Landscapes of the Psyche Sandplay in Jungian Analysis

This book is the result of research carried out by Paolo Aite, who for over thirty years has introduced sandplay in adult analysis into Italy. This method is becoming more and more popular among Jungian analysts, both in Italy and abroad, in private as well as in public practice. But just what is sandplay in analysis? It is not another kind of therapy. It is preverbal communication through images that goes hand in hand with communication through words. By means of the physical experience of playing with sand and using objects, a symbolization of deep emotions is set into motion which speech, more closely linked to the defences, can only partly express. This is a perspective which brings out the close relationship between words and images and makes it possible to study the transforming moment when emotions take on a visual representation, changing the feeling tone of the analytical relationship. Contained in the spatiotemporal organization of the play scene is a precise interpretation through images of the intrapyshic and interpersonal experience shared by the patient and the therapist in the analytical relationship. The purpose of analysis is to succeed in expressing in words the whole transforming potential of the symbolic image which has inspired the play scene and the emotions shared in the analytical relationship. This research, which springs from the theoretical hypotheses of Carl Gustav Jung, addresses central issues of his thinking which have yet to be thoroughly explored, full as they are of potential development, both theoretical and clinical.