Healing and Transformation in Sandplay

Book excerpt: Sandplay is a powerful method of psychotherapy, based on practical, creative modelling - literally a "hands-on" approach to healing the whole person. Sandplay has both diagnostic and therapeutic value, and is efficacious for adults and children. Since there are no preconceived ideas about "art" in sand, there is a wonderful freedom and flow in using sand creatively. This book focuses on the process of sandplay and how it works. Ammann's account draws upon her wide knowledge of myth and folk tale, but remains a practical work, dealing systematically with the "how-to" details, the necessary role of sand pictures in enhancing the self-regulation of the psyche, the two routes from psyche to sand pictures, and the symbolic interpretation of spatial phenomena. Ammann illustrates these principles in several case histories. "Healing and Transformation in Sandplay" contains a plea to therapists to make greater use of sandplay, alongside classical dream analysis. As a means to liberate the forces of the brain's right hemisphere - the intuitive and bodily rather than logical or rational - sandplay activates deep layers of the unconscious in the service of healing and development, layers hard to reach with more verbal methods of therapy.