A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice, but as yet unstained.
Music Therapy
Free Books
We understand the importance of reading and the positive impact it can have on the development and well-being of all children, especially those with special needs. Our goal is to make a wide selection of books available to these children and their parents, so that they can enjoy the benefits of reading together.
Engaging Resistant Children in Therapy: Projective Drawing and Storytelling Techniques
Publisher: Rhinebeck Child and Family Center Publications
This book presents ten major story-telling techniques that contribute to dialog between children and therapists. The techniques consist of brief original stories that the therapist reads or tells to the child, which lay the groundwork for the child to express thoughts or feelings, first through a drawing about the story, followed by a story they tell on their own. The child’s drawings and stories then help the therapist to gain access to the internal world of the child by giving the child the tools to share their inner-life. Aggressive and anxious children, often distrustful of others, are usually reluctant to share their private thoughts, feelings, and fantasies. Often they lack the skills to identify and label the sometimes frightening inhabitants of their inner-world. Others may be in touch with the thoughts and feelings that trouble them, but are unable to find the words to express them. In addition, they often feel their inner-world is too scary to share with another, even a trusted person.
Psychotherapeutic Strategies in the Latency Years
Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc.
Dr. Sarnoff is the most prominent authority on latency. In this volume, he extends his work beyond the characteristics of ego function during the ages 6-12, to include the entire age period of latency in a study of the role of cognitive development and the unconscious in latency-age adjustment and psychopathology. In addition, well-springs of adolescent and adult adjustment and pathology in the latency years are described.
Achieving Success With ADHD: Secrets from an Afflicted Professor of Medicine
Publisher: International Psychotherapy Institute
This book describes tricks and tactics, strategies and systems, all based on behavioral modification. (49 pp.)
A Child Psychotherapy Primer: Suggestions for the Beginning Therapist
Publisher: Human Sciences Press
This work addresses the many practical questions asked by beginning psychotherapists, yet largely ignored in the child psychotherapy literature. Issues discussed include managing difficult child behavior, relating to the child’s parents and teachers, appropriate and inappropriate play techniques, and dealing with termination. Each question is answered with several alternative suggestions for the reader’s consideration.
Existential Child Therapy
Publisher: Basic Books, Inc.
Ten therapists illuminate in depth the “alive” experiences in psychotherapy with children. Emerging from this sensitive work is the awareness that schools of therapy are less important than the integrity and daring of the creative therapist. (318 pp.)
Playing for Their Lives: Helping Troubled Children Through Play Therapy
Publisher: Free Press
Children are vulnerable, and too often they suffer–sometimes at the hands of those who profess to love them most, their parents. In poignant tales of therapy drawn from her practice, a wise and empathic psychologist, Dorothy Singer, addresses common problems of children today.
See What I’m Saying: What Children Tell Us Through Their Art
Publisher: Islewest Publishing
Is your child in good emotional health? Overly fearful? Struggling with a problem? Typical for his or her age? Myra Levick, Ph.D., says that the answers to all these questions can be seen in how and what your child draws. Dr. Levick, recognized expert in the filed of art therapy, discusses what children communicate through their art and gives practical tools for assessing their intellectual development and emotional development. A psychologist and an art psychotherapist, Dr. Levick is a pioneer in art therapy education. She served as the first president of the American Art Therapy Association and as Editor-in-Chief of The Arts in Psychotherapy, an international professional journal. Long associated with Hahnemann University in Philadelphia as Professor and Consultant, Dr. Levick currently is Director of the South Florida Art Psychotherapy Institute. In addition to conducting annual training seminars, Dr. Levick also serves as a guest lecturer and teacher here and abroad. (150pgs)
The Many Meanings of Play: A Psychoanalytic Perspective
Publisher: Yale University Press
From its very beginnings, child psychoanalysis has relied on observations of children at play in both natural and therapeutic settings as a source of information about the mental life of children. Play is known to be an effective means for the child to come to understand and cope with unhappiness and conflict. And the collaborative play of analyst and patient has served as an important way for the analyst to convey insights to the child. Further, these and other meanings of play have ramifications throughout adolescence and even adulthood, so that play is a crucial subject of study for all clinicians. In this book, prominent psychoanalysts explore children’s play and its implications throughout life. (447 pgs)
Working with Troubled Adolescents: A Handbook
Publisher: Academic Press
The field of adolescent therapy is alive and well. Innovation is occurring, professionals are questioning their practice and, theoretical developments are opening up avenues for the exploration of new approaches to treatment. Work with adolescence is a growing, changing and demanding field. Therapists need to know as much as possible about what others are doing and this book provides that opportunity. It will stimulate and encourage those who dip into it. (600 pp.)
