ABSTRACT

In my experience, there is an explosive, all-consuming quality to what is brought by preschool children to the art therapy room. Intense, preverbal experiences are brought to the therapy space, enacted in the art making and play and communicated through projective processes in the transference (Meyerowitz-Katz, 2003, Reddick, 1999). When I first began working with this age group, I was flooded with intense feelings and at times overwhelmed by the chaotic mess that the children made. O’Brien (2008) writes of countertransference to the dissociated child as consisting of feelings of being overwhelmed by chaos, loss of skill and disconnectedness during seemingly mindless play brought to therapy. The therapist’s role is to hold the space and take in these emotions, think about them and reflect them back to the child in a digestible way, so that the child has the experience that his or her emotions are witnessed and can be taken back meaningfully (Dalley, 2007).