Play therapy

Play therapy is a child psychoanalytic approach, which was developed from 1920 by the psychoanalyst Hermine Hug- Hellmuth and adopted in the 1930s by Anna Freud and Melanie Klein and developed.

In play therapy, a patient is stimulated to heal within a therapeutic process by the method of play. The game in this framework encourages the patient and initiates a strengthening of the self.

For the development of a child playing plays a central role. Following the so-called playfulness, the child learns the Children's both themselves and know their environment, working creatively and thereby develops his understanding of social roles. In the game, the child takes the opportunity to express themselves in a trusted him, appropriately, even in situations where it is not possible for him to communicate through spoken language. Thus the games can be both therapeutically diagnostically make as access to the unconscious usable.

Differences are directive and non-directive play therapy. In the directive play therapy done the processes under the direction and responsibility of the therapist, in the non-directive leadership and responsibility will be theirs. The special form of the game Focal therapy ( Giocoterapia Focale ) for the treatment of eating disorders and excretion disorders in infants has been developed from the 1970s at the University of Bologna from the Gestalt psychologists and psychoanalysts Giancarlo Trombini and his staff.