Violet Oaklander

Violet Solomon Oaklander (April 18, 1927 – September 21, 2021) was a child and adolescent therapist known for her method of integrating Gestalt therapy theory and practice with play therapy.

Oaklander was the author of the books Windows to Our Children: A Gestalt Therapy Approach to Children and Adolescents (The Gestalt Journal Press, 1978; published in 16 languages) and Hidden Treasure: A Map to the Child's Inner Self (Routledge, 2006; published in eight languages), as well as several journal articles, book chapters, and audio and video recordings on psychotherapeutic work with children. Oaklander had a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, a Master of Arts in marriage, family and child counseling, a Master of Science in special education with emotionally disturbed children, and was a certified Gestalt therapist.

As a five-year-old child, Oaklander sustained a burn to a large part of her torso, arms, and legs in a home accident, in which a family friend spilled a large pot of boiling cabbage and water on her. About this childhood injury, Oaklander said, “It could be the beginning of why I do this work... Everything I've ever worked on, especially with my Gestalt therapy training... always went back to that burn...”

For 27 years, Oaklander conducted a two-week training program in California which was attended by participants from all over the world. After one of her music lessons with first graders, Oaklander was reported to the school authorities as a communist because she was singing and teaching Woody Guthrie songs to the children. Speaking about the role of play in her work, Oaklander said, "Children play-act part of their lives, and by doing this, bring up things that happened to them in the past that are still with them, a.k.a., the 'unfinished business.' Play is the child's language. Children will express themselves much more authentically through a drawing or working with clay or doing a scene in sand. It's easier for them to articulate. This is the way the child knows the world and they love doing this." Psychotherapist Christiane Elsbree wrote, "Those who have trained with Violet know that she often said, 'I don't fix kids.' Yet her delight in each child, her 'I- Thou' approach, supports the child's growth through facilitated contact and awareness, helping children find who they are and their own rightful path, their emergent path, their own organismic self-regulation and well-being... Over the course of twenty-six years, her two-week training programs in Santa Barbara and Hermosa Beach brought together therapists and counselors from more than twenty-five countries and six continents to form an intensive learning community. The interest in Violet's work brings to light the widespread interest in the theory and practice of Gestalt therapy and what it has to offer world-wide in the field of health and well-being."

The Oaklander Model Oaklander's method of incorporating Gestalt therapy into play therapy for children and adolescents became known as the Oaklander Model. According to the Oaklander Model, as a child's sense of internal support increases, their ability to express their emotions also increases.

In his book Windowframes: Learning the Art of Gestalt Play Therapy the Oaklander Way (2006), Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling professor Peter Mortola, documents his consistent approach to therapy using the Oaklander Model, and identifies a set of therapeutic experiences involving different media, including drawings, clay, sand trays, and puppets, and then shows how each of these therapeutic experiences share a similar underlying structure. In this way, the Oaklander Model engages the child in a playful activity that often reflects very real issues and aspects from the child's own life.