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This book is a treasure chest of stories about play therapy written by practitioners who combine self-awareness, skilled and sensitive therapy and a gifted narrative sense. The chapters are easy to read and each has something important to teach, both for beginning and more experienced practitioners.

Graham Music (PHD), Tavistock Centre, London, author of Nurturing Children

This valuable book explores the personal process of play therapists and how life experiences impact on their clinical work. The contributors courageously reveal the challenge of managing profound feelings of shame, loss, and anger as clinicians, arising from current and early trauma. They describe how the understanding they have gained in processing these feelings has aided their development as therapists, supported by supervision and personal analysis. This book would greatly benefit those involved in therapeutic work with children as well as their teachers and supervisors.

Deirdre Dowling, Child psychoanalytic psychotherapist, teacher and supervisor on Independent psychoanalytic child psychotherapy training.

This is a sensitive, intelligent and inspiring book which explores the play therapist’s internal processes with honesty and integrity. The editors are highly respected in the field as both clinicians and trainers and have brought together a group of authors whose contributions will undoubtedly enrich the development of the profession. The book speaks to the robustness needed by play therapists without sacrificing the need to name and pay attention to therapists’ own vulnerability. It offers insightfulness which might also provide companionship in the challenging times we are living through. I highly recommend it.

Anna Seymour PhD, Professor of Dramatherapy, University of Roehampton, London

Frequently moving and thought provoking, this book makes an important and unique contribution to the child centred play therapy literature, exploring the relationship between our own internal processes, our use of self, and our work with children and families. Written with honesty, creativity, and in places, humour, the text combines research findings with practice experience to explore some important new themes as well as some familiar challenges. As such this will have relevance for both play therapy trainees and experienced practitioners.

Pete Ayling, Senior Lecturer, University of Worcester

This book is a wonderful resource of depth, reflection, and exploration. Le Vay and Cuschieri have curated a collection of chapters that honestly and bravely encourage therapists to consider the impact of their experiences and emotions in the therapeutic process. Each chapter invites the reader to stop, breathe and sit with those moments in the past and present that colour our work, whether as therapists, students, or supervisors. It is an invitation that proves most moving and inspiring.

Henry Kronengold, Ph.D. Adjunct Assistant Professor & Clinical Supervisor, Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, City University of New York.

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