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 following the child, in all the twists and turns that her treatment illustrates and which both adult and child psychoanalysis privilege so uniquely.