Play in the analytic setting: The development and communication of meaning in child analysis

Child analysts increasingly appreciate that play can stand on its own as a mutative process. When the analyst shares a child's "play state," her participation creates a transitional space in which a therapeutic process is enhanced. During play, children experiment with new, improvisational ways of sharing and negotiating meaning between themselves and another. The child and analyst co-create a new lived-experience that can be organized and integrated into a different narrative about the child and his world. This paper demonstrates, through a clinical illustration, how the analyst's participation in play works therapeutically.