Hanney & Kozlowska, 2002, p. 2). The trouble with that kind of emphasis is that such therapeutic approaches effectively exclude infants, toddlers, preschool, and young school-aged children who lack the cognitive capacity to utilize verbal communication to reveal their emotions (Hanney & Kozlowska, 2002). Yet the evidence of the major expert voices of child psychology is that preverbal children can nevertheless reveal their emotions forcefully.
In order to address this deficit of the delivery of therapy to children, courses in play therapy should be offered in MFT programs. Through a qualitative review of literature, this paper will provide supportive evidence to indicate why play therapy is a valid therapeutic approach that should be introduced to students of MFT. First, the historical development of play therapy from various strands of established therapeutic approaches will be discussed. More specifically, the work of some of the major contributors will be described concisely to illuminate the validity of play therapy as a legitimate therapeutic approach with a strong established tradition. Second, the applicability of play therapy to young children, particularly those aged between 3 and 11, will be explained. Finally, the use of play therapy with three specific populations of children will be explored. The investigation will include the use of play therapy with children of divorced parents as well as the use of play therapy with children who have witnessed domestic violence in their family. But the psychology of families and children is as varied a their experiences, and play therapy has an extremely large potential scope that MFT professionals ignore at their peril and the peril of their youngest clients.
Over the last 80 years, theorists from diverse traditions of psychotherapy have contributed to the unique development of play therapy--for example out of (and specifically distinguished from) the psychoanalytic tradition in t...