Non-directive play therapy with autistic adolescents: a qualitative study of therapists’ interactional practices

Abstract

Abstract This case study identifies and examines interactional practices of non-directive play therapists during their therapeutic sessions with autistic adolescents. The study involved two therapists and two adolescents (siblings) on the autism spectrum. The video-recorded sessions took place at participants’ home and were conducted in Polish. Employing insights and tools from discourse-analytic approaches, in particular conversation analysis (CA), the findings show how clients and therapists are both involved in co-constructing therapeutic interactions by orienting to each other’s utterances. CA is presented in this article as a useful tool for recognizing and describing the therapists’ interactional contributions and their local functions. The therapeutic practices identified in the analysis (talk-in-practice) – e.g. mirroring, meaning expansion, recast and scaffolding – are further juxtaposed with theories concerning interactional practices in non-directive therapies (talk-in-theory) in order to provide a more detailed picture of these practices as well as complete them. The findings from this study expand the current state of knowledge of non-directive play therapies of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and carry practical implications for specialists involved in ASD treatment.