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In Starting Treatment with Children and Adolescents, Steven Tuber and Jane Caflisch bring us into the wild and sometimes chaotic world of play
therapy, with all its unexpected delights and mysteries. While the book is geared to the beginning therapist, all clinicians working with children will find themselves challenged and engaged by it. Unlike other introductory works, this volume is unique in that it uses raw material from beginning therapists—material as difficult, forthright, and honest as any that therapists will likely encounter early in their careers, or indeed, throughout their professional lives.
Using a close process technique, the authors, drawing on Tuber's experience and wisdom and Caflisch's fresh eye and clinical astuteness, intersperse carefully transcribed process material with supervisory-style reflections on these vignettes. Thus, in an accessible and engaging manner the authors provide us alternating views into the minds of the clinician, the supervisor, and the child patient. Reading this book is like participating in a child therapy seminar of the highest order, one that allows for frank discussion of what has actually transpired in the playroom between child patient and therapist—omitting neither the good nor the bad nor, at times, the ugly. In this vein, they offer an indispensable lesson in child therapy, specifically, that there will always be a second chance, a time to revisit and rework clinical challenges.
The book has at its heart several main themes that are interwoven throughout. The first, embracing all the others, is that therapy is a self-reflective process whereby the therapist invites the child patient to join in and wonder alongside one another. This is an essential concept for the child therapist. By adapting this stance, the therapist encourages the child to become curious about his or her internal experience and to develop the sort of psychological mindedness that permits introspection. Over time, the authors suggest, this s