Sandplay: Silent Workshop of the Psyche

Kay Bradway, Barbara McCoard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415150743
• eBook ISBN: 9781134747283
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Sandplay is a growing field of interest for Jungian and other psychotherapists. Sandplay - Silent Workshop of the Psyche by Kay Bradway and Barbara McCoard, provides an introduction to sandplay as well as extensive new material for those already using this form of therapy.

Based on the authors' wide-ranging clinical work, it includes:

• in-depth sandplay case histories
• material from a wide range of adults and children
• over 90 illustrations in black and white and colour
• detailed notes on interpretation of sand trays
• an examination of symbols and concepts used in sandplay.

Clearly written and soundly based in theory, this book provides historical background for understanding sandplay as well as helpful discussion of how it works in a clinical context.

Kay Bradway and Barbara McCoard bring their indispensable personal experience to the subject to stress the healing potential of sandplay. They also reflect on the nature of a therapy where the psyche works largely in silence.

Part I

Background and reflections

Chapter 1
Introduction to background and reflections

This first part opens with a chapter on what makes sandplay work. The second chapter reviews how sandplay began and how I started using it myself, together with my personal remembrances of the founding of the international and American sandplay societies. The third chapter extracts quotes that I especially value from what three other authors have had to say about the theory and practice of sandplay in their recent books and compares them side by side. The fourth chapter looks at some of the similarities and differences between Jungian analysis and sandplay therapy. And the fifth chapter explains why I prefer the word “co-transference” to the less precise “transference-countertransference.”

The next several chapters are best described as my “from-time-to-time” reflections on different aspects of sandplay, including chapters on sandplay language and sandplay appreciation.

The final chapters of Part I present my more “how-to” thoughts on the role of the therapist and the process of sandplay, with an emphasis on empathy. Part I ends with a chapter on four key areas that I keep in mind when I am trying to understand sandplay scenes: levels, stages, sequences and themes.

Chapter 2
What makes sandplay work?

What is there about sandplay that causes both patient and therapist alike to experience it as having such power? What is there about sand in a 19.5 by 28.5 inch tray with blue base and sides, a supply of water, a collection of miniatures and the instructions “Do what you want in the sand” that is so effective in promoting both healing and growth?

Sandplay is a form of active imagination, but the images used in sandplay are concrete and tangible rather than invisible and intangible. Like dream scenes, sandplay scenes are a series of figures and actions. But, unlike dreams which must first be remembered by the patient, then reported to the therapist and then visualized internally by the therapist, sandtrays are immediately seen by both patient and therapist. And sandplay is, of course, play. But, unlike spontaneous play, it occurs within specified boundaries of time and space.

Even a single sandtray can have healing power. A few days before I left for a month’s vacation, a young man I had been seeing for several months came in and went directly into the sandplay room. He put his fingers into the sand down to the blue base and circled with them through the sand making the largest oval shape the rectangular box permitted. He ended up with an oval island in the center of the tray. He piled more sand on the island from the edges and proceeded to pat the sand down hard, adding water occasionally, and stroking and re-stroking the sand into a smooth, and smoother, hard surface. He said nothing until about half the time was up and then he asked me how much more time he had. When I told him, he heaved a sigh of relief and settled in. He spent the rest of the time smoothing and patting the oval island, sometimes with one hand and sometimes with both hands, circling it with his finger or fingers, and clearing the sand away from the blue so that there was a clear blue space around the hard central mound of sand.

I found myself relaxing with the rhythm of his movements. I had been feeling harassed with last-minute preparations for my trip. This hour put me in a centered space. He also seemed to enter a new place. I silently thanked this man. Later, I learned that for him, too, this had been a healing experience, and had prepared him for this interruption of his therapy. Words did not have to be spoken. No amplification, no interpretation, no verbal exchanges were necessary.

Sandplay has parallels in alchemy, which Jung found so helpful in describing the process of individuation. The chaotic placing of a multitude of objects which often occurs in beginning sandplay scenes is like the prima materia of alchemy. “It provides a glimpse of the…chaos prior to the operation of the world-creating Logos” (Edinger 1985:12). In a sandplay process, one can often see order emerging from the chaos of earlier trays.

In the alchemical process of calcinatio, matter is burned into a white powder. Edinger refers to the ash that has survived calcinatio as the “white earth.” I liken this to the sand in the sandtray, even to the whiteness of it. And, of course, the alchemical operation of solutio refers to water, represented in the sandtray by both the blueness of the bottom and the water that can literally be poured into the tray.

