Barbara Turner is the author of The Handbook of Sandplay Therapy, used by mental health clinicians around the world.

Sandplay and Storytelling

The Impact of Imaginative Thinking on Children’s Learning and Development

By Barbara A. Turner, Kristín Unnsteinsdóttir

Temenos Press

Copyright © 2011 Barbara A. Turner and Kristín Unnsteinsdóttir
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9728517-4-9

Contents

Foreword – Thomas L. Armstrong,
Part I,
Overview – Barbara Turner,
My Way to Sandplay – Kristín Unnsteinsdóttir,
Part II,
Sandplay Therapy,
Part III,
Sandplay and Brain Function: How Sandplay Impacts Neurology,
The Brain in Relationship: Mirror Neuron Networks,
Mirror Neuron Networks: The Hands, Learning and Language Formation,
Part IV,
The Value of Imaginative Storytelling,
Reflections,
Part V,
The Research Study,
The Outcome of Psychological Tests and Assessments,
Conclusion,
Part VI,
The Sandplay Cases – Overview,
Concluding Remarks,
Resources,
Glossary of Jungian Terms,
References,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Overview

Barbara Turner

Permit me to introduce myself. I am Barbara Turner, a psychotherapist with a specialty in Jungian sandplay therapy. My initial interest in sandplay came after I had seen some remarkable clinical work using this modality. In 1988 in Switzerland I began my studies with Dora Kalff, founder of the sandplay method. I focused my doctoral work on sandplay as a medium of individual, social and global change in the Department of Transformative Learning at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. I remained impassioned by the method and was determined to develop an understanding of how sandplay worked to move the psyche. This culminated in writing The Handbook of Sandplay Therapy in 2005. Prior to that I was also able to return the classic books in sandplay to print, Dora Kalff’s Sandplay: A Psychotherapeutic Approach to the Psyche, 2003; Estelle L. Weinrib’s Images of the Self: The Sandplay Therapy Process, 2004; and H.G. Wells’ Floor Games: A Father’s Account of Play and Its Legacy of Healing, 2004. I used sandplay therapy in my clinical work with adults and children for over twenty years and now devote my energy to training sandplay therapists and writing in the field.

Given the wonders of the internet and technology I had the good fortune of meeting Kristín Unnsteinsdóttir in 2007 through the online curriculum I offer in the theory and foundations of sandplay therapy. I soon noticed that her work was exemplary. Through correspondence I learned about her extensive background in Jungian psychology and her expertise in fairy tale and storytelling. Not long after she completed the sandplay curriculum we began consulting about the sandplay work she had done with children.

I soon discovered that Dr. Unnsteinsdóttir had conducted a remarkable study at the school where she is the Learning Specialist. We will review the study in depth at a later point. Briefly, she had a group of elementary school children who were referred to her office for a number of emotional, behavioral and learning issues. She ran a large battery of pre and posttests that measured many dimensions of the children’s emotional well being, behavioral issues, information processing, learning styles and traditional IQ scores. Remarkably, in addition to general improvements in emotional well-being and behavior, the posttests showed substantial increases in the intelligence scores of nearly half of the children.

I was greatly intrigued. While this is just one study, the clinical documentation of this finding is highly significant and has far reaching implications for the use of sandplay as a standard component of the educational setting. Dr. Unnsteinsdóttir comes from the fields of Education and Analytical Psychology. My background is in Religious Studies, Counseling Psychology and Transformative Learning. I have long been a firm believer in interdisciplinary studies, knowing that reaching beyond the limits of our particular disciplines has the advantage of contributing new information, insight, vision and possibility to our work. With the input of specialists from outside our areas of expertise, we increase the possibility of seeing things in new ways in addition to learning a great deal. Thus Dr. Unnsteinsdóttir and I began our collaborative effort to share this information with other educators and mental health clinicians who might have interest in sandplay as an important supplement to education. Perhaps this will inspire a new level of collaboration between teachers and school counselors, art therapists and psychologists who train to practice sandplay.

My Way to Sandplay

Kristín Unnsteinsdóttir

The path leading me to use sandplay and storytelling in my work with children was unforeseen 37 years ago when I started my professional life. However on the way my interests gradually coalesced around children’s development. I was particularly concerned with their emotional development, and methods that would allow them to access their inner worlds using imagination and creativity.

I started my professional life as a children’s librarian in a public library and soon changed to school libraries where I became interested in education. Both my M.Ed and PhD in education were based on studies of fairy tales from oral tradition. In the doctoral studies I also investigated self-generated fairy tales and how they function as catalysts in children’s educational and emotional development. My study drew from theories of analytical psychology and models derived from structuralism. Following the completion of my dissertation I continued my studies in analytical psychology. That is when I first learned of sandplay therapy. I located a sandplay therapist who lived nearby the little town where I was living in England and began my personal sandplay process. Soon after I defended my dissertation and returned home to Iceland. This was in 2002. To this day I continue my sandplay process and studies in sandplay.

