A client comes into the therapy room and talks about their situation. They may come for personal development, because of depression or other emotional problems or just to train in this modality. In the therapy room there are shelves with lots of figurines and two trays of sand… a tray with wet sand and one with dry sand.
After talking for awhile the client then goes to the shelves, chooses some figurines and makes a picture in the sand. Sometimes the client will just use the sand to mould a design or shape and not use any of the objects. There is no direction. The sandtray is a free but protected space, (see below) protected by the sides of the tray and by the presence of the therapist. The basic idea is that the client can express more clearly in symbol form than in words what is really going on in the unconscious. The more they can allow themselves to “play”, to relax and feel free, the better. Jung himself in midlife resorted to play to sort out a block in his journey into the unconscious. By using objects we bypass the conscious mind and the inhibitions there. The sand picture is then photographed; for several reasons. The principal reason is to keep a record of the work of the client. The therapist will look at all the pictures from time to time to see how the process is developing. These photographs are absolutely confidential and can never be used in public or for teaching without the expressed permission of the client and normally at least one year after the process is complete. This process will continue usually weekly until the client feels they have finished. This will vary from two sessions to several years depending on the difficulty of the problem. In those who stay several years very many of them will continue in the process for reasons of personal development or in order to train. I began Sandplay simply to investigate this modality as I had heard that it was a way of looking at the unconscious and I had read a lot about Jungian psychology and was very familiar with Jungian theory. My first encounter with sandplay was on a weekend on which I made two sand pictures or trays as we refer to them. In the second tray I created an image in the sand which appeared to me as nondescript and meaningless. However when I stood back from the tray my therapist asked me to look closely at it and I then realized that I had created a very precise and distinct picture of a particular object. I was excited because I had had no knowledge consciously of what I had been doing. I now knew that the unconscious was a reality. This was the beginning of a journey into the unconscious that lasted 8 years in a formal way and which still goes on less formally.