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Integrating Play in Family Therapy: An Interview with Eliana Gil, Ph.D.

Teresa M. Christensen and Jill M. Thorngren
The Family Journal 2000; 8; 91
DOI: 10.1177/1066480700081017

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THE FAMILY
Christensen, Thorngren
JOURNAL:/ PLAY
COUNSELING
IN FAMILYAND
THERAPY
THERAPY FOR COUPLES AND FAMILIES / January 2000

v Interview

Integrating Play in Family Therapy:

An Interview With Eliana Gil, Ph.D.
Teresa M. Christensen
University of New Orleans
Jill M. Thorngren
Montana State University, Bozeman

E
liana Gil, Ph.D., is currently the
director of the Starbright Training
Institute for child abuse and neglect,
parents. It rarely involves young children in conjoint family
sessions for any length of time. (p. v)

As play and family therapists, we have struggled with

play therapy, and family play therapy in actively integrating young children and their unique
Springfield, Virginia. She is also the approaches of communicating in family therapy. Accord-
coordinator for the Abused Children’s ingly, Gil’s numerous publications and vast experiences have
Treatment Program at the Inova Keller consistently spoken to us and assisted us in coconstructing
Center in Fairfax, Virginia, and a clini- family therapy sessions that effectively integrate the para-
cian in private practice in Rockville, digms of play and family therapy. Consequently, we leapt at
Maryland. Among her previously noted the opportunity to converse with Gil regarding her ideas,
credentials, Dr. Gil is also a registered play therapy supervi- experiences, and feelings about play in family therapy. In
sor, a registered art therapist, and a certified family therapist. early November 1998, we attended a workshop on Play Ther-
She presents on various topics related to family and play ther- apy for Children and Families in Crisis in Pocatello, Idaho.
apy and serves as an adjunct faculty member at Virginia Tech Dr. Gil was kind enough to engage in an afternoon of dia-
and George Washington Universities. Dr. Gil also has made logue, which resulted in the following narrative.
numerous contributions to the field of counseling through
serving on various boards and publishing many articles and EVOLUTION
books. Currently, she serves on the boards of directors of both
the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children Thorngren: First, we would like to get some background
and the National Resource Center on Child Sexual Abuse. information about those experiences that led to your
She has authored many books on play and family therapy, work with incorporating play in family therapy.
including Systemic Treatment of Families Who Abuse Gil: My initial training was in family therapy where all the
families I worked with were abused families. That
(1996a), Play in Family Therapy (1994), The Healing Power
meant that the presenting problem was related to the
of Play: Therapy With Abused Children (1991), and Treating child and some problem or dysfunction in the par-
Abused Adolescents (1996b). ent-child interaction. My experience in family therapy
As indicated by Dr. Gil and supported in family and play left me dry about how you work with kids. I felt like
therapy literature, for various reasons, many family therapists there was almost a domino principle—that if you work
struggle with families that include young children. Often- with the families and help them get better somehow this
times, family therapists either intentionally or unintentionally will affect the child and the child will get better as a
exclude young children because they do not know how to or result. But I noticed that a lot of these kids had a variety
do not feel comfortable involving children actively in family of issues of their own that needed to be addressed in a
sessions. As Robert-Jay Green commented in the forward to safe environment. I began thinking to myself, “I like
Gil’s book titled Play in Family Therapy (1994), family therapy but I want to see these kids individually
to see how they are away from their parents or do some
Thus, in actual practice, the field we call “family therapy” of the work I think they need to have done.” Also, given
usually consists of treating an individual parent, or only the my population, a lot of times there was not an intact
parental couple, or sometimes an adolescent and one or both family. I worked with children in foster placements,

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© 2000 Sage Publications, Inc.

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92 THE FAMILY JOURNAL: COUNSELING AND THERAPY FOR COUPLES AND FAMILIES / January 2000
group home placements, and residential centers. I
really felt these kids needed some experience, even if
you maintain a systemic view. Therefore, I began work-
ing with the individual child and talking about systemic
issues. But I still felt there was something important
that was imperative that needed to happen for them.
They needed family therapy, if possible. So I think in
answer to your question, it came from a combination of
exposure to the type of problem I was working with and
my understanding of trauma. Sometimes children need
an opportunity to have a healing experience, and some-
times that can be done alone away from the family at
first and later with the family working in the child’s par-
adigm. The families I work with are sometimes those
people who are involved in hurtful experiences. When I
have a biological family who is willing to work and par-
ticipate in treatment, or mandated, I always include
family sessions to try to give them a reparative experi-
ence in terms of parent-child dyads. As I continued val-
uing the corrective manner that the child-therapist rela-
tionship could offer to a family, I realized that every
child deserved that. So I started out as a “child thera-
pist” and then quickly went to play in family therapy. I
had to pursue my own training in play therapy because
it wasn’t offered. I started tracking down every work-
shop, conference, and book on play therapy. I continued
doing this until I felt well versed enough in play ther-
apy. Ironically, now I end up, like so many people,
introducing play therapy as a concept. So it has been
just a very interesting evolution.
Christensen: In your writing and throughout your work-
shop, you shared your perceptions about the “down-
play” or hesitance of many training programs and pro-
fessionals regarding play therapy and the inclusion of
small children in family therapy. Would you please
speak more about that?
Gil: I think that first of all I have direct experience with that
because I got a Ph.D. in family therapy. Throughout
that entire family therapy program, any time there were
young children, they were given pencils and papers and
asked to go and draw something. My feeling in just
watching this was “You go be out of the way while we
do this important work with your parents.” When talk-
ing to family therapists, I realized that they do not par-
ticularly feel competent working with young children
and are almost afraid of them because they’re not as
verbal. Many family therapists do not feel they are
skilled in engaging children in therapy and often get
very frustrated with children when they don’t respond
the way older kids can respond, like in terms of such
limits as “sit down” or “speak when you’re spoken to.”
