Starting Treatment With Children and Adolescents provides therapists with a time-tested framework for treatment and a moment-by-moment guide to the first few sessions with a new patient. In twelve remarkable case studies, verbatim transcripts of individual play-therapy sessions are brought to life through running commentary on techniques and theory and a fine-grained analysis of what worked, what didn’t, and what else the clinician could have done to make the session as productive as possible.
Clinicians will come away from the book with a unique window into how other therapists actually work as well as new tools for engaging children and adolescents in process-oriented treatment. They’ll also be guided through an exploration of common questions such as how else could I have handled that situation? What other paths could I have tried? Where might those other paths have led? What treatment strategies are most advantageous to my patients’ growth – and to my own?
Reviews
"I have been teaching child psychotherapy for nearly 30 years, and this is the first and only book I have found truly helpful in illuminating the processes that underlie the craft, intuition, and rigor of working with children and their families. It is simply a brilliant and deeply humane book that is pitch perfect for beginners and more advanced trainees alike." - Arietta Slade, The City College and City University of New York, USA, and Yale Child Study Center, Connecticut, USA
“This book, which simulates the experience of being in training with a master clinician and supervisor, is a remarkable contribution to the field of child therapy. What Tuber and Caflisch provide are not idealized portrayals of clinical cases designed to support a theory but real transcripts illustrating the ups and downs of real clinical work. The authors’ comments about hindering interventions are as valuable as those about helpful interventions, and the illustrations of how the therapist mighntervened differently in different contexts are tremendously illuminating. This is a “must read” book for child clinicians of all orientations, and all levels of experience.” - Jeremy D. Safran, New School for Social Research, New York, USA, and International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy
"Starting Treatment with Children and Adolescents" essentially consists of 12 process recordings with sessions of children 5 to 14 years, with supervisory comments interspersed throughout. The richness and comprehensiveness of the material will undoubtedly allay the anxiety of beginning child clinicians, as well as anyone anxious to discover, what really happens during the course of play therapy….. By providing us with a window into the mysterious world of play therapy, the authors help to demystify the goings-on in the treatment room, and in so doing, help the beginning child therapist and his or her patients learn how to make sense of the world, and go on...
