The children's play therapy instrument: Analisi longitudinale di un caso

Aim of this work is to present the Children's Play Therapy Instrument (CPTI) and to study its application in a clinical case over time. The CP-TI is a new instrument to assess the child's activity during an individual ludotherapy. It has been recently created by Paulina Kernberg, Cornell University, New York. We got her precious supervision on our work. The instrument consists in a rating scale, including many items that analyse the child's activity, and in a manual, describing operational definitions and clinical examples. A 41/2 year old boy treated from P. Kernberg for a severe separation anxiety is studied. The CPTI was used for evaluating all the therapy, which lasted 3 months. Each session was videotaped and than analysed. The Instrument showed to reflect very well each therapeutic session. The longitudinal analysis clearly showed the pathological areas of the child's activity and the data obtained are parallel to the clinical evolution, so that they can be considered a reliable index. The CPTI can be considered an useful instrument to assess the child's activity because it makes possible for the clinician to obtain objective data, to be used both in the diagnostic and in the therapeutic phase.