멜라니 클라인의 대상관계이론 관점에서 본 놀이치료 임상사례 연구

Abstract

In this paper, a clinical case of play therapy is presented through the lens of Melanie Klein's Object Relations Theory, which even today is often used as a key approach to the psychoanalytic play therapy with children. Klein considered the play of children as equivalent to free association of adults. In a reliable and safe environment with child analysts, children can project their inner stories and express them without resistance by using play figures through which their own unconscious representations and conflicts are discovered. They can also re-experience past events that have affected their lives. Reliving these through play therapy can weaken their influence on the children's psyches. In this clinical case, which lasted for around three years, a 7 year-old boy reenacted through play a traumatic event and a series of unfortunate consequences. This reenactment was closely related to his need to master his own traumatic experiences. He was able to control his anxiety and aggressiveness by bringing his inner object relations and conflicts into the play, which allowed him to step into the unresolved developmental path from a paranoid-schizoid position to a depressive position. In the beginning, he separated toy figures into good guys and bad guys, which symbolized dichotomous thinking in his mind. Through the intervention of play therapy, he was able to attain the mental capacity that made it possible for him to have a whole object relationship. This argument illuminates that play is an area where meanings are created and possibilities are brought into being. Pastoral counseling can be called a form of play whose area is filled with religious symbols and resources. The representative resource for the play of pastoral counseling and care is the Bible, into whose stories and figures clients can transfer their own inner problems. They can have the opportunity not only to find their own inner object relations through the stories but also to realize a new alternate way to resolve their own psychological problems. The therapeutic process of play therapy can provide a methodological guideline for pastoral counselors to build up their own identity.