The class is now full and registration is closed. 

How do you use play in your work with children and adolescents that feels natural and spontaneous?  For example, how would you play with children when they cheat in a game, tell you a lie or threaten to destroy toys in your office? Do you interpret its meaning?  Do you confront the child’s behavior or set limits?  How do you play with children who refuse to help you clean up at the end of a session or who refuse to end a session when it’s time?  How do you use play to communicate with a child who hits or kicks you?  When is it appropriate to leave the play metaphor and talk directly about a child’s or adolescent’s distress or symptoms or behavior in a  session? 

While traditional psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children and adolescents has typically stressed the importance of verbal insight and interpretations of resistance to thinking and feeling, this three-part seminar focuses on how to work with children and adolescents through play and action. In this seminar we will also briefly discuss how action and play are applicable to work with adults.  Prior to each seminar, participants will be emailed a reading of approximately  10 to 20 pages. Additionally, participants will have time to discuss case vignettes from their own practices, while also hearing about how the instructor plays with kids and teens in creative and innovative ways.

Don Schimmel is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst based in Mountlake Terrace, WA. He is on the faculty at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute where he teaches seminars in relational and intersubjective theory, self-psychology, child and adolescent development, ego psychology, the history and legacy of Sigmund Freud and several others seminars on psychoanalytic theory and technique with children, adolescents and adults.

Learning Objectives: 

• Participants will be able to characterize how Freud defined play.
• Participants will be able to characterize Winnicott's concepts of "transitional object” and "playing with reality."
• Participants will be able to characterize how Freud defined "repetition compulsion."

• Participants will also learn how to apply the aforementioned concepts to psychotherapy/psychoanalysis with adult patients.

Fees: $120 for Members and $145 for non-members

Refund Policy: Refunds less a $10 handling fee will be given up until one week before the first class.