Healing Through Play Using the Oaklander Model

Dr. Karen Fried, Christine McKenna, Shelley Short, "Healing Through Play Using the Oaklander Model: A Guidebook for Therapists and Counselors Working with Children, Adolescents and Families"
English | 2020 | ASIN: B08D4VSCZ6 | 120 pages | MOBI | 69.5 MB
We created this guidebook to serve as a companion to the Oaklander Training Program Violet developed after publishing Windows to Our Children. Child and adolescent therapists came from all over the world to attend her life-changing two-week intensive workshops in Santa Barbara, California. This training continues in Santa Monica, California (led by Karen Fried) and in other United States and international venues by facilitators whom Violet trained, including Lynn Stadler and Peter Mortola. While this guidebook is meant to be used by therapists who have participated in Violet’s training process, that experience is not a requirement. Here, we outline Violet’s thinking as well as some of her classic experiential exercises for you to use when a child or adolescent comes to therapy. Introduction to the model includes how to conduct a first session and how to take developmental factors into account. The guide then explains key elements of Violet’s signature focus on a young client’s ability to contact (inwardly and outwardly), and details how you can enable youngsters at any developmental stage to develop healthy contact functions and to strengthen their sense of self. In addition, this guidebook outlines Violet’s approach to the emotions-including the universal but often-misunderstood ones of anger and aggressive energy that can be challenging to handle in a therapy session. To support you in doing so, the guidebook leads you, step by step, through many of her most effective projective techniques, such as the Safe Place and Rosebush drawings and working with clay, sand tray, and puppets. Finally, it lays out the self-nurturing process, often arising at the end of therapy, and explicates Violet’s insights on developmental issues impacting termination for you to apply in your own practice. Thus we present Violet’s work and, with her blessing, have endeavored to make it even more accessible to therapists. Whether we cite her words verbatim or not, Violet’s knowledge, wisdom, and deep love of young people inspires every line. We hope you enjoy using this guidebook as much as we have enjoyed composing it.