INTRODUCTION

Sandplay is a nonverbal, non-rational form of therapy that reaches a profound preverbal level of the psyche . In this psychotherapeutic modality, patients create three-dimensional scenes, pictures or abstract designs in a tray of specific size, using sand, water and a large number of miniature realistic figures.

Unlike the customary practice in verbal dream analysis, interpretations are not offered at the time the pictures are created. Although the patient may associate to the sand pictures as he or she would to a dream, the therapist is receptive but makes minimal comment. Interpretation is delayed until a certain degree of ego stability has been reached. The rationale for this unusual practice and other points made here will be discussed later.

A basic postulate of sandplay therapy is that deep in the unconscious, given the proper conditions, there is an autonomous tendency for the psyche to heal itself.

In the verbal analysis of dreams, personality and life problems progress in the direction of consciousness. In contrast, the sandplay process encourages a creative regression that enables healing. In short, when both modalities are undertaken two separate but related therapeutic processes occur, and the interaction between them seems to hasten and enrich the endeavor.

Sandplay enables the three-dimensional tangible expression of inchoate, unconscious contents. Sand pictures represent figures and landscapes of the inner and outer world. They materialize to mediate between these two worlds and to connect them.

Sandplay therapy provides the conditions for a womb-like incubatory period that facilitates the repair of a damaged mother image. This enables the constellation and activation of the Self, the subsequent healing of the wounded ego, and the recovery of the inner child with all that implies in terms of psychological renewal (see Chapter 5).

THE EVOLUTION OF SANDPLAY

Magic Circles and Fantasies

Perhaps the earliest precursors of sandplay therapists were primitive tribes, who drew protective magic circles on the earth. The nearest cultural parallel to sandplay therapy seems to be the sand painting of the Navajo religion. The Navajo people use ritual sand pictures extensively in ceremonies of healing, as well as for divination, exorcism and other purposes. Chanters, medicine men or initiated assistants make pictures by molding and painting symbolic figures out of sand on the ground.

The sand paintings are composed according to prescribed arrangements, and they are enclosed by "guardian" boundaries marked in the sand. The figures represent mythic deities in human or animal form, as well as natural or geometric symbols. Usually, all the figures are arranged in quadrants around a center, strongly suggesting a mandala form. The exception to this is the outer boundary (circular, square or rectangular) that has an opening to allow evil a way out and good a way in.

These sand paintings can be quite simple or very elaborate. A sand painting may be as large as 20 feet in diameter and require up to forty assistants eight to ten hours to complete. When the painting is finished, the patient or seeker sits on it, while the chanter applies sand from the various figures of the painting to specified parts of the patient's body. This is done to identify the patient with the deities represented in the painting. Additionally, the sand itself is felt to have healing properties. It is said that the patient absorbs good from the sand, while the sand absorbs evil from him or her.

The pictures are believed to carry manna and are held sacred.

To watch the laying of a sandpainting may be somewhat dangerous for the uninitiated ... There is, however, a time when even he must not witness the completion of the sandpainting preparation, a moment of sanctification when the painting becomes sacred — the instant when the encircling guardian [boundary] of the sandpainting is started (Reichard, 1950/1974, pp. 160-161).

Sand paintings represent blessings only. They attract good and repel evil. They are believed to be particularly efficacious in the treatment of trauma, when the patient has been shocked or frightened into unconsciousness. The sand paintings also "... correct symptoms due to the contemplation of supernatural things too strong for the patient" (Reichard, 1950/1974, p. 717).

The first Jungian to be involved with sandplay therapy might be said to be Jung (1963) himself, who described in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, how in 1912 he happened upon a healing form of play.

After his break with Freud, Jung wrote that he found himself in a painfully confused inner state that yielded neither to analysis of his dreams nor to reexamination of his life. He decided to submit himself to impulses of the unconscious, to do whatever occurred to him. He remembered that as a small boy he had built castles and buildings of stone and mortar, made of earth and water. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he writes:

"Aha," I said to myself, "there is still life in these things. The small boy is still around, and possesses a creative life which I lack. But how can I make my way to it?" For as a grown man it seemed impossible to me that I should be able to bridge the distance from the present back to my eleventh year. Yet if I wanted to re-establish contact with that period, I...