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In this imaginative and original book Caroline Case, who is both an analytical art therapist and child and adolescent psychotherapist, bringstobeara wealthofexperience from over thirty years working with children. These disciplines are seamlessly combined to create a vivid account of working with some of the most disturbed and deprived children in our society, those who are hard to reach clinically. The intention is ‘to elaborate a method of working which uses both art and play in an analytic approach with this hard-to-reach client group’ (p. 127).
The book is divided into three sections; each begins with a brief introduction and a review of the literature, followed by three chapters, rich with clinical examples. As the title suggests the dual theme is animals in reality, myth and metaphor but this is more than a mere account of animal symbolism. It begins with an animal alphabet, ‘a kaleidoscopic view of our complex and contradictory relationship to nature and the animal world’ (p. 31). Some of the many roles played by animals in society, story and culture are discussed; ‘we become more aware of our humanity through our engagement with animal form’ (p. 31). Case points out that animals are ubiquitous in the work of children and act as a catalyst, bringing life into therapy with children who present in lifeless or autistic states. The children, to whom the reader is introduced, make models or pictures of animals, they play at being animals, talk about their family pets, real or imaginary and even, on occasions, bring real animals into their sessions, (on one occasion hybrid shrimps [p. 23], and on another tadpoles [p. 159]). The author demonstrates that animals in psychotherapy express the relationship of the child to parts of the self that otherwise could find no expression; this is often the rejected younger/infant self. ‘When rejected parts of the self are projected … it is useful if the therapist can give voice to the unwanted parts’ (p. 103). At times this is ve