Treating Troubled Adolescents: A Family Therapy Approach
Publisher: Perseus Books Group
Based on years of clinical experience, this book presents a clear, immensely practical approach to the assessment and treatment of adolescents with severe emotional problems. Using full-length case examples with incisive commentary, Fishman demonstrates how the principles of structural family therapy – including enactment, unbalancing, and reframing – are successfully applied to such issues as delinquency, violence, suicide, runaways, and incest. (254 pgs)
A Clinical Treatment Guide to 10 Common Pediatric Behavioral Problems
Publisher: International Psychotherapy Institute
Clinicians serving families are regularly presented with parental complaints about child behavior management problems involving certain settings, daily activities, or time periods. Ten common behavioral pediatric problem areas (bedtime, eating, siblings, etc.) are addressed in this clinical resource. Each treatment package provides a number of parenting tips and suggestions that form the basis of the clinical intervention for that particular problem area. This resource material for clinicians is comprised of behaviorally-based solutions and includes data sheets and handouts for parents. (55 pgs)
Mediation Therapy: Short-Term Decision Making for Relationships in Conflict
Publisher: XanEdu Publishing
Reaching decisions about whether to marry, divorce, or separate, to live with someone, or to institutionalize an aging parent or a special needs child can be extremely painful. Couples and their families facing such critical choices often reach a stalemate. By the time many couples seek professional help they are often so angry and in such conflict that even the most experienced clinician or counselor can feel overwhelmed.
Chinese American Family Therapy: A New Model for Clinicians
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Offers specific and effective guidelines for treating Chinese American individuals and families with respect, sensitivity and understanding. Jung examines these families within their culture of origin and offers an understanding of values, beliefs and customs that are rooted in Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. The book offers a comprehensive multidimensional clinical approach in clear and concise terms. (351 pp.)
Mutual Storytelling Technique
Publisher: Fideli Publishing
The Mutual Storytelling Technique is a method of therapeutic communication with children. In it, the therapist elicits a self-created story from the child, surmises its psychodynamic meaning, and then creates a story of his own using the same characters in a similar setting. The therapist’s story differs from that of the child in that he introduces healthier resolutions and maturer adaptations. (11 pp.)
Cognitive Control Therapy with Children and Adolescents
Publisher: Pergamon Press
This book describes a cognitively oriented psychodynamic method of psychotherapy called cognitive control therapy (CCT), designed to treat children and adolescents who suffer both learning disabilities and serious behavior disorders. Like most therapeutic innovations it has been undergoing continuous change shaped by therapeutic necessity, clinical experiences and research findings.
A Biodevelopmental Approach to Child Clinical Psychology
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Integrating the power of cognitive psychology with biodevelopmental principles, psychoanalytic concepts, and the child clinician’s need for new technology, Santostefano presents techniques to assess cognition and a treatment method “cognitive control therapy.” The basic intention is to illustrate the value of looking at normal and pathological human behavior through the lens that is formed by cognitive, developmental, and psychoanalytic principles and observations, placing the psychodynamic concept of cognitive controls at the center. (974 pp.)
Communication Therapy
Publisher: Fideli Publishing
Communication Therapy in childhood psychosis involves treatment of speech, language, and interactional behavior as well as attention to the cognitive substrate that underlies communication performance. As such, Communication Therapy with the psychotic child is concerned with the child’s difficulties with the structure, the meaning, and the function of a speech act. (12 pp.)
Play Therapy
Publisher: Fideli Publishing
Therapists can make use of Play Therapy to aid the child in: 1) expression of fantasy and imagination, 2) release of energy and agression, 3) opportunity for social learning, 4) opportunity for creative activity, and 5) acquisition of physical skills. (12 pp.)
Puppet Therapy
Publisher: Fideli Publishing
Puppetry, a form of drama in which human figures or fantasy creatures imitate life, can be a valuable tool in therapy with children, as it provides a nonthreatening and spontaneous means of communication. (10 pp.)
Shadow Therapy
Publisher: Fideli Publishing
Shadow Therapy is a two-dimensional method of therapy for children. The method of treatment consists of involvement in three environmental alternatives and in a focus on inner-psychic experiences. (8 pp).
