In this book, Hanna Kende uses her wealth of experience to explain how psychodrama can allow psychotherapists to fundamentally change their relationships with children presenting with psychosocial, mental, or behavioral problems. Based on Kende’s extensive and wide-ranging knowledge, Psychodrama with Children explores the origins and roots of psychodrama, and uses detailed case studies to show how psychodramatists can encourage groups of children to draw upon their natural creativity as a force for healing. The method draws on a rich theoretical base starting from the foundational work of Moreno and Adler.

The method is applicable to a wide range of children with varied symptoms (psychosomatic problems, distractibility, hyperactivity, inhibition, capable children performing poorly at school, etc.). By creating a warm climate of reciprocal tolerance and acceptance, psychodramatists allow children to express themselves freely in a group of their peers and to reshape their negative self-image. Psychodrama lets children use their natural language of play to mobilize their creative imagination, and to express their anxieties, conflicts and problems in a symbolic mode. This approach helps children heal through their own creativity.

Psychodrama with Children will be of interest to psychodramatists, dramatherapists and child psychotherapists, as well as psychologists, psychiatrists and other child and adolescent mental health professionals.