ABSTRACT
Winnicott’s concept of play is that it is an essential creative space within our imaginative world where we play with ideas. He considered this playful awareness to be central to our work as psychotherapists, one that is particularly relevant to psychotherapeutic work with children where play and conversation is their medium of communication. Key aspects of child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy are outlined. The importance of the new therapeutic relationship which offers the child an opportunity to explore and understand the underlying distress, conflict and anxiety that is the causing so much unhappiness. It offers a reliable and contained therapeutic structure, within which the child is encouraged to play and share ideas that often reveal the unconscious anxieties underlying the child’s difficulties. The task of the child psychotherapist is to help the young person gain self understanding and overcome those emotional and developmental issues that are disrupting their life and interfering with their capacity to make close and meaningful relationships.