So it’s been interesting to hear people say that “no” they
do not have enough training in this area. On the average,
in the entire course of their training, they maybe got a
course in Child Psychopathology, which doesn’t tell
you much about therapy. Or maybe they had a course in
Child Development, which again doesn’t necessarily
tell you much about therapy. When it comes to the
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12-and-younger group in particular, many family thera-
pists feel stymied. Now in some cases (the 13-and-older
group—as long as the children are highly verbal), some
family therapists feel differently, more competent. For
example, I think Peggy Papp did some dynamic work
when she talked about family sculpting because that
could involve children and children could definitely get
interested in role-playing pretend sculptures and things
like that. But that’s been kind of a rarity. When you look
at the literature in the family therapy field—I mean,
Whitaker did some but he didn’t really say what he did
and what he did also seemed to be more Whitaker than
anything else is. There have been some notable excep-
tions, obviously, of people who have really paid atten-
tion to integrating play into family therapy but not a lot
and not enough. Now on the other side of this integrated
approach lay the play therapists. When I started really
seeking out my own training in play therapy, I encoun-
tered lots of play therapists who feel totally comfort-
able with kids but uncomfortable with adults (“Don’t
make me talk to those adults”). These therapists do not
know what to say to parents; they do not know how to
speak to them. It’s hilarious to watch these two separate
groups of people working with the same population
who feel reluctant to integrate them. Again I go back to
it’s a sense of not feeling competent and that as soon as
therapists feel that they know what to do, they have
something to do. Then therapists know how to relate to
and instruct other people/parents on how to do it. I have
consistently found that once therapists have the tools,
they use them, but it takes quite a long time for them to
get comfortable. Even as I go around teaching people
about family play, it’s one thing to know, “Okay, I need
this, this, and this, and I understand how to run the
activity.” It’s another thing for them to say, “But, okay,
after the family finishes the activity, what do I do? What
does this have to do with the therapy? How do I make
connections?”
TECHNIQUES
Christensen: You commented in your writing and in your
workshop that you often use play to spice up your reper-
toire of family interventions. Essentially, you are say-
ing that you integrate play therapy and family counsel-
ing techniques. For example, you talk about using the
narrative approaches, like the aquarium or puppet inter-
view, to allow for the emergence of information and
provide the families with the opportunity to coconstruct
their environment in therapy. Can you speak more
about that?
Gil: Yes. Again, when holding these two different fields of
study, I look at the possibility of integration. My origi-
nal pressure came from feeling that when we did family
therapy without play, when we did verbal family ther-
apy with kids, we were putting a demand on them to
communicate in a way that adults do. In other words, it

seemed like it was not a user-friendly environment to
kids and even the circular questioning or whatever, it’s
still so verbally focused. I wonder what would happen
if instead of putting the demand of the adult world on
the child, we reversed it and put the demands of the
child’s world on the adults. Just every now and then, as
an experience, I would have the families interact with
the play. The idea was, this was play in and of itself and
could the play serve as a link, a bridge, between these
two worlds that are so different—one so confident and
verbal and the other so creative, pretending and nonver-
bal, like a fantasy world. This would be the bridge and
at the same time with that bridge, we could cause some
new interaction between parent and child that might be
rewarding—that might not be so deeply immersed in
negative patterns of relating. Essentially, my goal was
to give people an opportunity to have them view each
other differently. So a child, for example, whose parent
had never played with them or been interested in their
play could suddenly have a parent attentive to their
play. This resulted in new perceptions of each other.
They would share something that was important, defi-
nitely to the child and hopefully to the parent. It really
was all about the bridge. The bridge became the meta-
phor for connecting two worlds.
Christensen: Like creating a shared narrative or a com-
mon reality.
Gil: Absolutely! Something that we can actually do
together that doesn’t have to be right or wrong. It’s just
who we are and the different things that come out, and
time together. I also found that so many of the parents
that I worked with had never actually been given the
opportunity to play. Many parents came from back-
grounds where they were the parents to their parents
instead of being the child. Some parents never had a
warm and nurturing environment, so in another way, I
was providing the parent with something I hoped they
would then be able to provide to their child. Some of
family therapy is about modeling that for parents.
Thorngren: It seems that you have been effective in inte-
grating two realms of therapy. Would you say that play
in family therapy is not a distinct approach, with spe-
cific step-by-step techniques, but really an integration
of various interactions?
Gil: Yes, and more! I think it requires somebody who is
willing to expand his or her view of therapy in the sense
of going beyond conscious material versus uncon-
scious material, verbal versus nonverbal, then integrat-
ing the possibility of symbolism, metaphor, and meta-
phorical language. This is the kind of thing that many
therapists do not feel comfortable with, as if they are
not conversant with it. I go back to: Nobody starts out
being conversant with anything. You have to experi-
ment. You have to practice.
Thorngren: In terms of specific techniques, you talk a lot
about art and sand work. Would you give some exam-
ples of specific activities and techniques that have
worked for you?
