THERAPEUTIC PLAY TECHNIQUES: SYMPOSIUM, 1954: 8. PLAY EQUIPMENT FOR DIAGNOSIS AND THERAPY

In this article past twenty years a large volume of literature has accumulated both on play therapy and on various specialized techniques for interviewing children for purposes of diagnosis or research, but in the papers on play therapy it is difficult or impossible to discover just what physical equipment was provided for the interviews, in a brief description of the play materials she uses in child analysis, mentions such items as human and animal figures, various conveyances, paper, scissors and pencils, but she does not discuss the basis of selection. Psychoanalytic literature, as a whole, while it emphasizes interpretation of the play, has offered no enumeration or evaluation of the materials used. It is felt that from this experience certain general principles of setting up a playroom can be established. It is apparent that communication of important material can be obtained from the use of a wide variety of toys. For the inexperienced examiner or therapist, however, it would seem advisable to set up as simple and standardized a play setting as possible. By so doing, the examiner is able to compare within his own experience the behavior of different children in the same setting and in reaction to the same toy stimuli. The toys in this study are not necessarily the only toys that could be used, but have been found to be useful and inexpensive. They are adaptable to any room, from the elaborate playroom constructed especially for that purpose, to a small box of play materials which can be transported easily and which can be used as a standard of stimuli for the interview situation in any physical setup. It would be perhaps difficult to find a pattern toy small enough to be easily transportable, but in many ways the toy box itself is a pattern, and its investigation or lack of investigation can be looked upon diagnostically in the same manner. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)