REAR COVER

“This is a delightful and refreshing book that significantly fills a gap in the literature on working with children and their families. The authors present a broad range of 'spirited' ideas about practice and share with readers a license to create, one that is vividly portrayed in the detailed illustrations of their work. The text is engaging and constitutes an invitation to therapists to step beyond the boundaries of the known in their work with children."

—Michael White

Dulwich Centre, Adelaide, Australia

co-author, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends

"This is a remarkable chronicle of the fruition of the narrative approach to working with children and their families and of many children's triumph over weighty problems. In these authors' hands the

'narrative' brings children's own creative solutions to center stage, while adults-parents, thera-pists, and the readers-are genuinely impressed and charmed by children's commitment and re-sourcefulness. This is a book about children, but the appeal to ingenuity in the desire to escape from emotional pain and discomfort can also be applied to many adult patients. This book and the children in it are guides and consultants to the possible in contemporary psychotherapy."

-Lee Combrinck-Graham, M.D.

Adult, Child, and Family Psychiatrist

Behavioral Health Medical Director, Oxford Health Plans

This book is the most compelling response yet to the long-standing need for a way to engage children and adults equally as participants in family therapy. It demonstrates how narrative therapy is ideally suited to the gifts and needs of children. The authors illustrate narrative therapy's deep respect for individual experience and its exquisite sensitivity to the interplay between the personal and the sociopolitical. The book's comprehensive scope, careful organization, and utter lucidity make it an extraordinarily powerful and accessible textbook on narrative therapy. Playful Approaches to Serious Problems is a joyful and brilliant gift to child and family therapy!"

—Richard Chasin, M.D.

Co-director, Family Institute of Cambridge Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry,

Harvard Medical School

*Inspirational, respectful, and playful at the same time, Freeman, Epston, and Lobovits once and for all dispel the myth that narrative approaches are too intellectual for working with children. The au-thors, three exceptionally creative therapists with a wealth of experience, immerse us in the stories of their work. Their incredible enthusiasm for and unshakable belief in the knowledge and potential of children and their families shine through on every page. Every child and family therapist should own this treasure trove of ideas!"

—Jill Freedman, M.S.W. co-author of Narrative Therapy