Play and Art in Child Psychotherapy

Ellen G. Levine is Co-Founder and Faculty member of ISIS-Canada, a Senior Staff Social Worker at the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre for Children's Mental Health, and a core faculty member of the European Graduate School, Switzerland. She has been working with children and parents in a clinical setting with the arts and play for over 30 years and is co-author of Art in Action: Expressive Arts Therapy and Social Change and Principles and Practice of Expressive Arts Therapy: Toward a Therapeutic Aesthetics, both published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Based on decades of experience as an artist, researcher, educator, and child psychotherapist Ellen Levine, author of many of the leading texts giving shape to the ever-emerging expressive arts therapy field, has created her culminating and most significant work in Play and Art in Child Psychotherapy. Among the many innovative features of the book is its unique contribution to art-based research emphasizing how the therapist's artistic reflection on sessions generates different ways of understanding, all influenced by the qualities of the various media used. Those wanting to see what art as research looks like, will find inspiration in how Levine's practitioner research expands essential expressive arts therapy experiences as a way of understanding. She demystifies research, making it inseparable from elemental and ongoing practice, helping us "play with" problems, discover the "beauty that sustains," and ultimately return insights to the work where there is always more to see. Ellen Levine's writing looks and feels like expressive arts therapy. It transcends linear, hierarchical, and formulaic schemes, modeling how art happens organically in every aspect of the experience from the client's exploration to the therapist's reflection and the overlapping space of imagination where they create together and make new and unexpected worlds.

• Introduction. Part 1. Theoretical Foundations. 1.1. Art Therapy, Child Psychotherapy and Expressive Arts Therapy: A Professional Autobiography. 1.2. Working with Children and Parents: The Architecture of a Session. Part 2. Clinical Practice and Arts-Based Research. 2.1. Playing with Sadness – The Beauty that Sustains. 2.2. Playing with War – The Round Nest. 2.3. Playing with Anger and Control – Playmates. 2.4. Playing as Food – Taking Risks and Crossing Boundaries. 2.5. Playing with the House – Keep Moving, Keep Playing. Conclusion. Appendix: The Developmental Profile and Treatment Progress Report. References.