When I returned to Reykjavik I began work in a public grade school where I became the director of the Learning Center. From the beginning I was determined to use sandplay and storytelling with my pupils who needed help with learning disabilities, reading competence, attention and/or emotional problems. I was convinced that the best I could offer these children would be drawn from fields I understand well and am profoundly interested in. This led me to the conclusion that the children’s strongest tool to tackle problems of all sorts is their imagination. My role was to help them get into touch with this source within themselves. In all of my reading about sandplay I did not find any accounts of the systematic use of the method in the school environment until I came across an inspirational article that described the positive influence of sandplay on reading skills (Noyes, 1981). This supported my own ideas and I was excited by the possibilities this might have at the Learning Center.

I began offering sandplay to the children who visited regularly. Sometimes a child would use the entire time period for work in the sand, and other times we would do additional activities in conjunction with sandplay. At all times I collaborated closely with the School Psychologist and did extensive consultation on my sandplay case work.

I soon realized that I missed doing research and received a grant that allowed me to launch a study that lasted from 2005–2009. This was entitled, The Influence of Sandplay and Storytelling on the Self-Image and Development of Children’s Learning, Mental Wellbeing and Social Skills. The cases presented in this book are all drawn from this project. I have recently received another grant that has enabled me to resume data collection.

I was professionally isolated during the first few years of my study at the Learning Center. I knew of no one in Iceland who was working with sandplay using Dora Kalff’s Jungian approach. After studying abroad for years I did not have the means to take a long break and leave the island for further studies. It was such a welcome revelation when I contacted Barbara Turner in 2007. In 2010, after consulting on a number of the sandplay cases from my study we decided to collaborate on a book that would focus on evaluating the regular use of sandplay and story making in the school context. The opportunity to work with Barbara has been invaluable to me professionally and has put my study into a context that was beyond my imaginings. As a mentor Barbara is not only an extremely experienced and a knowledgeable sandplay therapist and scholar but has also proven to be a generous and open-minded person with a warm sense of humor which makes her so pleasant to work with.

CHAPTER 2

Sandplay Therapy

Introduction to Sandplay Therapy

Sandplay therapy is a psychotherapeutic modality that was originally developed as a means of doing Jungian analysis with children. Sandplay stems from the pioneering work of Dr. Margaret Lowenfeld, a physician who worked in London in the early twentieth century. Lowenfeld had dual citizenship, having been born in Poland. She visited her native Poland after the ravages of a devastating war and was overcome by the trauma suffered by the children. This experience inspired her determination to find a way to work with children that would allow her to understand their thinking.

Lowenfeld recalled reading a little book written by well-known social critic, H.G. Wells, called Floor Games (Turner, 2004). In this delightful book Wells talks about the imaginary worlds his boys built on their nursery floor with wooden blocks and miniature figures. With his inimitable wit and humor Wells describes their endless play and how this was essential to their creative development. He counsels parents, as well as uncles and aunts, about the value of play in childhood. In addition he admonishes shopkeepers for selling only figures of soldiers and having no regular people.

Inspired by this Lowenfeld brought a large variety of miniature figures to her clinic for the children. What she soon discovered was that the children were taking the figures from the cabinet on one side of the clinic and playing with them in the sand box across the room. This motivated her to create a small sand tray in which the individual child could build a miniature world. It was the natural brilliance of the children that created sandplay. Lowenfeld called her method The World Technique. Lowenfeld’s approach was to ask the child to build a miniature world in the sand tray and then they would talk about it together.

Dora Kalff, who had been displaced from her native Holland by another war, lived in Switzerland very near Carl and Emma Jung. After completing her analysis with Emma Jung, Kalff was pursuing options for a career. Carl Jung said that he had noticed that his grandchildren were always in better condition when they returned from Kalff’s house, so he suggested she find a way to do Jungian analysis with children.

Understanding children’s abilities and level of development, Kalff knew that any such method would need to be play based, largely non-verbal and not analytical. Kalff then met Dr. Lowenfeld and was intrigued with the possibilities of her World Technique. Kalff studied with Lowenfeld in London and soon recognized that what was taking place in the children’s worlds was what Jung had described as the individuation process. She also saw that this process of human development was best facilitated when the therapist witnessed the child’s work without the interference of questions and dialog used in the Lowenfeld method. Kalff and Lowenfeld discussed their differences in approach to the work and agreed to have two separate schools of practice. Lowenfeld would continue to call her’s The World Technique and Kalff called her’s sandplay.

