Abstract
This qualitative research aimed to understand, phenomenologically, the lived experience of psychotherapists and children in the clinical event of humanistic play therapy. A total of 26 individual dialogical encounters were held with nine psychotherapists and seven children, registered in the form of Comprehensive Narratives by the researcher, which included her subjectively impacted impressions about the participants’ speeches and body expressions. The phenomenological analysis culminated in a Synthesis Narrative. The results demonstrate that the psychotherapeutic relationship is perceived as: facilitating the child’s psychological growth; intensifying the flow of change by streamlining children’s personal processes; generating motivation for the child to get involved with interpersonal relationship, based on the subjective involvement of the therapist; potentiating awareness raising based on the corporeality; enabling the integration of experiences by playing; revealing the uniqueness, catalyzing development; and, finally, benefiting the updating of meanings and senses of personal and relational experience. A conception of humanistic play therapy became evident among the psychotherapists, which prioritizes the understanding directed to the own way of each client regarding how to feel and express themselves in the world and the structuring of the psychotherapeutic process based on the relationship with the child. Thus, it was concluded that the experience of this interpersonal relationship facilitates the constitution in the child of singularities that bring their own existential meaning to their world of relationships and historicity. The relevance of the psychotherapeutic process for the child’s psychological growth was also shown by the psycho-prophylactic character reverberated in the processes associated with the child’s personal experience.
Keywords:
Clinical Psychology; Play Therapy; Phenomenology; Intersubjectivity