Child Psychotherapy at the Institute of Child Psychology

In this article an attempt will be made to give an account of the way the psychotherapy of children is conducted at the Institute of Child Psychology, and to outline the main principles developed by its founder, the late Dr Margaret Lowenfeld, which have determined the rationale of this mode of child psychotherapy.

To do this, it is necessary first to say something about how Dr Lowenfeld arrived at the views she held and taught.

With a background of children's medicine that had alerted her to the importance of emotional factors in children's illnesses, and with wide reading in psychology and psychoanalytic theory, in 1928 she set up the Children's Centre, which developed in 1933 into the Institute of Child Psychology.

Into the two rooms of the Children's Centre she brought children referred to her from widely differing social backgrounds and suffering from a wide variety of difficulties in physical, emotional or intellectual functioning. Play equipment was at first minimal, and was added to as children indicated their needs.

The children were allowed to make whatever use of the material they chose, and to combine together in groups or not as they chose. There were only a few common-sense rules about damage and injury, otherwise they were free to do as they wished. Dr Lowenfeld and her co-workers tried to minimise the fact that they were adults vis-a-vis the children, and tried to maintain a friendly but non-involved attitude towards them.

As far as it is possible to do so, they tried to have no preconceptions about what behaviours they expected of the children nor of what they hoped would emerge from the study.

Extremely detailed records were kept of what happened during the children's attendances at the Centre, as the object of the study was to see what does actually happen when children are given the chance to play freely with minimal adult involvement or interference and a plenitude of material with which to realise their play intentions.

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