Marie-Jose Dhaese and Holistic Expressive Therapy: A naturalistic inquiry.

This is a naturalistic inquiry to describe a therapeutic approach called Holistic Expressive Therapy, developed by Marie-José Dhaese. Dhaese is renowned in the play therapy community and has been recognized by the Canadian Association of Child and Play Therapy (CACPT) as one of five leading play therapists in Canada. Dhaese's focus has been on clinical practice, supervision, and teaching at her Centre of Expressive Therapy in Parksville, British Columbia (BC), and at the Justice Institute in Burnaby, BC, Canada. The inquiry begins with a literature review of play, therapeutic play, history of play therapy, and expressive therapy to situate Holistic Expressive Therapy. Marie-José Dhaese was interviewed, and a thematic analysis was used to develop a case study on the principles and components of Holistic Expressive Therapy. Then four participants volunteered to be interviewed to describe the influences of Dhaese's approach on their therapeutic practice. A grounded theory method was used to analyze the data -- seven categories and 14 subcategories emerged. There is a marked congruence between Dhaese's description of Holistic Expressive Therapy and the influences described by the four participants. The congruence discovered in the findings can be linked with the current literature. This naturalistic inquiry positions Holistic Expressive Therapy as a distinctive, original therapeutic approach that is grounded in theory and empirical research of insights from Dhaese's personal and professional self-healing journey. --P. ii.