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Christensen, Thorngren / PLAY IN FAMILY THERAPY 93
Gil: As a matter of fact, I have just finished writing a chap-
ter for somebody else’s book on family play therapy
techniques. I went through and described a lot of tech-
niques. I will talk about the ones that I seem to lean
toward the most. I almost always start with the puppets,
and I do not know exactly why. I think it’s the easiest
thing to do. Sometimes the art requires people to work
with materials and easels you have to bring in. Also,
sometimes when you ask people to do art, there’s an
immediate, “I can’t.” There’s a performance anxiety. I
usually start with the puppets and this thing called the
family puppet interview where the therapist has the
family tell a story. After the story, there is a for-
mal/structured kind of dialogue that goes on, which is
designed to, in some ways, make meaning of the fam-
ily’s story and issues. In other words, going from right
brain to left brain activity pretty quickly. I think of it
much more as family puppet sessions and I don’t go to
the end point immediately. What I’m trying to do much
more of now, and have experimented with over the
years, is after the person, the people, tells the story to
actually have the family therapy occur with the pup-
pets. In other words, the therapist and family stay
within the metaphor, within the characters. They do not
take the puppets off their hands and the therapist starts
talking only to the puppets that are in the story. As a
therapist, you can do all the different kinds of play ther-
apy interventions as if you were working with a family.
You just stay with Mr. Owl, for example, “Owl, I notice
that Mouse was trying to get your attention. I wondered
if you noticed that?” and/or “Mr. Turtle, it looked like
you were left out of the play altogether and I’m just kind
of wondering what that was like for you? Have other
people ever felt left out?” and so forth.
Christensen: So it’s almost like externalizing the problem?
Gil: Figuratively—exactly—and oftentimes it allows for a
wonderful processing to occur. Again, the defensives
are still down because you’re in character and all the
interventions are being done with the characters. So
you might say to them, “Well, during the week that
comes, Mr. Turtle, I think that one of the things that you
might want to experiment with is taking some flowers
over to the Owl to see how the Owl responds,” and so
forth. It is all still done in the metaphor. Then you close
that session and it’s possible to come back and have that
whole story told again or tell a new one with the same
characters. It’s also possible that some of the interven-
tions you give the family get translated in other ways.
For instance, I remember one situation where the meta-
phor had to do with an alligator in the pond and we
ended up talking about the alligator being threatening
to others or the perception was that the alligator would
hurt them. Finally the alligator said, “But, you know, I
don’t really want them to run away. I want them to stay
and play.” I said to him/the alligator, “If they stayed and
played, what would you most like to do?” He replied,
“Have a picnic.” So we talked about what kind of picnic
the alligator would like to have with the other people in
94 THE FAMILY JOURNAL: COUNSELING AND THERAPY FOR COUPLES AND FAMILIES / January 2000
the story. The long and short of it was that the family
went home and spontaneously during the week went on
a picnic. Now that’s an interesting connection to make
between unconscious material and conscious material.
Likewise, another art technique we did with the family
was drawing a fruit salad, where they have the experi-
ence of making a fruit salad together. This technique
takes it from the less concrete to the more concrete and
in the process of doing the fruit salad, one of the chil-
dren was left out completely. It was actually the same
alligator kid and so instead of doing anything, he drew
an alligator coming to eat the fruit salad. Then the
mother got mad at him. But it was one of those wonder-
ful, systemic moments where she could see that, in fact,
her attempts at ignoring him actually precipitated his
acting out behavior.
Christensen: So these techniques allow for the therapist
and family members to give meaning to their interactions
and manners of relating to one another. That was that
particular family member’s role in his family. Wow!
Gil: Exactly. So that family actually was very interesting,
so much so that the mother was able to, over the weeks
between the sessions, either look at the tapes or look at
the art and come back and say, “You know what I
noticed was . . . ” That is ideally what I want to have
happen. Sometimes it won’t come from them. Some-
times it has to come from me, where I’ll show them the
tape and say, “Now I want you to notice what happens
right now. Now what did you see? What I saw was he
kept asking what kind of fruit he should be and nobody
paid attention to him. As no one paid attention to him,
you could see him get really upset. Now he’s the alliga-
tor and he wants to be aggressive. How could you
change that?” Slowly but surely, most families begin to
grasp the concepts that therapists are trying to commu-
nicate. It is all very nonthreatening and that allows
everyone in therapy to relax and get involved. For
instance, sometimes people say to me, “What about the
dads?” because everybody thinks that the men don’t
participate. Some of the best puppet renditions have
been by men who just totally get into using their voices.
Furthermore, the selection of puppets is very interest-
ing from the outset. What somebody chooses has some
meaning to them, tells you a little bit, or suggests some-
thing. It is like I’m always saying, “What do you think
is suggested by this?” That’s really where you need to
go. So the family puppet technique is one that I like a
lot. I’ll do that over time at different intervals. Some-
times they come in and want to do one and that’s fine.
The key is the interaction with the metaphor, expanding
the metaphor, and keeping the interventions there as
opposed to going outside. Another technique that I like
a lot has to do with family art stuff and there is a struc-
tured technique called the family art evaluation. There
is a book written by Peterson and Hardin (1997) that
describes this particular technique that I find incredibly
informative. Rich metaphors come out of this activity,
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including many things that can be integrated into ther-
apy. I believe that every now and then it’s the therapist’s
job to sort of tease out things that can then be promoted
with the family or that can be language that gets incor-
porated into what the family’s going to focus on. The
family art evaluation allows this to happen.
The family aquarium is another technique that I
started using because it integrates individual issues as
well as family issues. Essentially, it requires moving
from a task that requires people to do a project where
they draw a fish, any fish they want. Then, once the fish
is drawn, they decorate it. They put on feathers, beads,
and color it in. It gets to be a big project. That is the first
piece of it, which is all about self-image and projection.
Is it a shark as opposed to a dolphin? I’ve had kids who
couldn’t limit themselves to one fish. They have to be
two fish. You know, stuff like that. I’ve also had kids
who’ve changed the function of the fish so it will be a
shark but with a good heart. With a protective shark,
they change the function of the animal. Then I have the
family select a piece of blue-green poster board and ask
them to create a body of water. I start out with the aquar-
ium by saying, “This will be an aquarium.” But I found
that sometimes people didn’t want to have an aquarium.
