Generation and Deployment of “Play” in Psychotherapy: Consideration of a Case of a Woman Who Has Difficulty Connecting with Her Feelings

Abstract

This study describes the case of a woman who has difficulty connecting with her feelings and examines the generation and deployment of “play” in psychotherapy. At the beginning of the psychotherapy, the client tended to be aware of external factors, such as common sense and norms rather than experiences and feelings here and now, and her “inside” and “outside” seemed to be clearly divided. In the process of psychotherapy, she often worked on sandplay and dreams, that were both intermediate areas, neither “inside” nor “outside”, in which “play” is created in the middle. In this case, the client came to be able to connect her separated “inside” and “outside” and feel her own feelings because of experiencing the process of “play” in the third. I suggest that psychotherapy itself needs to guarantee and embody “play” in order for the client to be able to incorporate “play”.