History  

The sandtray method was originally developed by Margaret Lowenfeld, a British physician, in the late 1920's.  Termed the World Technique, it was largely inspired by H.G. Wells' Floor Games.   In this book, Wells described a form of play in which his children, using miniature objects, depicted their own inner worlds.  Lowenfeld used this approach extensively at her own clinic to treat children with a range of learning, adjustment and emotional difficulties.  

In Lowenfeld's view, there exist levels of thought and feeling that could not be accessed through words.  Rather, she posited, they lay in the realm of what she termed the 'pre-verbal', or protosystem.  Within this domain, meanings are highly personal and experientially-based.  The building of Worlds provided the means for removing barriers to their expression and understanding.  As she wrote,  "a child is not a logical, reflecting being -- he does not when he is by himself use his brain for connected thought.  Instead he plays out his ideas as they leap up in him in pictures ... we must [then] find a way in which his play can be shared and understood and the thoughts that lie behind it gradually pieced together."   By encouraging this level of thinking, Lowenfeld believed, one could lay apparent cognitive structures serving not only as a basis of conflicts but, as well, core strengths to be encouraged and nurtured. 

   In the past few decades sandtray, and its close correlate sandplay, have been expanded by such persons as Dora Kalff and Gisela De Domenico.  While these practitioners infused the technique with additional theoretical constructs (cf. Jungian analysis), the method remains intact in its original basis:  a means of expressing feelings and thoughts in a non-verbal fashion. 

References:

Kalff, D.M. (2004).  Sandplay: a psychotherapeutic approach to the psyche. Cloverdale: Temenos Press.

        De Domenico, G.S. (2202).  Sandtray-Worldplay:  A psychotherapeutic and transformational sandplay technique for individuals, couples, families and groups.  Sandtray Network Journal. 6:2.

Turner, B.A. (Ed.) (2004). Floor Games: A Father's Account of Play and Its Legacy of Healing.  Cloverdale: Temenos Press.

   Urwin, K. & Hood-Williams, J. (Eds.). (1991). Child Psychotherapy, War and The Normal Child: Selected Papers Of Margaret Lowenfeld. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. p. 180. 

nancy berkan, M.Ed. (Ph.D. deferred)   l    sandtrayworks     l      new york   NY   l    cambridge   MA   l    all rights reserved  © 2011-15

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