They wanted to have an ocean—they wanted a pond, a
lake, or whatever. So nowadays I lean toward a body of
water and then the family together decides on the type
of body of water. Once the body of water is decided on,
the next part is to create an environment. Here they go
into that poster board and add to the water. They add
food, snakes, plants, a bottom, or whatever. Some peo-
ple get really involved. They even go to the extreme of
putting in barometers so that the water temperature is
good or putting in filters so that the water is clean. Some
continue making sure that there’s plenty of food and
different kinds of food for people. Others make sure
that there are caves or places where the kids can isolate
or play.
Then there is the other end of the continuum where
these family projects possess the absence of such
healthy things, thus representing a complete disregard
for a nurturing environment. Examples include cutting
off sunrays and including fishhooks where someone’s
fishing and there’s danger. I had a real extreme case
with a kid who was in a lot of trouble and a lot of pain.
He drew himself with one eye out because all the other
fish had picked it out and were eating his eye. I thought
that was a very powerful metaphor. Sometimes there
are body pieces in the aquarium because people had
died and left body pieces. I mean, you get all kinds of
variations on the themes. I’ve been trying simply to re-
cord all the things people include or don’t include. I’m
trying to develop grading sheets so that you can actually
look at this and then mark off things because there are
times that certain aspects make my intuition go in cer-
tain directions, which sometimes people aren’t trained
to do.

Thorngren: It seems as if your activities allow you to get
the symbolism and meaning out of what’s going on in
the family.
Gil: Absolutely. They also allow me to document it
because it’s very hard to catch all of that. So I’m very
invested in trying to develop grading sheets for the
aquarium now. I’ve also started making available black
poster board because I’ve had some families that didn’t
want either the blue or the green; they thought they
were too bright. Really what they’re talking about is
flatness, depression, withdrawal, and isolation. So now
I make different colors of poster boards available.
Once the environment is set up, the last piece is that
now all the fish must coexist. Here you get to see
boundaries, alliances, conflicts, the family hierarchy,
and how they relate. We have people separate the waters
so that there’s one family member totally isolated from
the others. This one kid I was telling you about changed
his shark from something to fear to something that as-
sisted and protected his family. Then he placed himself
in the water behind the mother on one side and around
the mother on the other. The mother looked at that and
said, “I can see how much of my time he requires, how
much he needs me.” This was a positive statement as
opposed to what she usually would say, “He’s on me all
the time.” She changed her thinking to “He needs me.”
Then when she said, “Oh, do you have to have a shark?”
He said, “But it has a heart of gold.” So again, she com-
mented on how sometimes aggressiveness is what she
notices about him but really he has a very sweet, tender
side. That is the aquarium project and it’s been one of
the most amazing experiences.
Christensen: I’ll bet. As you described the activity, I
thought about how this relates to many premises
included in the social constructionist perspective. The
family and the therapist were cocreating their environ-
ments, their realities, and their manners of relating to
others. I was amazed at the symbolism and meaning for
the individual and in terms of family systems. It also
allowed me to envision how you are a part of the cre-
ation of their environments.
Gil: Absolutely. It’s great. It’s a wonderful constellation of
systemic thinking without failing to recognize the indi-
vidual and the family’s dynamics. It is because of this
that the aquarium has become sort of a staple that I do
with most families. In addition, I started some maps,
which is another example of an activity that follows this
same kind of format and content. I’ve also done things
like a family vase where family members are asked to
draw a picture of flowers, decorate it, and then the fam-
ily comes together to create a floral arrangement that
makes up the vase. I’ve also got one called the carnival
park where everyone is a carnival ride that they each
make. They then have to put them in relationship to
each other in the park and make each of those events
have a cost to them. They put in the safeguards around
who can ride it and who can’t. That has been very
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Christensen, Thorngren / PLAY IN FAMILY THERAPY 95
interesting. I also do a garden where everyone is given a
piece of construction paper as their plot where they can
choose to grow garden vegetables, flowers, trees, or
whatever they want in their plot. Then they come
together on a poster board and have all these plots coex-
isting. They have to find ways to get from one plot to
another to irrigate the plots and so forth and so on. I’ve
started with that basic principle of having this task
where it’s projective initially and then systemic at the
end and environmental or contextual.
I just started free-associating and came up with a
whole bunch of different activities like the ones that
I’ve explained. Those are just some of the examples and
are the ones I’m writing up in the chapter I mentioned
earlier. When I teach the family play therapy class, the
students have an assignment in groups of three or four
of designing a play therapy technique. You should see
the stuff they’ve come up with—it’s been fabulous. It’s
been really good.
Christensen: That seems to be a common theme—the cre-
ativity and allowing yourself to flow with your ideas, as
you say “free associate.” That takes some skill and trust
in yourself and the families that you work with.
Gil: Absolutely. But it’s also responding to the people
because they supply me with a lot of ideas. Somebody
might bring up something that strikes a chord in me. For
example, a guy that I was working with took his family
to a racetrack for recreation. So when I got to this task, I
said, “Okay, everyone draw a race car.” That was
another technique that I just went to because that was
important to their family. It is really an interesting kind
of give-and-take; a creative kind of back-and-forth
experience between the family and the therapist.
Thorngren: In your work, you include play and art tech-
niques combined with family dynamics. You gather a
wealth of information. I think of many of the therapists
that I know who would say, “I wouldn’t know where to
begin with that.” How would you respond to them?
Gil: I understand your hesitance but you have training in
relating to people and that is what family play therapy is
all about. The funny thing is, a lot of the play therapists
already do all these techniques; they just don’t do them
in the context of families. Oftentimes, they actually
have a much easier transition than the family therapists
do. I also think the family therapists can be taught.
