Aggression,Empathy, and Self‐Regulation

The authors conducted a randomized controlled trial to investigate differences among 36 elementary school age children who received 16 sessions of child‐centered play therapy and 35 children who were assigned to a waitlist control group. Pre‐ and postassessments were used to measure children's levels of aggression, self‐regulation, and empathy per parent and teacher report. Results revealed statistically significant positive results for parents and nonstatistically significant results for teachers. Implications and future research are examined.     

Individual and Group Child‐Centered Play Therapy: Impact on Social‐Emotional Competencies

The authors conducted a randomized controlled trial study with 56 elementary school children to test the effectiveness of 16 sessions of individual and group child‐centered play therapy (CCPT) in improving social‐emotional assets, including self‐regulation/responsibility, social competence, and empathy. Parent reports indicated that treatment in both CCPT conditions was correlated with substantial gains in overall social‐emotional assets and in the constructs of self‐regulation/responsibility and social competence.     

The Frequency and Intensity of Negative Attitudes Expressed in Play Therapy: A Comparison of Well-Adjusted and Disturbed Young Children

The relationship of age and IQ to response inhibition in children was investigated in two experiments. Two tasks were employed: a “walk slowly” task designed to measure motor inhibition and a simple matching task designed to measure cognitive inhibition. In Experiment I, the Ss were 20 “normal” children at ages 4, 5, 6, and 7 years of age. Response inhibition was found to increase with age. In Experiment II, the Ss were 48 institutionalized retardates, half between the ages of 8 to 12 and half between the ages of 13 to 17. Half of each age group had IQs between 40 and 55, and half had IQs between 56 and 70. Motor response inhibition varied as a function of age but not IQ, while cognitive inhibition varied as a function of IQ but not age.