Sandplay Therapy: A Way of Rediscovering Inner Wisdom in the Body and Psyche
Sandplay therapy offers the possibility of healing from the wounding effects of sexual abuse on both psychological and physical levels. For both children and adults, unspeakable violence toward the body and psyche is difficult to address solely with verba
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Sandplay Therapy: A Way of Rediscovering Inner Wisdom in the Body and Psyche Judy D. Zappacosta
Introduction Sandplay therapy offers the possibility of healing from the wounding effects of sexual abuse on both psychological and physical levels. For both children and adults, unspeakable violence toward the body and psyche is difficult to address solely with verbal therapy. A clinician will be well served by having a variety of modalities to rely on when dealing with clients with abuse histories. It can also be both painful and potentially retraumatizing to rely on talk therapy to act as the primary healing agent. Expressive therapies, particularly sandplay therapy, has become more and more accepted as a modality that offers a safe and protected space for the reparative aspects of healing to emerge. It is an accepted principle that sandplay, as a modality, provides a mediating process whereby conscious and unconscious material from the inner world of the psyche can be organized in new ways that offer healing and new outer stability to the developing personality (Kalff, 1980). Because sandplay therapy is both nonverbal and nondirective, it offers safe therapeutic space that reaches a preverbal, nonrational level of the psyche. Unique to sandplay, containment is offered in three different configurations. It is offered within the parameters of the sandtray itself, within the therapeutic dyad, and within the therapy room, which provides a secure and insulated setting. The significance of a free and protected space for the client is implicit in sandplay, as is the idea that symbols used in the tray act as healing mediators. Using sand, water, many miniature toys, and symbols, a client is able to create within a rectangular box of sand a story, an image or imaginative picture. The old adage that says “A picture is worth a thousand words” is an apt description for imagery that emerges in the sand.
J.D. Zappacosta, MFT, CST-T (*) Sandplay Therapists of America International Society for Sandplay Therapy, 2820 Daubenbiss Avenue, Soquel, CA 95073, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. Loue (ed.), Expressive Therapies for Sexual Issues: A Social Work Perspective, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-3981-3_8, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
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The therapist offers no immediate interpretation, and the creator of the sandplay is free to simply let hands, feelings, and choice of image lead the experience. It is both simple and profound in its ability to invite the natural healing qualities of the psyche to emerge. Therapeutic language develops through the use of sand and the spontaneous conversation that emerges out of the nonverbal experience. Sandplay therapists often report that the sandplay room is certainly not without conversation and discussion; however, it often grows through the experiences that develop during the sandplay process. In sessions where the sand is not touched, other verbal and expressive therapies may also be part of the therapeutic process. There is, however, a palpable silence th
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