Especially if you write down on a piece of paper, “Buy
poster board, this color, buy art supplies, etc., and here’s
a checklist.” Honestly, my experience has been that
most family therapists respond very well to specific
ideas and activities. For example, with the family art
evaluation, we actually started putting a rating sheet
together. The last time I looked at it, we were up to
something like 28 pages. We can’t seem to quite cut it
down to where it needs to be. I think that if there was
something available like a rating sheet where it could be
submitted to a registered play therapist for consultation or
96 THE FAMILY JOURNAL: COUNSELING AND THERAPY FOR COUPLES AND FAMILIES / January 2000
feedback that many family therapists would have an
easier time incorporating play in their sessions.
TRAINING
Christensen: I hear you saying that it is a matter of learn-
ing by doing. This leads to training. What are some vital
aspects of training someone specifically in utilizing
play in family therapy?
Gil: The biggest thing is learning by doing. I have found
that once therapists give themselves a chance by taking
a chance, they learn and gain confidence. I encourage
people to go and practice with people that they work
with, others in training programs, extended family
members, or friends that have children. They can just
say, “Come on over and let’s do this activity.” It’s defi-
nitely not something that’s going to be harmful to any-
body. This gives therapists an opportunity to get the
experience of doing it, watching it, observing it, decod-
ing it, and listening to what families are communicat-
ing. Some kind of concrete experience so that you don’t
have people say, “Well, the kid was just playing and he
didn’t say anything.” Kids say volumes through play if
you’re listening.
Thorngren: Right. If you know how to look at it. Do
you just hope and assume that the therapist under-
stands children and play enough to understand the
symbolism?
Gil: No, which is exactly the main point that I’m trying to
make with the field of family therapy. Family therapists
must have some knowledge and experience with basic
play and child therapy. Most family therapists have
been very responsive, but again, there is some resis-
tance. I believe resistance is really about fear of incom-
petence and inadequacy. I also believe that the resis-
tance pertains to not knowing where to get these tools
and/or thinking that maybe it’s a wee bit expensive to
do that. There are certain therapists that are resistant
because they contend that the adults in the family won’t
want to do play in the family therapy sessions or that it
won’t be seen as professional. I believe that in many sit-
uations this is a total projection on the part of the family
therapist. Then I go back and say, “If you convey it as
important work, are congruent, and know what you say
is congruent with how you present it, people will see it
that way as well.” Even with families where you can see
a certain reluctance, I say to them, “You know, lots of
times families initially aren’t comfortable with this or
don’t understand exactly what we’re doing. You have to
trust me on this one. Trust me and you may be surprised
what comes out.” That usually works for me. In a sense,
I cajole people sometimes. I never force them; I just
strongly encourage them. Then even if they’re reluctant
in specific ways, I try to get their involvement in other
ways, like a puppet interview.
Christensen: You basically enlist their involvement by
asking them to construct and concretely express their
own realities and stories.
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Gil: Exactly! I become the audience and I listen to the indi-
viduals’ and families’ stories.
Christensen: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. I hear you
encouraging therapists to go ahead and kind of learn by
getting into the fire and having the confidence to just do
it.
Gil: Yes. Therapists in general have to get into it. I also
think that family therapists might want to expose them-
selves to play therapy information because most family
therapists just don’t read play literature. It’s so funny
when you think about it—how totally separate these
fields are and yet they’re often working within the
dynamics of family systems. I think that one of the big-
gest steps for many family therapists is to open them-
selves to reading and exposing themselves to play ther-
apy. There are some wonderful books now that even
include case studies on play therapy. So it does not even
have to be dry material with straight didactics, just
something to show how kids use play to communicate.
For example, O’Connor’s (1991) book has to do with
all the theoretical bases for play therapy and how they
differ from each other. Therapists can expose them-
selves to that and then kind of decide what they lean
toward. Then they can decide on specific techniques
that they want to use.
Thorngren: You are basically suggesting that family ther-
apists expose themselves to play therapy and utilize
some of those techniques and theories in their family
sessions.
Gil: Yes. Then if you do a play activity with the family and
you feel like you have nothing to say, you have no idea
what just happened, just say to them, “Thanks a lot for
doing this. I’m going to think about this and review the
material for a week or 2 and then we’ll talk about it
some more.” This provides therapists with a chance to
gather their thoughts. I think that a dilemma for many
therapists is the feeling that they’re going to be under
the gun to come up with some idea immediately or
come up with an interpretation or revelation.
Christensen: Yes, it is almost as if there is some sort of per-
formance anxiety. As a play therapist and supervisor,
not only have I observed this in others but I have experi-
enced this as well. I have said to myself, “I’m going to
need to do it right, or I’m going to need to perform, or I
better make them get something out of this.” It seems as
if that adequacy piece is a main dilemma that therapists
encounter when incorporating play in family therapy.
Gil: Exactly! Therapists get stuck in making sense of it or
performing. I think that’s where the anxiety comes
from. Therapists step into an area that they don’t feel
completely well versed in and feel scared or inade-
quate. I think that is where theory comes into play.
THEORY
Gil: The really neat thing about play therapy is that play
techniques in particular can lend themselves to any the-
oretical approach. So if you’re a narrative therapist,

then you’re doing puppet stories. I mean, you can
address the narrative questions within the story of the
puppets.
Thorngren: So you are saying that therapists from a vari-
ety of theoretical backgrounds can effectively utilize
this approach. For example, therapists within a narra-
tive context may choose to utilize circular questions.
Gil: Certainly. Therapists can do whatever their orienta-
tion might be. Whatever theory they bring into it they
can use play to think about things in that particular way.