While sandplay was originally developed for use with children, adults soon became fascinated with the modality and began doing sandplay in their therapy. The sand tray measures 28.5 × 19.5 × 3 inches. It is filled about half full of sand. The tray is painted a sky blue color on the inside so the sandplayer can dig down through the sand to make a lake, river, design, etc. The sandplay therapist has two sand trays, one with wet sand, which can be sculpted and shaped, and the other with dry sand. A collection of miniature figures representing all parts of life and fantasy is arranged on shelves nearby. Simple building materials, such as paper, string, sticks and glue, are also in the collection in the event the client is not able to find what is needed for the tray. The therapeutic method is referred to as sandplay. The box of sand is the sand tray. We interchangeably refer to the individual completed construction as having done a tray, sand tray or a sandplay. The psychological work done over a series of trays is known as the sandplay process, or a process.

The therapist encourages the client to make whatever he or she wishes in the tray. As the client works, the therapist observes quietly and makes note of what the client does, uses, and so on. When the client is finished, therapist and client quietly observe the tray together. With a child client we may ask if there is a title or a story to this tray. With the adult we usually ask if he or she had any associations as they did the tray. They can say something or not. The therapist just makes note of it. The therapist photographs the tray for a visual record and disassembles the tray after the client has left.

Sandplay appears very simple on the surface. It is certainly not difficult to put together a collection of toys and a tray of sand. However, what takes place in sandplay work is highly complex and requires that the therapist be very well trained. Sandplay works at a deep level of the psyche and can be profoundly evocative. To keep the process safe, the therapist must understand what is taking place and must be prepared to handle whatever comes up. To do this requires the therapist to have undergone extensive inner work in addition to a proper study of psychology. Training requirements for sandplay are managed by the International Society for Sandplay Therapy – ISST and by its regional branches such as the Sandplay Therapists of America – STA. More information about these organizations can be found in theResource Section.

How Sandplay Therapy Works

Sandplay therapy is an image-based psychotherapeutic modality that works largely in the right of the brain. It is based on C.G. Jung’s personality theory, a central tenet of which is that the psyche is naturally inclined to heal and grow to more wholeness. Jungian theory is used in sandplay as a means of understanding how the mind functions and undergoes change. We will refer to Jung’s personality theory throughout the text and will attempt to define new terms as they appear. We have also prepared a Glossary of Terms for ease of reference.

Jung observed that the psyche is not chaotic, but is characterized by a central ordering principle, he called the Self. In the proper conditions this innate disposition to heal and grow toward the wholeness of the Self is activated. Dora Kalff (2003) referred to these conditions in sandplay as the free and protected space. Sandplay is free because it offers the client limitless possibilities. It is safe because the tray itself has boundaries and serves as a container. Even more importantly the safe field is created by the presence of the properly trained therapist. The therapist is the most important tool in sandplay.

Early in his work Jung (1976) observed that there were two types of thinking. One is ordinary, directed thinking, which is rational and logic based. This form of thinking is sequential and rational and is primarily a function of the left hemisphere in most people. Jung noticed that this form of thought did not stand on its own, but appeared to evolve out of an underlying form of thinking that he called undirected thinking. This mode of thinking is non-rational, but has its own form of meaning and is characterized by images and symbols. On the basis of these observations Jung developed his theories of the unconscious and the conscious mind. We will explore directed and undirected thinking later in the text.

Kalff proportioned the sand tray in such a way that it fills the entire field of vision without requiring the client to turn the head from side to side. Standing at the tray thus relaxes our hold on rationality and allows the mind to access the right hemispheric undirected mode of thinking. In this softened or liminal state of awareness, the client enters unconscious mental processing and selects figures that catch his or her attention from the collection. The figures that catch the client’s attention are those that bear the symbolic content of his or her inner images. In this way the images or symbols that prefigure new forms of thought assume concrete form. Placing objects in the tray in varying combinations and arrangements, along with the way the client shapes the sand, forms a complex symbolic construction that is visible to both the client and the therapist. Because the psyche is predisposed to heal and develop, the material that appears is that which is on the cutting edge of the client’s psychic growth. This symbolic material may carry psychological conflicts that have prevented the client’s continued growth, causing an arrest in the development of the personality. It also contains the means to resolve them. The symbolic material may carry new psychic qualities that will enhance and further development toward wholeness. The sandplay process thus provides the conscious personality the means to address conflicts, traumas, losses, etc., as well as the psychic content necessary to further personality development.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Sandplay and Storytelling by Barbara A. Turner, Kristín Unnsteinsdóttir. Copyright © 2011 Barbara A. Turner and Kristín Unnsteinsdóttir. Excerpted by permission of Temenos Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.