About Educational Psychotherapy
Educational Psychotherapy (EPT) is a unique style of therapy with the signature method of working through the metaphor of the learning task. This is an indirect approach to working with children and young people (CYP). What this means is, unlike counselling, whereby the behaviour difficulties or stressful situations are the central focus for therapeutic conversation, in EPT, it would be a learning task. The learning tasks are carefully selected by the therapists and would be the metaphor for any underlying issues there might be. This includes art, literature, writing games and numeracy games. Play is particularly important in Educational Psychotherapy. It is a very useful metaphor and essential for the therapeutic relationship between the therapist and the CYP.
Educational Psychotherapy offers an alternative for CYP who do not want to talk about their difficulties. Sometimes spoken words can be illusive and sometimes direct conversation can be a deterrent. Often, CYP like this style of therapy because it takes away the pressure to talk about themselves and it is much easier to talk about the task. The therapist’s work is to encourage thinking and through the metaphor of the task and work through the difficulties at the child or young persons pace.
Educational Psychotherapists use Psychoanalytic theories to inform their work and create a safe space for the therapy. The founder of EPT, Irene Caspari, first made the link between learning and emotions when she discovered how working through the child's internal barriers using a psychoanalytic relationship and tailored tasks, enabled the child to become unstuck and develop both cognitively and emotionally in a more health way. Please refer to The Caspari Foundation for more information.
Having been a teacher for students with additional needs for so many years, I hold a whole bank of resources that I have made over the years, with a deep understanding of the effectiveness of visual aids. In my experience, I have found these resources useful for students of all ages, all styles of learning, for all levels of attention, for students with English as a second language and students with underlying emotional difficulties.