Therapists simply need to add a few more things. I have
a lot of the theoretical material around family therapy.
All of the different theories—structural, strategic, and
narrative—hold the same philosophies and techniques
when it comes to play. So now it’s a question of having
so much more available to me where I can pick and
choose from various aspects of play and family therapy.
Families just come in with so many different needs and
different ways of being, different ways of asking for
help, different ways of everything.
Thorngren: It seems like by opening yourself up to this
whole other realm, you have all these other options. As
if you’re never going to run out of ways of relating to
children and their parents.
Gil: That, for me, is just wonderful. I always feel like, well,
there are always other things I can do. I never feel, in
that sense, stuck per se because I always think to
myself, “I wonder what this incredibly structured rigid
family would do if I asked them to do a scribble
together or if I bring the puppet in and ask them to do a
family puppet story.” It is energy. It’s like when I talk
about art techniques and the fluid paints as opposed to
the more restrictive materials. It’s the same kind of
thing. I see verbal therapy as more restrictive because
it’s confining. Even when we speak, we use words in a
certain kind of way. You think I mean something; I
think I mean something else. There’s so much more
opportunity to err in communication, but much more
important, it’s the control around what I do and don’t
say. But when you move into some of the other areas of
play, families don’t have as much control. That is what I
find so exciting.
Christensen: It really is like many other therapeutic
approaches. Therapists possess their personal philoso-
phies about people, life, and counseling and use their
beliefs to guide them in their relationships in therapy.
You are basically proposing an approach that allows for
families and therapists to communicate their thoughts
and feelings through various materials and mediums of
self-expression and play.
Gil: Right, exactly! It really is about who the therapist is as
a person that guides what they do with their clients.
That is what theory is all about. Theory guides thera-
pists in how they relate to people. Therapy is simply
another relationship.
Thorngren: It seems as if you are talking about multiple
influences. What are your ideas about reciprocal influ-
ences between therapists and their clients?
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Christensen, Thorngren / PLAY IN FAMILY THERAPY 97
Gil: That is another piece of it, which may be more about
me personally than this approach to therapy. Because of
my work with abused families, I often found myself
feeling fatalistic and pessimistic. Sometimes I found
myself experiencing these feelings of helplessness or
feelings of depression. Sometimes what was happen-
ing, in essence, was I was picking up all of the family’s
stuff—all the negativity. Now I know that family thera-
pists do not use the word countertransference but you
can use different language and just say, “This is the
impact of this family on me.” I thought to myself, the
child must feel this, the child must feel down and heavy.
One of the things I know to be true about play is that it
frees energy up. It does get you physically involved and
it does release energy. How about that as an option? In
some ways, I said, “I can’t continue to do this. This is
way too heavy. It’s bringing me down. I’m going to try
something else.” So there’s that little part that has to do
with me, and it relates to my theoretical beliefs. I know
the value of play. I really treasure what it can provide
not only for children and families but for me as well. I
thought, “I’m going to try this out and just see what
happens.” I didn’t want to get stuck in specific tech-
niques of some theory but just try it out. I am pleased
with the results. It has been amazing that we’ve been
able to do play therapy in even the most tragic situa-
tions, the most stressful of situations, the most crisis
oriented, where most people would go, “Oh well, you
can’t play with a family that’s having that problem.”
Well, you can practically do it with any family having
any problem because, in fact, if you believe it to be true
so will the family. If the family does respond differ-
ently, make different contact and relate to each other in
a different and new way. It is incredibly and potentially
beneficial. If, in fact, what we’re trying to do in therapy
is give people an improved sense of well-being then this
certainly contributes to that. The research on play says
that play actually releases endorphins so people actu-
ally have physiological well-being as a result of it. So
why not open up that channel, that opportunity for peo-
ple to communicate both intentional and unintentional
meaning.
SPECIFIC ISSUES
Thorngren: You mention that play is appropriate for prac-
tically all families. Have you ever encountered families
that were resistant, had special issues, or had dynamics
that prevented them from finding play in family therapy
to be of some use?
Gil: I believe that play is useful when dealing with most
populations on various issues. I have many examples of
how this approach was effective with people who were
guarded, resistant, and didn’t want to deal with thera-
pists. Therapists were part of the system in their eyes
because they’re mandated to be there. I’ve given them
puppets or artwork and suddenly you’re on a different
plane. The fact that they’ve shared that experience of
98 THE FAMILY JOURNAL: COUNSELING AND THERAPY FOR COUPLES AND FAMILIES / January 2000
expressing themselves through play, sand, or art makes
them, in a way, have contaminated feelings of positive
regard.
Christensen: It seems to relate to your thoughts about the
influence of clients on counselors, and vice versa. I got
that from you through your workshop and even from
talking to you now. You exhibit passion, excitement for,
and a genuine belief in utilizing play in family therapy.
Are you simply suggesting that therapists somehow
express their passion for play therapy through their
interactions within their family sessions and that will
influence parents to give play a chance?
Gil: Absolutely. That is what I say to people when they’re
going to start family play therapy. I tell them, “Get com-
fortable enough with it so that you believe it because if
therapists can’t convey to families that this is important,
valuable, and useful then they are just not going to be
able to sell it in that particular way.”
Christensen: Those seem to be some key things. In terms
of using this approach with any population, you were
talking specifically about the severely traumatized. Are
there any specific differences or techniques that you’d
change based on a given issue or population?
Gil: The only group that I’ve really been concerned about
is people who act out in a violent way. Now that’s the
only place where I’ve found that sometimes this mate-
rial actually loosens them—“loosens” is the best way to
explain it—to the point that whatever internal controls
could be there aren’t there. Sometimes that leads to
negative themes being introduced or the themes actu-
ally translating it to negative or dangerous behaviors.
