How do children emotionally heal and regain equilibrium after suffering trauma? How do adults understand and help them in a therapeutic relationship? These questions are at the heart of Violet Oaklander’s approach to play therapy and her methods for training adults to work with children and adolescents. In this text, Peter Mortola uses qualitative and narrative methods of analysis to document and detail Oaklander’s work in a two-week summer training attended by child therapists from around the world.

Peter Mortola, Ph.D, Peter Mortola, Ph.D. is Professor of Counseling Psychology at Lewis and Clark’s Graduate School of Education and Counseling. He is also the Co-Director of Lewis and Clark’s nationally approved Educational Specialist degree program in School Psychology. He is the author of Windowframes: Learning the Art of Gestalt Play Therapy the Oaklander Way (Routledge/Gestaltpress, 2006), the culmination of 10 years of inquiry and research on Violet Oaklander’s methods of both child therapy and adult training. Windowframes has recently been translated into both German and Spanish. He is also the co-author of BAM! Boys Advocacy and Mentoring: A Leader’s Guide to Facilitating Strength-Based Groups for Boys (Routledge, 2008). Both these texts focus on relational methods of working with children and youth in therapeutic settings. For more information, please visit www.lclark.edu/faculty/pmortola and www.bamgroups.com.