The Children’s Hour
Publisher: Lyre Books
The Children’s Hour is a “must-read” according to Dr. Robson’s colleagues in the field of child psychiatry. They are delighted by the book’s combination of compassion, insight, poetry, and candor. They find its emphasis on nonchemical therapy to be a necessary antidote to the more mechanistic, biological approaches currently in vogue. And they note that the book is equally important to professionals and the general public. No one can read this engaging, witty, devastatingly honest, and wonderfully wise memoir without feeling its direct relevance to the sorrows, dangers, and triumphs we have all experienced as children and continue to experience in the lives of the young in our immediate and extended families. Whoever we are, wherever we have been, this book cuts deeply into our common humanity. (113 pp.)
Piaget’s Theory of Intellectual Development
Publisher: Prentice Hall
This volume contains an up-to-date presentation of Piaget’s theories, and explains their relevance to contemporary education. The Third Edition is updated to include a description of important work, particularly on development and learning, conducted during the last 10-15 years of Piaget’s life. (344 pp.)
Attention Deficit Disorder and Learning Disabilities
Publisher: Doubleday
Your child has a short attention span and can’t sit still for more than five minutes at a time. You notice that despite his intelligence, your child can’t keep up with his schoolwork. Doctors have told you that he has either Attention Deficit Disorder or a learning disability. You’ve consulted dozens of experts for the best treatments, and you’ve received dozens of contradictory responses. You want to make the best choices for your child, but you don’t know where to turn. What now?
Play: Its Role in Development and Evolution
Publisher: Penguin Books, Ltd.
Intended for both the lay reader as well as the student of human behavior, this extensive volume gathers articles and papers from some of the world’s most renowned authors on the study of play. Divided into four main sections (The Evolutionary Context of Play, Play and the World of Objects and Tools, Play and the Social World, Play and the World of Symbols) the editors have provided introductory remarks to put particular papers in broader perspective or to summarize details about method. (1161 pp.)
Treating Conduct and Oppositional Defiant Disorders in Children
Publisher: Pergamon Press
Conduct and oppositional defiant disorders in children represent a predominant childhood referral problem, accounting for the majority of presenting problems to child and family agencies. Aggressive and disruptive behavior is one of the more enduring dysfunctions of children and, if left untreated, frequently results in high personal and emotional—as well as financial—costs to the child, the family, and society in general.
Adolescence: A Developmental Transition
Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
This book describes how adolescents grow and develop during the transitional years from childhood to adulthood. Its purpose is to convey to readers what is known about adolescent development, how the behavior of young people can best be understood, and what the experience of adolescence is like for teenagers and those around them.
Analysis of Delinquency and Aggression
Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
This volume is organized about two central themes; the experimental analysis of aggression, and the application of learning principles to the prevention and modification of delinquency. The chapters, all new and original, demonstrate how the problems of aggression, which have been interpreted in diverse ways, can be analyzed under controlled laboratory conditions. In addition, the contributors offer an explanation of how behavior modification techniques, derived from this knowledge, can be used for preventative purposes.
Group Therapy with Children and Adolescents
Publisher: Human Sciences Press
A developmental model of group psychotherapy with children and adolescents that emphasizes relationships in the therapeutic process. Implicit to this book is the assumption that behavioral and attitudinal changes are made out of increased and continued acceptance by the therapist and group. Most traditional models do not highlight the equal importance of the group’s acceptance.
Between Two Worlds: Aspects of the Transition from School to Work
Publisher: International Psychotherapy Institute
This book presents research into the transition from school to work, and into career counseling as it affects the ‘non-academic’ child. The work was carried out over several years in the 1970s by John M. Hill, Psychoanalyst and Director of the Centre for Applied Social Research, and by David Scharff, MD, for the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, working under John Hill’s direction.
Central Themes and Principles of Ericksonian Therapy
Publisher: Brunner/Mazel
In the spirit of intellectual freedom that inspired Milton Erickson’s work, Central Themes and Principles of Ericksonian Therapy presents a multitude of articles indicating the far-ranging influence of Erickson’s work, including: brief therapy, utilization approach, centrality of the self, scramble technique, treatment for chronic pain, childhood asthma, shyness, and application of ambiguous function.
Resistant Interactions: child, family and psychotherapist
Publisher: Human Sciences Press, Inc.
In this original work, Robert Marshall demonstrates numerous approaches to helping hard-to-treat patients. He shows how to facilitate treatment with joining techniques such as mirroring, echoing, and reflection, and how the innovative concept of sequence therapy—a systemic analysis of child, adult, and familial resistance—and countertransference exploration can vastly improve a difficult therapeutic process, Resistant Interactions is a useful resource for clinicians with challenging patients, that is, every clinician. (510 pgs)