ABSTRACT
Peter Carnochan offers a reconfigured account of the parameters of psychoanalytic play therapy. Noting that relational critiques of classical analytic technique have opened the field to a wider understanding of the analyst’s subjective participation and to new views of therapeutic action, he argues that child analysis must do more than merely uncover the existing internal world of the child; it must also support the child in developing new affective-relational skills. Carnochan suggests that the analytic field is best understood as a non-finite, three-dimensional planetary system populated by positive and negative principles. He draws on clinical vignettes from multiple child treatments to illustrate how we strive to draw closer to the gravitational bodies of safety, insight, and aliveness, but steer away from the problematic forces of impingement, despair, and endless repetition.
