Customer Reviews

Jungian Sandplay: The Wonderful Therapy

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Jungian Sandplay is a valuable contribution to the sandplay therapy literature. It is a very readable book and accesible to both the beginner and the experienced psychotherapist. Ryce-Menunin describes sandplay therapy while also sharing with the reader his opinions and clinical experience. The author does not limit himself to Jungian references. Quotes from Jung and Winnicott help bridge analytic and psychoanalytic perspectives in service of healing and development. This one hundred and twenty page book focuses on what is essential. Through word and image Ryce-Menuhin shows the reader how this non-verbal technique "can help patients express beyond words and before words the deepest archetypal images projected from the unconscious." Ryce-Menuhin surprises the reader by starting the book with an account of his first experience with sandplay. He tells that he was a depressed analysand when he "reluctantly entered the sandplay room and made the first sandplay with painstaking effort." The author also closes the book with a personal experience. The inclusion of this personal material helps the reader locate the author in the context of the short history of Sandplay. The second and third chapters are informative and I find them to be a good teaching resource. At the heart of the book are four case studies accompanied by thirty-three color photographs of sandplay scenes. The Story of Agnes describes the case of an adolescent girl who entered puberty when her parents divorced. Marie's case is about a woman grieving her sister's death. The Story of Clive is about a man with a history of traumatic childhood ego damage. The third section of the book includes the author's "controversial theory of the psyche as it maps into the sand." Diagrams of these "mappings" illustrate the author's findings. Through this theoretically and clinically sophisticated book, Ryce-Menuhin has made a valuable contribution to the study and clinical practice of sandplay therapy.