The incident has sparked a lot of discussion, including a statement from the doctor in question: "How to combine psychology with new media, how to make our psychology flourish, and how to make the public accept it and understand it, and what kind of effect it will achieve, this is something that we expect, but we can't necessarily control." This sounds reasonable, like that, but I ultimately feel that this event is like ordering food in a restaurant, where the menu shows pictures of dishes that are so colorful and flavorful that your mouth is watering, except that the pictures are accompanied by the sentence, "Subject to availability!" Oh, No! Is this a tease? It's a wonderful idea to publicize the program to bring attention to one's own mental health and that of those around them, just not to the detriment of the visitors' immediate interests. Only in this way can the industry develop healthily. So personally, I think the publicity of counseling for whatever purpose should be rigorous and cautious, after all, we are not pseudo-psychology.
I would like to take this opportunity to talk about sandplay therapy as I understand it.
What is sand tray play therapy? There are sandboxes, sand tools, sand and water. The visitor chooses some of the hundreds of sand tools and creates in the sandbox, which is like a game for the visitor. The child creates a three-dimensional picture of the sandbox through which I understand the child's state of mind, and problems that are still in the subconscious are played out in the sandbox like a drama," says Kraft. Conflicts in the inner world are translated to the outside and become visible. This imaginative play influences the subconscious dynamics of the child and subsequently brings about an effect on his or her mental state."
Many people will think that I buy a set of sand tray game molds for children to play on their own! In fact, Eva Pattis, a senior sandplay analyst, once said, "If you buy a set of molds and let the children play by themselves, then sandplay is just a game, not sandplay therapy."
Sandplay therapy, is based on the principles of Jungian psychology, developed and founded by Dora Kraft, a kind of psychotherapy. Sandplay is a creative way of using imagery for therapy, "a concentrated distillation of physical and mental life energy". It is characterized by the therapeutic relationship between the counselor and the visitor and " free and protected space ", the use of sand, water and sand utensils in the creation of imagery, sand tray in the series of sand tray imagery expressed in the sand tray, to create a continuous dialogue between the conscious and unconscious in the depths of the mind of the visitor, as well as the resulting stimulation of the healing process and personality development.
What Kraft calls the "therapeutic relationship between counselor and client" and the "free and protected space" are key elements of healing in sandplay therapy. In addition, we should also pay attention to imagery.
(Note: Because Japan has a long tradition of creating small art gardens, sandplay therapy is called "hakubutsu-therapy" in Japanese).
How to harmonize the seemingly contradictory elements of freedom and protection? What we mean by freedom is the absolute freedom of the visitor to decide what kind of sand tools he wants to choose and how he wants to use them to build what kind of sand picture he wants to build. What is protection? To make the visitor free from exposure, to protect the visitor from being punished or criticized or judged for what he or she does in the sandbox, so that he or she can be safe to be himself or herself.
But also, just as true freedom in the real world necessarily has its boundaries, the size of the sandbox can limit the visitor's reproduction of psychic realities to a certain range, and at the same time provide a safe framework within which the visitor's transformation may take place. At this point, the visitor will unconsciously feel as if they are in a free and protected space.
Sandplay therapy is also known as non-verbal mindfulness, and Ruth Amman says: "The deeper emotions and feelings are hidden, the further away they are from our conscious memory and the body of our personality, and the more difficult it is for us to find the language to express them." Martin Kraft believes that these can be expressed through playful creation in the sandtray. Imagery is the "language" of expression, and through the symbolic expression of imagery, we approach the unconscious inner world of the visitor, and feel the therapeutic effect of imagery expression through the understanding of the symbols in the sand chart.
Overall, the imagery and active imagination expressed by sand tools connect the inner and outer worlds. Sandplay, connecting the conscious and subconscious, gradually loosens the control of the conscious mind, and then step by step pushes what is hidden in the subconscious mind to the surface. In this process, what is in the subconscious mind does not just appear, but is applied to the conscious mind through the shaping of sand, through the selection of sand tools and the construction of sand diagrams into conscious goals and wills, which is what initiates the transcendental function, and thus facilitates the transformation of the visitor's self-nature.
When doing the sandbox, many parents of children ask the counselor, "What did my child set up? What does it represent?" At this point, we do not need to explain the specific imagery to the child's parents. This includes the visitor herself asking, "What does this thing (the sand set) I set up symbolize?" At this point we must likewise avoid making interpretations in the moment; if the visitor experiences the experience for what it is rather than just caring about what it is, he will try to give form to the unformed content and correct the confusion that emerges. At this point, we can invite the visitor to explore with us, or ask him to talk about the story of the sand picture, or ask for his comments and associations with it, but the counselor must not press or confront the visitor for the sake of associations.
Often in sandplay therapy, the counselor does not ask questions, discuss, or make interpretive interventions, so the visitor does not have to be influenced by the counselor's orientation to do sandplay in his own way. In a free and protected space, the journey of self-healing begins, and its efficacy comes from the experience of the process, not from theoretical interpretations.
While delaying interpretation or avoiding in-the-moment interpretation during the sandplay process, it is the counselor's responsibility to become familiar with the various cultural or archetypal intentions of the sand tools being used, and to learn more about the feelings and thoughts that are evoked through the process of sandplay therapy.
Kay Bradway has made the analogy that using sandplay as an assessment tool is a bit like using a violin to prop up a table that is missing a foot; it helps, but it can damage the violin.
If sandtray games are used for assessment, like a Rorschach inkblot projection test, people feel critically evaluated, even if they don't say so openly. When used with children, the children may hide it from the counselor, and the ensuing sandplay session may prevent the children from feeling completely free.
Overall, Kalfe sees sandplay as a psychotherapeutic orientation to spirituality. I feel that it will always provide a psychotherapeutic power to break the deadlock and get development flowing again when a visitor's psychological development is in a painful stagnation.
Bibliography:
Sandwalking - A Role in Psychotherapy
Sandwalking - A Psychotherapeutic Orientation to Spirituality
Sandwalking. -The Non-Verbal Approach to Psychotherapy