The Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program
IN PERSON OPEN HOUSE

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025 

7:30-9:00pm

From Playing to Playing With: the Evolution of the Imaginative Play of a Young Boy

A Clinical Case Presentation by Camilla Xiao Yu, MS, LMHC, LPC

with Supervisor Tomás Casado-Frankel, LMFT

Join us at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street (between Central Park West & Columbus Avenues)

Light refreshments will follow the presentation.

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION

Play can offer rich insights into a child’s internal world and is a great treatment modality to facilitate change and growth. In this case presentation, Ms. Yu will share her experiences as a therapist working with a young boy for the first time. Through trial and error, she navigates the patient’s curious developing psyche as well as her own unresolved issues. She will focus on exploring the evolving features of the patient’s imaginative play, and its usefulness in ameliorating reported symptoms. The relational dynamic and counter-transferential impacts are explored and tentatively conceptualized.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER AND THE SUPERVISOR

Camilla Xiao Yu, (she/they), MS LMHC LPC, is a bilingual (English/Mandarin) psychotherapist and consultant, and third-year candidate in the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training program at the William Alanson White Institute. She is a Gestalt therapist trained in developmental somatic work and Reichian principles and is also a certified Imago Relational Therapist and Brainspotting practitioner. Her expertise lies in addressing relational, intergenerational, and cross-cultural trauma in the Asian and Asian immigrant communities. Beyond psychotherapy, Ms. Yu is a certified Reiki master and studies Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Tomás Casado-Frankel, LMFT, is faculty and supervisor in the Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program at the William Alanson White Institute. He is a graduate of that program as well as the Institute’s Psychoanalytic Program. He is also a graduate of the Couple & Family Therapy program at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid, Spain, and holds a postgraduate diploma in Conflict & Dispute Resolution Studies from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. He is the co-author of Early Relational Trauma and the Development of the Self (Routledge, 2022), and is in private practice in New York City.