Book Reviews

inaccessibility of children’s actual play formany scholars, careful to warn early onthat his media-focused methods do notgrapple with ethnographic observation orallow for a descriptive theory of children’s
LEGO experiences. At times, though, thelack of a situated social agent at the heartof the analysis leaves LEGO play itself as
the actor under discussion, as if it were anentity independent of its players or corporate creators. Lee is better able to avoid thistrouble when discussing the LEGO play ofadults (much better-documented than thatof children, especially regardling onlinecommunities). The short postscripts that
follow each chapter, with case studies ofartworks or fan productions that complicate LEGO’s corporate narratives, offersome of the book’s best insights about playin actual practice.
A short final chapter sums up andoffers sandbox play as an integrative wayof thinking about LEGO as a medium—a play modality that can encompass thediverse others Lee sees operating in
LEGO’s toys and its wider media entanglements. Thus, his deconstruction of LEGO
also becomes a reconstruction, resulting not in “any single ethical critique
but . . . ongoing critical interventions into
the dynamic spaces of LEGO play” (p.
238) with the interpretive tools offered bypoststructuralist, phenomenological, andfeminist theory. Although Lee convincingly makes the case that the toy’s deep
imbrication in popular culture and heavy
grip on contemporary childhood makethe serious study of LEGO worthwhile,the book nevertheless left me wanting abetter sense of the broader cultural stakesat hand. What larger lessons, external toLEGO, might we take from this analysis

of how the company mobilizes designed
playthings, charismatic narratives, andthe fraught ideology of creativity as commodity? Perhaps the difficulty in breaking
beyond the “spaces of LEGO play” indicates LEGO’s deeper success in naturalizing its tightly controlled, self-containedbrand as synonymous with play itself.
—Colin Fanning, Bard Graduate Center,
New York, NY

Prescriptive Play Therapy:
Tailoring Interventions forSpecific Childhood Problems
Heidi Gerard Kaduson, Donna Cangelosi,and Charles E. Schaefer, eds.
New York: 2020. About the editors,
contributors, preface, and index. 276 pp.
$29.75 paper. ISBN: 9781462541676
Anyone familiar with play therapy knows
Charles E. Schaefer, the cofounder, alongwith Kevin O’Connor, of the Association for Play Therapy in 1982. Schaefer’s
clinical and scholarly contributions to
the discipline, and with them, our understanding of its powerful role in helping
children, have been unparalleled. And
those who have followed and applied thefruits of the burgeoning field in their own
clinical work know well the many seminal
contributions that coeditors Heidi Kaduson and Donna Cangelosi have brought
to the field. So, who better to bring thisimportant volume, Prescriptive Play Therapy, to our attention?
In the clinical field, there are the purists who adhere to one favored and empirically supported mode of treatment, such101

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as client-centered or gestalt play therapy.
Then, there are those clinicians who are
facile at blending the techniques of twotreatment models in their clinical workwith young clients. And finally, there arethose clinicians who call themselves eclectic, and who may have their own bag oftricks, but who are not particularly conversant in the multiple treatment theories
from which these techniques emanate. But
more and more, the treatment literaturesuggests that clinicians, who are indeed
transtheoretically grounded and carefully
match techniques with the clients’ presenting problems on a case by case, session by
session basis, are perhaps best preparedto address the quickly changing and challenging developmental and clinical needsof their clients.
This is exactly what Kaduson, Cangelosi, and Schaefer have offered up in
this important multicontributor volume,
which brings together the voices and richclinical experiences of a highly respected,
well-known and extensively publishedteam of play therapy experts. Certainly,
there are other volumes that use teamsof transtheoretical clinical experts; however, clinicians in this particular groupare known specialists and experts in theirrespective domains. And so, the book is
neatly and logically divided into sections,corresponding to prevailing and agreedupon domains of clinical problems andthe therapeutic techniques uniquely prescribed to address them.
Part 1 of the book introduces us toprescriptive play therapy, the role of comprehensive assessment, and their rationales. Subsequent sections take us directly
into the therapeutic playroom with master clinicians working with internalizing

disorders (depression, anxiety, mutism);externalizing disorders (attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder, aggression, sexualdisturbance); stress and trauma disorders(survivors of divorce, sexual abuse, tragedy); and other disorders (autism spectrum, attachment issues, and school-basedproblems).
Working clinically with children
challenged by these disorders is far fromroutine and formulaic. Thus, any volume
that professes a formulaic approach isnot going to be as useful to most clinicians working with this population. However, the very strength of this particularvolume is in its logical and predictableorganization. Each chapter presents anoverview of the particular clinical problem, useful assessment strategies, anda rationale for the use of prescriptivetreatment. The essence of each chapter
involves a clinical vignette, in which theauthor (or authors) take us right into
the playroom, bringing alive their actual
clinical thinking and treatment with aparticular child. Following each chapter,a list of useful and mostly current references guide the reader into a deeper
exploration of its content.
The book is a timely, relevant, anduseful volume whose strength and utility lie in its well-informed, empiricallysupported, box-of-chocolates approachto guiding—rather than directing—clinicians. There is something for everyone,
especially so for those clinicians willing
and ready to embrace the value and significance of a prescriptive approach to playtherapy.
—Lawrence C. Rubin, St. Thomas University, Miami, FL