The role of transitional experiences in child psychotherapy: Dependence and trauma.

Examples from the Road: Mindlessness In-Home

“…The therapist's creative communication to mutual play is a crucial dimension of the therapeutic change process (Ringel, 2003). Migden (1994) describes potential space and therapy in this way: … the special, magical world of the session process, the world that can arise out of the shared therapist-patient experience and which fosters overlapping transitional experiences, is more likely to develop out of our presence in and understanding of the moment, less likely to develop out of our knowledge of the patient's history and ongoing interactions outside the session. … for me, the less I strain to actively think about the relationship between session material and outside reality, and the more I simply become a part of shared session process, then, I find, the more the session process actually recreates (within the transitional area) this outside world.…”

“…Psychotherapy has to do with two people playing together" (p. 38). In this potential space, wherein the child's internal reality and external environment is accepted and respected… a thoughtful yet fluid interchange [occurs] between the external reality of the [child's] material and the inner world of the [therapist's] own associations (Migden, 1994). The therapist's creative communication to mutual play is a crucial dimension of the therapeutic change process (Ringel, 2003).…”