This study intended to investigate the effect of play therapy on self esteem and self expression of the children who are not classified as the disabled but have the handicapped sibling by employing the therapy on them.
The target of the research were those 4th graders and 5th graders of elementary school who have younger sibling with developmental disability and hearing disability respectively, who showed a problem in self expression among the same age group, due to a special situation of being a family member of the disabled child.
This case study was proceeded once a week for 40 minutes per session, since June, 2012, by using children-based play therapy and Jung's analytic psychological play therapy syntagmatically. In order to confirm the result of the study, self esteem scale and self expression scale were performed before and after play therapy, and as qualitative analysis, symbolic meaning was investigated through therapeutic consideration in the viewpoint of Jung's analytic psychology and the change in verbal and nonverbal expression was investigated according to behavior observation standard per session.
As the result of the study, changes appeared through play therapy as follows.
First, as the result of investigating therapeutic consideration, they appeared to express their unconsciousness naturally and show positive appearance of understanding and accepting themselves when expressing symbolic figure. That is, play became an activity for children to embody and conscientize their thought or feeling through image which could not be expressed by language.
Second, verbal and nonverbal expression showed positive change per session by having various experience in the expression of their emotion through play. This means that emotional development was induced and lots of opportunity of expressing their own emotion and thought was provided through the natural situation of play.
Third, self esteem of the children who are not classified as the disabled but have the handicapped sibling was improved through play therapy. This means that self esteem could be improved through having positive experience toward oneself and accepting themselves as they are through a medium, play.
Fourth, self expression of the children who are not classified as the disabled but have the handicapped sibling was improved through play therapy. Positive change occurred by provision of the opportunity to honestly express their negative or positive emotion through play.
This study is meaningful that it treated the psychological problem of the children who are not classified as the disabled, placed in a special environment due to the handicapped sibling, and that it included the changing process through qualitative analysis of play therapy, despite the restriction of having only two of research object number and a short period of time.