Kramer Mahler Forum
Presenter: Dr. Robin Holloway

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Time: 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM EST

Teleconference via Zoom




The Moving Picture: How Children’s Art Illustrates Change During Treatment

Click here for the flyer and more information . 




Dr. Robin Holloway, Ph.D. will use real drawings from his work to showcase child art as an invaluable tool to understand the mind of a child. It is often remarked in psychoanalytic circles that children’s play is the analogue of free association in the adult. In this presentation Dr. Holloway will give shape and texture to this assertion. As Melanie Klein once wrote: “The child expresses its phantasies, its wishes and its actual experiences in a symbolic way through play and games. In doing so, it makes use of the same archaic and phylogenetic mode of expression, the same language, as it were, that we are familiar with in dreams.” (Klein, The Psychological Foundations of Child Analysis) All skill levels and familiarity with child work will be able to connect with the immediacy of the images, which elegantly capture psychic change over time. Pictures will be used from several treatments to highlight both the commonalities as well as the particularities to each treatment. Topics to be discussed include: (1) how child art offers a visual snapshot of a child’s mind, (2) how children work through fears and fantasies in drawings, (3) the use of drawing to represent important relationships and object relations, (4) drawing as a way to gain mastery over difficult affects and spheres of life.



Click here to register

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Program Objectives:


1. Demonstrate how child art facilitates and demonstrates treatment change over time.

2. Examine how art is a useful arena to help children work through difficult affects. 

3. Describe how drawings represent object relations and relationships.



Speaker Biography: Dr. Robin Holloway, Ph.D., C.Psych., is a licensed psychologist who has worked with infants, children, teens, parents and families for over 25 years, including 20 years in the Child and Family Services department of a large hospital. Prior to his training in child psychotherapy, Dr. Holloway taught for a number of years. He is qualified as a teacher in Ontario at both the high school and elementary school levels. Dr. Holloway received his first Ph.D. in educational theory from the University of Toronto (1978) and his second Ph.D. in clinical and developmental psychology from York University (1986). He is a member of the Canadian Society of Clinical Hypnosis. In addition, Dr. Holloway is a graduate of the Toronto Child Psychoanalytic Program, and is now a teacher and supervisor in that program. He is the author of On Emerging from Autism and into the Terror of Relationships, published in the Journal of Child Psychotherapy, and Asperger’s Children: Psychodynamics, Aetiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment, published by Karnac Books in 2016.


Address: 254 Kent Rd, Wynnewood, PA 19096
Phone Number: (856) 600-5673

The Margaret S. Mahler Child Development Foundation is a 501(c)6 non-profit organization.

Privacy Policy | Terms of Use

Powered by Wild Apricot Membership Software