So that’s one place where I’m pretty careful. As a mat-
ter of fact, somebody called me the other day to consult
on a pretty violent guy. I said, “You know, play just
might not be the best place to go. He needs so much
more control and structure and he doesn’t need to be
emotive. He needs to actually ‘tuck it in’.” Play some-
times frees things up as opposed to helping a person
learn to control inappropriate displays of anger. The
other thing is that in terms of using this, it’s not some-
thing that I use in every session. I’m pretty careful or
purposeful about when I introduce it. I always tell peo-
ple ahead of time, “I am a family play therapist. Now
what that means is I will work with your child and I will
work with you but there are going to be times that I’m
going to invite some of your family members to come in
together. There are going to be times when I’m going to
invite everyone to come in. Sometimes when we come
in you’ll talk, sometimes, however, I’ll ask you to do
some play activities.” I do that with all the families I work
with. I want them to know ahead of time so that they
won’t be surprised by any of my invitations to play.
SCHOOLS
Christensen: What are your thoughts about how you could
employ play in family therapy in the school system?
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Gil: That brings forth something that I wanted to talk
about. In general, I believe that it all comes down to the
fact that children just tend to be low priorities across the
board. I find that therapists must be advocating for chil-
dren to have therapy, permanency placement, to be
heard, and for their schools to respond to their social
and emotional needs. I think that this is a necessary
aspect for all therapists, everywhere you go. This is
mainly because I believe that people think of children
as not necessarily that important. That is a pretty sad
commentary. I was working at the county when I went
to school at George Washington. One of the things that I
found out was that I was going to have to do a
practicum, which meant internship. It was just such an
interesting experience; it was one of the best experi-
ences because my art therapy supervisor, Barbara
Sobol, is one of the most gifted human beings I’ve ever
met. I learned so much from her. I talk to her all the time
and she’s one of the best gifts that I’ve been given.
Barbara was very interested in working with the
schools and we were trying to figure out what to do. So
she got together a little art therapy mobile unit, went to
the schools, and said, “Look, I can come in before
school and/or at a convenient time and work with kids
in groups and do some art therapy stuff.” She started
and it was great to watch them. She’d go out there with
her little art cart and she’d have these kids do these
amazing projects. Now one of the projects Barbara
taught me, which has become one of the projects that
we’re doing with the kids in group therapy, is some-
thing called “Build a Safe Environment.” I love this
because the kids are given an animal to choose from.
They get in a basket of animals and they choose an ani-
mal. Then they create an environment for the animal.
They use poster board, wood, telephone spools, and
wire. Some of their environments are just hilarious.
That safe environment process has, again, been one of
the most incredible things I’ve seen people do. It’s
about mastery, it’s about creating a reality, and it’s
about learning from the child what is and what is not
relevant or dangerous or safe. It’s just an amazing thing.
So she would go out and do the safe environments with
the kids in the schools. Barbara was doing it as a pilot
project and the hope was that everyone would think of it
as useful; then they would encourage therapists to come
back and she could get funding. Likewise, at the last
APT conference, there were people doing sand therapy
in the schools and I think this is a really important thing.
I mean, it’s just like all those medical units that are in
the streets now. People won’t come to get their vaccine
so let’s go out to them. I think the same thing could be
said of play, particularly play in family therapy. I think
we really need to make it available to people who ordi-
narily wouldn’t seek it or get it.
Thorngren: You are suggesting that we almost advocate
for play and family therapy.
Gil: Absolutely. A woman that I worked with named
Monica McGoldrick who created the materials on

ethnicity and family therapy runs a play therapy insti-
tute in New Jersey. So she and I hooked up and my inter-
est was in teaching family therapists play techniques. I
basically approached her and she approached me. I
asked, “Could I go and teach family therapists and inte-
grate a play therapy component into a standard family
therapy program?” We have been doing that for a little
more than 2 or 3 years now and it’s been just an amazing
experience. Now one of the students from that program
who graduated has started a family play therapy project
within the institute. That is very exciting, especially
because initially many of the family therapists were
hesitant. They would say, “I just don’t get it.” They did-
n’t quite understand why we were teaching them this.
Slowly but surely I’ve won over probably 80% of them.
There is still a group that believes that it is too expen-
sive, “I don’t feel comfortable with it, I don’t work with
kids, I don’t want to work with kids, and so forth.”
Christensen: You really focus on empowering both fami-
SUPERVISION
Gil: Exactly. In terms of supervision, that is when I started
Thorngren: Would you please address supervision issues
related to play in family therapy?
Gil: The Family Institute is very much team oriented and
so what we do there is have families come in where we
do a variety of play therapy activities with them. The
person who is bringing the case in either does it alone or
I do cotherapy with them. Then after the family leaves,
we process all the information. We use those little
sheets that I mentioned developing before. Like the one
for sand tray where I take them through a process of,
“Let’s start at the very beginning. What is it about what
this person or family chose that’s interesting to you?”
Then the example that I always give is this woman who
chose to be Goldilocks on one hand and an innocent
bystander on the other. That’s a perfect example of how
much is communicated. Goldilocks was obviously an
adventurer, explorer, intruder, and very assertive about
getting her needs met. Then this woman was also an
innocent bystander. I then ask my supervisees, “What
does that tell you right away about this woman?” Obvi-
ously, she’s holding a lot of ambivalence about how
much she can go out into the world and how much she
needs to retreat. Well, this was a woman with phobia.
We don’t initially jump to what the problem is. I
encourage my supervisees to just “listen to the story.
Let’s see what you can learn.” So we go through every-
body’s puppets and what that might suggest and some-
times there’s association between puppets. For exam-
ple, the match story, where the father was a judge, the
girl was a policeman, and the other girl was a lawyer.
