DOING

PLAY
THERAPY
From Building the Relationship
to Facilitating Change

Terry Kottman
Kristin K. Meany‑Walen

Series Editors’ Note by

Cathy A. Malchiodi and David A. Crenshaw

THE GUILFORD PRESS

New York  London
 CH A P T ER 2

Pick a Theory, Any Theory

There is nothing so practical as a good theory

—Kurt Lewin (1951, p. 169)

Icaln this chapter, we are going to focus on the “systematic use of a theoreti-
model” part of the APT definition of play therapy in Chapter 1. (We
hope everyone reading the book is interested, too, because we think it is
important.) Not being part of the committee that developed that defini-
tion, we aren’t exactly 100% sure why they included it. However, since we
also think it is essential, we thought we should explain why we believe
play therapists (and counselors who work with adults, teens, etc.) should
have a consistent method for systematically conceptualizing clients and
coming up with a “Big A agenda” (your long-term goals and objectives
for your clients) and a “small a agenda” (a plan for specific sessions). We
completely agree with Kevin O’Connor, co-­founder of the APT, who in
Foundations of Play Therapy (Schaefer, 2011) said that “therapists can be
effective only when they consistently work from an organized theoretical
framework” (p. 254). The simplest way for you to work from an organized
theoretical framework (short of developing your own counseling theory,
which is possible and lovely if you are willing to do the work to consider
all of the following questions listed later and develop a consistent way
to think about clients and their issues and how to help them) is to pick
one of the established theoretical approaches to play therapy. In order to
help you consider adopting a theoretical framework for your play therapy,
we thought we would give you some information about how to go about
exploring the various frameworks.

 39 
40    D oing P lay T herapy  

There are many different approaches to play therapy, some of which

are based on major models of counseling and psychotherapy (i.e., Adle-
rian, person-­centered, cognitive-­behavioral, Gestalt, Jungian, narrative,
and psychodynamic) and others that were developed specifically for play
therapy (i.e., ecosystemic and Theraplay). We have chosen to consider
Adlerian, child-­centered, cognitive-­behavioral, ecosystemic, Gestalt, Jung-
ian, narrative, psychodynamic, and Theraplay because we feel comfort-
able enough with those approaches and their underlying philosophical
assumptions to be able to explain them well enough to make a reasonable
effort to give you a rounded picture of how and why their proponents
believe they work. There are several other approaches to play therapy that
we have not addressed: dynamic play therapy, experiential play therapy,
existential play therapy, and object relations play therapy, to name a few.
We didn’t feel we were familiar enough with those models to be able to
explain them adequately. There is another, currently popular, way to con-
sider theory in connection with play therapy: prescriptive or integrative;
we will deal with that ball of wax at the end of this chapter.
The process of finding a play therapy theory home (at least the way
we believe it should be done) involves several steps. The first part of the
procedure is to take the time to consider your stances/opinions on the
philosophical assumptions that undergird each approach to counseling
and/or play therapy and to think about your beliefs about how they work.
The next step in the process is to investigate the various approaches to play
therapy and decide how each of them would answer those same questions.
(We know, we know—a counseling theory can’t really answer questions,
but we couldn’t figure out another way to say it.) The third part of the
quest for a theory is to look for the closest match possible between your
personal beliefs, convictions, and opinions and a theoretical approach.
And voila—you have picked a theory! (Cue the celebratory music!)
The first step in choosing a theory is to ponder your stance on the
philosophical assumptions that underlie counseling and play therapy the-
ories and your stance on how therapy works to help people make changes.
Here are questions we think you need to consider:

 1. What do you believe about the basic nature of people? Are people
inherently good (positive, self-­actualizing, etc.); bad (negative, irra-
tional, evil, etc.); or neutral? Or some combination of these? If you
believe people are some combination of good, bad, and neutral, how
would you describe the configuration of these factors?
 2. How are personalities formed/constructed?
a. What factors influence the formation of personality?
b. What combination of heredity/environment influences the forma-
tion of personality? Which do you believe is more important in
   Pick a Theory, Any Theory   41

the development of personality: nature or nurture? If you had to

designate a percentage of each of them, what would you decide?
c. In relationship to what you believe about free will and determin-
ism in the formation of personality, do you believe that people
exercise free will in the formation of their personalities, or do you
believe that personal qualities are determined by outside factors
without input from the person? Or some combination of free will
and determinism? If you believe it is a combination, can you assign
a percentage to each?
d. What is the relationship between thinking, feeling, and behaving?
Is there a linear, causal relationship between thoughts, emotions,
and behavior? If so, what causes what? If not, what is the relation-
ship between these factors?
e. What is the basic motivation for people’s behavior? What motivates
people to do the things they do in their lives?
f. What are the basic elements of a person’s personality?
 3. What is your stance on perception of reality—is it subjective or objec-
tive?
 4. What do you believe is the role of the therapeutic relationship in
counseling? Do you believe that the therapeutic relationship is neces-
sary and sufficient (as in, it is the primary and only factor in clients
moving toward healthy functioning)? Do you believe that the thera-
peutic relationship is necessary and that it serves as the foundation
for helping clients through the creation of opportunities to entertain
alternative perspectives, learn new coping skills, learn and practice
socially appropriate behaviors, let go of destructive patterns, and so
forth?
 5. In counseling, do you think you need to help clients extensively
explore the past, look at their current issues in the context of their
past, or focus only on the here-and-now without considering anything
about the past?
 6. Do you believe it is important to help clients become more aware
of their own motivation and patterns by helping them gain insight/
become more conscious? Or do you believe clients will get better
if they learn better coping skills without becoming more aware of
their motivation and patterns? Or do you believe clients will get bet-
ter if they experience certain conditions that activate their own self-­
actualizing tendencies without additional information, practice, or
insight?
 7. What do you believe should be the primary focus of counseling—­
creating a relationship with the client or helping the client make
changes in personality, feelings, behaviors, attitudes, and/or
42    D oing P lay T herapy  

