Rules of the game: board game design as a directive therapeutic intervention

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the clinical rationale for designing a tailor-made board game as a therapeutic intervention in play therapy. Games are practiced in play therapy in directive and non-directive ways. Structured and directive approaches are used in individual and group therapy, and enable therapists to identify themes and work them through. A review of the literature concerning the use of games in psychotherapy is suggested in this paper, followed by a detailed rationale for a tailor-made rule-governed board game as a directive theme-focused intervention for short-term group psychotherapy. Such a board game, designed for processing termination in a group of severely deprived adolescent boys in their final year of long-term psychodynamic residential treatment is described. Therapeutic considerations for designing specific elements of the game are described in detail, as well as the symbolic language that served as a framework. Based on a description of clinical thinking used in the preparation of this board game, a discussion of the particular characteristics of designing tailor-made board games as a directive intervention in play therapy is suggested. The paper explains the need for a particular design of game for each specific therapeutic group, based on the identified needs of the participants, as well as on the aim of the intervention.

Keywords:

• Board game
• groupwork
• directive approach
• therapeutic intervention
• termination

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Noga Dvir from the library of the school of society and the arts, for her valuable assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elana Lakh

Elana Lakh is a supervising art therapist and a Jungian analyst. She is a senior lecturer of art therapy in the school of society and the arts in Ono academic college and in the school of Jungian psychotherapy in Bar-Ilan University in Israel. She conducts a private practice in Jerusalem specializing in treatment of sexual abuse survivors. She is a member of the Israeli institute for Jungian Psychology in honor of Erich Neumann, and a teacher in the training program. She studies creation mythologies and her research interests include archetypal aspects of art made in therapy. She is the author of a book -“The origins of evil in the human psyche: Jungian reading of creation myths” (2017, in Hebrew), and other articles.

She is currently the chairperson of YAYAT- The Israeli Association of Creative & Expressive Therapies.