Social Therapy and Family Play

Abstract

This chapter has centered on social therapy with families and how the developmental paths of children and parents were reignited through their engagement in a form of therapeutic performance and family play. This experience required them to reenvision and reinvent new roles at home and in other social settings and work through how these ways of relating might unfold in the many scenes of their lives. The narratives illustrate how the philosophical/performatory activity of questioning familiar roles and relationships in the course of performing new ones can open up new possibilities and contribute to environments where all can grow emotionally. Playing, imagining, and performing on a therapeutic performance stage of the participants' own making allowed families to grow. And while the growth process was often chaotic, challenging, and even threatening, the social therapist as the group's organizer helped the group power onward to create itself. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)