thoughts? If you believe it is important to help clients make changes,

do you believe it is important to help clients make changes in only one
of these factors or in some combination of these factors? If so, which
would be the “firing order” you would prioritize?
 8. How do you define psychological maladjustment?
 9. What do you think should be the goals of counseling?
10. How can you tell if your clients are getting “better”? How will you
judge whether or not clients are making progress?
11. Do you imagine your role as a counselor to be more directive or non-
directive in your play therapy sessions?
a. Would you prefer to create the space for the client to grow without
making suggestions for in-­session activities or homework (allowing
the client to play without therapist intervention in play therapy)?
Or are you more comfortable intervening by inviting clients to par-
ticipate in structured techniques and assigning homework?
b. How comfortable with participating in active interactions with the
client [okay, what we mean is playing with them] are you? Do you
believe it is never appropriate to play with the client in a session?
Do you believe it is only appropriate to play with a client at the cli-
ent’s invitation? Do you believe it is acceptable to initiate playing
with a client? If a client invites you to play something, do you think
you must play even when you are not comfortable with what the
client wants you to play?
12. If you are working with a child client, what is your stance on work-
ing with parents? teachers? Do you believe it is always necessary to
involve parents and/or teachers? Do you believe it is not necessary
to include these adults in counseling? If you believe it’s necessary, to
what degree do you think they should be included?

We recognize that these are difficult questions, and we want to

acknowledge that there are no “right” answers—just the answers that feel
right for you. We are asking you to take a stance by getting more clarity
about your opinion around each of the questions. We also realize that, in
many cases, we are asking you to overgeneralize by saying “people” rather
than “some people.” We know that there are always exceptions to the
rule, and we ask that you consider the questions (which are philosophical,
remember; not factual) seriously, talk them over with friends (and fam-
ily if you want), dream about them, talk them over with your cat (if you
think it would help), think about them again before you come up with
your answers. Sometimes it helps to journal about them, do a sand tray or
two about them, draw about them, make a collage about them—­whatever
works to help you ponder.
   Pick a Theory, Any Theory   43

After you have answered each of the questions about your philo-
sophical beliefs and how you believe counseling and play therapy can
help people, the next step in discovering the theory with which you most
closely align is to consider how each of these questions is answered by
the various theoretical approaches to play therapy. We are only experts
in Adlerian play therapy. We have done our best to research the answers
for the other approaches, and we could have gotten them wrong. So, the
ultimate method of doing this part of the quest is for you to do your own
research and figure out for yourself how each approach to play therapy
would answer the questions. (We know, you are probably thinking, “If I
wanted to answer all this stuff for myself, I wouldn’t have had to buy this
book.” Unless, of course, you had to buy it for a class.) Our ultimate goal
is to pique your interest enough so that you will be willing to investigate
further, and to help you narrow down the choices enough that it isn’t
completely overwhelming to seek out further depth to the two or three
approaches that connect with your mind and your heart. We have pro-
vided a list of references for each of the approaches in Appendix A to give
you a head start on the journey.

ADLERIAN PLAY THERAPY

In developing Adlerian play therapy, Terry used the concepts underlying

Individual Psychology (a.k.a. Adlerian psychology) and combined them
with the practices of play therapy. The Adlerian play therapist conceptual-
izes clients from an Adlerian perspective while strategically and system-
atically using a wide variety of directive and nondirective skills and tech-
niques as vehicles for supporting clients’ changing patterns of thinking,
feeling, behaving, and interacting. For this section, we are going to give
you information about the theory from Alfred Adler and contemporary
Adlerians and about Adlerian play therapy from Terry and Kristin.

 1. What do you believe about the basic nature of people? Good (positive,
self-­actualizing, etc.), bad (negative, irrational, evil, etc.), or neutral?
Or some combination?
Adlerians believe that people are basically positive and self-­
actualizing (Adler, 1931/1958; Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956; Carl-
son & Englar-­Carlson, 2017; Maniacci, Sackett-­Maniacci, & Mosak,
2014). Adlerian theory is a very optimistic approach to conceptualiz-
ing people. Adlerians believe that all people are born with the capac-
ity to learn to connect with others (this is called “social interest” in
Adlerian theory) and that parents, schools, and society must foster
the full development of that connectedness in children as they grow.