But it is Edinger’s description of the alchemical procedure of coagulatio that most alerted me to the parallels between sandplay and alchemy. He states,

Concepts and abstractions don’t coagulate…. The images of dreams and active imagination do coagulate. They connect the outer world with the inner world…and thus coagulate soul-stuff. Moods and affects toss us about wildly until they coagulate into something visible and tangible; then we can relate to them objectively.

(Edinger 1985:100)

Sandplay offers an opportunity for such coagulation. Emotions and moods are experienced concretely in the use of sand and water with, or even without, miniatures.

Dieckmann writes,

If the individual is concerned with consciousness, he will become acquainted with this unknown thing that is growing in him; if he is concerned not only to know that it is, but also to experience what it is, then he attempts to give form to the unformed, to speak the unspeakable, and to shape the chaos that is bubbling up.

(Dieckmann 1986:101)

It is the experiencing of molding the sand, of adding water in sprinkles or by cupfuls, of placing the objects, of burying them, of letting something happen, be it felt as creative or destructive, and of honoring whatever process takes over, that is healing. In watching patients work, I sometimes feel that they enter a near-trance state.

The sandplay therapist typically avoids intruding upon the patient’s experience of this concretization, or coagulation, in the sandtray. It is out there in front, to be seen, to be felt with the hands, to be changed with the hands. But therapists do provide the necessary container or temenos. Kalff’s phrase, “free and protected space,” describes it best (Kalff 1980: 39). The holding container of the co-transference, a term I like to use for the transference-countertransference, is always there. It is an essential part of the therapy.

Both negative and positive transference may be depicted in the sand scenes. Sometimes the patient specifically identifies a figure as the therapist. This is more likely to happen in early scenes. As the sandplay process progresses, it tends to be accompanied by reduced consciousness, often verbalized by such remarks as “I don’t know what I am making” or “I don’t know why I am putting this in.” It is at this time that archetypal symbols are most likely to be used.

Intrusive or premature interpretations may interrupt the only partially conscious processes of sandplay. Several psychoanalysts at Mount Zion Psychiatric Center in San Francisco designed a study (Gassner et al. 1982) to investigate Freud’s early theory, which assumed that analysts had to interpret repressed mental contents in order to make those contents conscious. What they found did not support this theory. Repressed contents typically emerged without the analysts having made any prior interpretations that were relevant to the repressed contents.

The Mount Zion group found, however, that the lifting of defenses against the repressed contents did depend upon the therapist passing what they called the “transference test.” When the patient feels safe in trusting the therapist, feels held in a safe temenos, then the material can flow.

This therapeutic safety, Kalff’s “protected space,” is akin to what Goodheart calls the “secure container” or “secured-symbolizing field” (Goodheart 1980:8–9). And Kalff’s “giving the patient freedom to do what he or she wants to do” in sandplay can be translated into Goodheart’s phrase, “respect for the patient.” He sees this secured-symbolizing field as one of three fields that occur in therapy. In this state, the therapist is aligned with unconscious forces within both the therapist and the patient. According to Goodheart, the therapist’s most important job is to provide for and maintain such a space (Goodheart 1980:12).

Winnicott calls this field the “transitional play space” and the “area of illusion” (Winnicott 1971:95). He writes, “It exists as a resting place for …keeping inner and outer reality separate, yet interrelated” (Winnicott 1971:11). Gordon refers to this space as the “third area” or “area of experience.” She adds,

when deintegrates emerge out of the self, they are at first crude… They are archetypal. However, if they can become contents of the third area, if they can be experienced and experimented with…they become “digestible” for integration into the ego.

(Gordon 1993:304)

This third area, this area of illusion or area of experience, is exactly the place where the sandplay process occurs. It is the place where inner and outer reality come together, sometimes more of one and sometimes more of the other. In the early trays, the contents are usually dictated more by outer reality. As the sandplayer gets deeper into the process, the making of the scene is often influenced more by inner reality. When the sandplayer says such things as “I don’t know what I’m doing” we can conclude that the inner process has mostly taken over the making of the tray.

Gordon feels that Winnicott’s theory of the third area provides analysts with a theoretical foundation for their practice and experience (Gordon 1993:304–5). And, I would add, a theoretical foundation for sandplay.

