ABSTRACT
This chapter explores thinking in the broader sense, distinguishing creative or therapeutic thinking, which can be done through action as well as cerebral activity, from more structured forms of thinking such as choosing. It draws attention to thinking and playing as equivalent to one another. Creative and therapeutic progress is made when thinking can happen in a playing kind of way and, indeed, the chapter considers creative thought and creative play to be the same thing. Choosing can seem to be a sort of near-visible, deliberate form of thinking. Encouraging someone to think and requiring them to choose are, however, not the same. Another way that children very obviously use their physical environment as a machine for thinking, is in play. Another crucial notion, in the realm of thinking, is that of meaning. A clinician, sensitive to the power of these meanings, can join in the project and lend their own creativity, confidence, and experience.
