Psychotherapeutic Approaches to the Resistant Child. Richard A. Gardner. New York:  Jason Aronson, 1975.  384 pp.

In this, his eighth book about children, Richard Gardner describes nine techniques designed to encourage cooperation from children who resist therapeutic involvement. These techniques, also referred to as methods, are the mutual storytelling technique (described in detail in his book Therapeutic Communication with Children); dramatization of the therapeutic communication; the talking, feeling, and doing game; the board of objects game; the bag of things game; the bag of words game; scrabble for juniors; and the alphabet soup game. All these techniques or games are designed to engage the patient in dialogue and encourage him to talk about his problems by rewarding him with approval in the form of compliments or reward tokens (chips). The therapist also plays the games and rewards himself and tells stories that are directed at the child's problems. The therapist thereby becomes actively engaged in an emotional and dramatic way with the child and his fantasies. All these games provide material and activities as a basis for storytelling and are thus used as variations of the mutual storytelling technique.

In his first four chapters, Gardner describes his philosophy and rationale of therapy. He believes that healthy pleasure is a universal antidote to psychogenic pathology. He believes that children like to play and that parents resent spending time and money to bring a child to therapy. He ends his book with a quotation from Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Yeoman of the Guard:

I liked this book and I liked Gardner's approach to children. The reading is easy, it is conversational, and professionals as well as lay audiences would enjoy his commonsensical approach. Gardner has developed an ability to communicate with children that I find enviable. He can speak to a child in the child's language and