Many therapists now appreciate the hazards of the therapist intruding into this space. Langs (1981), for example, ranks silence as the primary form of intervention.

Delaying or avoiding amplification and interpretation during the sandplay process does not, however, lessen the sandplay therapist’s responsibility to become familiar with the cultural and archetypal dimensions of the available objects, and to try to understand through both feeling and thinking what is going on as the process unfolds. Understanding and empathy are both essential, although they need not always be voiced. As O’Connell writes, “Silent amplification nourishes and expands the container…. There is meaning in the not-saying, in the conscious use of silent incubation, an inner witnessing” (O’Connell 1986:123). And with this witnessing, sandplay therapists often find themselves deeply moved.

For me the power of sandplay has to do with the coagulative potential of working with actual sand and water and miniatures, and with the freedom to do whatever one wants with these media while feeling protected by a non-intruding, wise therapist whom one trusts. It seems so simple: a combination of sand and water, shelves of miniatures, freedom and protection. But this combination holds the potential both for healing and for transformation.

Chapter 3
Beginnings

BEGINNINGS OF SANDPLAY AND OF MY USING IT

Sandplay did not emerge fully formed. It has a long tap root. In the early part of the twentieth century, a father observed his two sons playing on the floor with miniature figures and noticed how they were working out their problems with each other and with the rest of the family (Wells 1911 and 1975).

Twenty years later, a child psychiatrist was looking for a method she could use to help children “express the inexpressible.” She recalled reading about the father’s experience with his sons and decided to add miniatures to the play room in her clinic. The first child to see them took them to the sandbox in the room and started to play with them in the sand. And thus what she called the “World Technique” was born (Lowenfeld 1979).

Then a child therapist studying with C.G.Jung heard about the work in England. With Jung’s encouragement, she went to London and studied under Lowenfeld. She realized that the technique not only allowed for the expression of the fears and angers and secret thoughts of children but also encouraged the individuation process, which she had been studying with Jung. This woman was Dora Kalff. (For a discerning and detailed account of the beginnings and development of sandplay, see Mitchell and Friedman’s (1994) book Sandplay: Past, Present and Future.)

Kalff introduced the technique which she called “sandplay” at a conference of Jungian Analysts in California in 1962. It was there that I first learned about sandplay and, soon afterwards, I had my initial sandplay experience with Renee Brand, the first American student of Dora Kalff.

As a psychologist, I was frequently involved in the evaluation of children, so it was in that way that I first used sandplay. I found it a helpful supplement to the battery of tests that I typically administered. But a little 8-year-old girl who was referred to me for therapy taught me to bypass evaluation and to instead incorporate sandplay directly into my play therapy with children. Kathy had had all the “testing” she could tolerate. She was dyslexic and had been through several batteries of tests to help psychologists understand why such a seemingly bright youngster was having so much difficulty in school. So I used no tests with her, but she took to the sandtray and started to use it the first time she came to me.

Kathy taught me much that supplemented what I was learning from Dora Kalff, who was supervising me during the time I saw Kathy. My work with her was the basis for my deeper understanding of sandplay: the significance of the initial tray; the role of transference countertransference (what I call “co-transference”); the importance of the appearance of the Self; the imprinting of an important tray on the sandplayer’s mind so that a subsequent tray practically duplicates the previous tray; the appearance of several recurrent themes in the sandplay process.

But perhaps the most important experience I had with Kathy was the power of self-healing without interpretation. Kathy did not want to talk about her father, who had recently died. She did not want to talk about her problems with her mother, or with her siblings, or in school. She worked all this out in the sandtray without discussion. And, most importantly for her immediate needs, she worked on her visual-motor problems in the tray, “practicing” visual-motor coordination skills on the figure of the flower plot with its removable flowers. She used me as she needed to: as an enemy in one tray where we shot guns back and forth at each other over a ridge of sand; and as a co-worker in the final tray to help her construct a castle.

I had my longest delayed review with Kathy. When I was contacting people who had done sandplay with me to secure permission to use their material for teaching and publication, I called Kathy’s mother to find out how I could locate her. I learned that she was away but would be home for Christmas. So I called her and made an appointment to review her trays. It had been twenty years. I was taken aback when I came to the waiting room an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of plates
• List of figures
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Background and reflections
• Part II Symbol studies
• Part III Individual cases
• Appendix What I look for in final case reports
• Lines from Kay
• Bibliography
• Index