You have to wonder what that suggests about this fam-
ily system. I suspect a need for authority, external
authority, a need for maintenance roles, looking at what
is right and wrong. So there’s probably punishment and
strict consequences. That was also interesting in terms
of this particular family. Then, after we’ve gotten the
symbols, I say, “Okay, tell me about the story. How did
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Christensen, Thorngren / PLAY IN FAMILY THERAPY 99
it start?” You look at not only the content of “Well, it
started with this point” but also “Who started it?” Now
we are looking at the systemic parts of who creates the
story, who participates, who’s left out, are some of the
ideas better than others, does someone say, “Oh, that’s
terrible, let’s do this.” Does someone acquiesce, com-
ply, dominate, and so forth. Next we get into the content
in terms of: What is the story about? What is this story
trying to tell us about this family? Essentially we
free-associate about these aspects. We free-associate if
the story has a problem, which it usually has built in.
How did that get resolved? Is there a resolution? Is it an
adaptive resolution? Then we go back into, “What do
you think this might suggest about interactions
between family members and/or issues that are most
prevalent?” It’s a whole process that we go through and
my hope is that they will begin to be able to do this pro-
cess on their own.
lies and therapists.
going into having these little sheets of paper that would
have them organize their thinking about what they were
looking at. Then when they got to the portion about
queries, that meant, “Well, what questions would you
pose now?” The building of questions is a really impor-
tant piece because you have to stay so much within the
metaphor and you have to try to understand. I look for
whether or not my supervisees can state what the story
is. Can they list at least five family dynamics that they
observed? Can they tell me something about the struc-
ture of this family, the hierarchy of this family, or any-
thing else from watching them? I have my little list
that’s called “observational categories” that just goes
through a lot of those structural therapy aspects. Also in
terms of the story, there are other dimensions like: Is
there symbolic play? Is there a level of enjoyment? Is
affect available? Those kinds of things. Then basically
they summarize this material and then come out with,
“Well, here’s what we’ve learned from this.” The next
piece of it is how does this relate to the therapy? How do
you translate this into something therapeutic? The ther-
apeutic questions or dialogues would need to be
focused on the unique needs of the family at hand. In
other words, supervisees need to list themes to start
with. Then they must make decisions about what we
were going to have to bring. We, as a group, formulate
the questions. I like to have people working in tables
and making a list of questions. I am very invested in
supervisors or trainees and in having them trusting and
respecting their intuition. For example, “What is your
gut reaction?” That’s really important. You trust that
material and it always has meaning. Likewise, if you
have a reaction to the story or the puppets, it always has
some kind of importance. So, yes, it is a process that’s
similar to what I encourage the families to do, and that’s
basically the training process.
100 THE FAMILY JOURNAL: COUNSELING AND THERAPY FOR COUPLES AND FAMILIES / January 2000
Christensen: You appear to utilize a supervision process
that parallels your approaches to therapy. You also
seem to lean toward group supervision. Is that your pre-
ferred mode of supervision?
Gil: Definitely. Group supervision provides numerous
benefits over just individual supervision. Just the reac-
tions of “What does this suggest to you?” The more
people you have, the more ample opportunity you’re
going to have to gather information and ideas. What
you were saying earlier is a really important piece to
me. I don’t always articulate this but concerning
cocreation, in that I’m not an expert telling people
what’s going on or what they need to do to fix it, I’m
really someone who helps reflect back to them what
they already know, in both supervision and therapy.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Thorngren: Is there anything else you’d like to talk about,
such as any special issue or anything that you haven’t
already addressed?
Gil: Let me think about that. Well, once again, just backing
into something I said earlier that’s been so helpful to
me. I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the reasons
why I haven’t had severe burnout or haven’t stopped
doing this is because I have integrated all these different
aspects that have therapeutic value, not only for the
families that I work with but for myself as well. I feel
better when I work with puppets. I feel better when I
work with those aquariums. I get so excited by what
people produce and the level of interest that I have is
remarkable. The value that I place on that is just amaz-
ing and all of that I find just so stimulating. I think it is
really important that if you find yourself, especially
working with resistant populations or court mandated
people, and you’re feeling like your job is really hard
and draining, etc., there’s probably something you can
do to add and restore yourself, to access energy, and to
encourage yourself to have different experiences.
Again, I know family therapists don’t like the word
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countertransference but there is an impact of each
group of people that you work with. I can get just as
much from my clients as they can get from me. I just
marvel at people and it isn’t so much about me. I keep
saying this to people because they tend to project things
on me. But there’s nothing special about what I do.
There’s a trust that I have. It is a hope that I feel and con-
veying that to people goes a very long way. They begin
trusting me and they find what they need to within
themselves. That has been very comforting to me to
know that it isn’t about theory or technique. It is to some
extent more about who you are and what you do in your
relationships with others. It is also about being recep-
tive to what children and families do and who am I with
them.
Thorngren: We both appreciate your time and energy!
Thank you.
REFERENCES
Gil, E. (1991). The healing power of play: Therapy with abused children.
New York: Guilford.
Gil, E. (1994). Play in family therapy. New York: Guilford.
Gil, E. (1996a). Systemic treatment of families who abuse. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Gil, E. (1996b). Treating abused adolescents. New York: Guilford.
O’Connor, K. J. (1991). The play therapy primer: An integration of theories
and techniques. New York: John Wiley.
Peterson, L. W., & Hardin, M. E. (1997). Children in distress: A guide for
screening children’s art. New York: Norton.
Teresa M. Christensen is an assistant professor in the Department
of Educational Leadership, Counseling, and Foundations at the
University of New Orleans.
Jill M. Thorngren is an assistant professor at Montana State Uni-
versity, Bozeman.