The Play Therapy Primer

The clinically indispensable guide to using play in therapy, revised and updated. Featuring new approaches developed since the publication of the successful first edition, The Play Therapy Primer, Second Edition offers health care professionals and students a balance of fundamentals, theory, and practical techniques for using play in therapy. Providing an ecosystemic perspective, the book defines distinctive approaches to the practice of play therapy that readers can integrate into a personalized and internally consistent theory and practice of their own. This timely resource also includes increased coverage of developmental issues and a new chapter discussing diversity issues with case examples.Presenting stimulating and useful information for therapists at all levels of training, The Play Therapy Primer covers: A history of play therapy The major theories of play therapy in use today Ecosystemic Play Therapy theory and practice A conceptual framework for the practice of individual play therapy The course of individual play therapy Structured group play therapy Session-by-session treatment plans

KEVIN J. OCONNOR, PhD, RPT-S, is Professor and Director of the Ecosystemic Clinical Child Psychology Program at the California School of Professional Psychology. He is the cofounder of the Association for Play Therapy and currently serves on its Board. He maintains a private practice treating children and their families and is the author of several widely used texts on play therapy in general and Ecosytemic Play Therapy in particular.