Customer Reviews

Sandplay: Therapy with Children and Families

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Lois Carey's book Sandplay Therapy with Children and Families is an interesting study of family therapy and play therapy in the sand. The core of her book focuses on families working in the sand with small miniatures and then the communications that result from their creations. She reviews family therapy and sandtray techniques and then brings these approaches together in her clinical examples. She shows us how we can use the sandtray and play therapy in our work with families to increase understanding, share feelings and communicate through the miniatures. This is a valuable contribution. A better title for the book, however, would have been Play Therapy with Families in the Sand. Her work does not hold to the basic theoretical principles of Sandplay Therapy. Sandplay is a Therapy developed by Dora Kalff that integrated the work of C. G. Jung and followed some of the principles of individuation that could be noted in a series of trays. Kalff and Jung honored the power of the unconscious and the healing that may be set in motion when the work of the unconscious unfolds through inagining. Carey mentions the archetypes but she does not show us how they work in and through our psyches. Nor does she show how the individuation process can include the integration of opposites on the path toward wholeness. This kind of integration can be seen in a series of trays that an individual creates in the process of Sandplay Therapy. Lois Carey's approach to working with families does not include a focus on the work of the unconscious and the unfolding of the imaginal that might occur in a series of sandtrays. The work of the family members in individual Sandplay Therapy and how the processes parallel, or differ from, each other might make an interesting study. This is not what Carey's book presents. Her book is a useful contribution that combines play therapy techniques and sandtray therapy in working with families.

Very few of us are trained in the use of sandplay with a family system. I found this book extremely helpful and informative not only for families, but in basic sandplay information. Of course the author cannot go into detail about every aspect of the unconscious or archetypes - that is why extensive training is available and necessary for sandplay and play therapists. Rather, I think of this book as a resource for those who have undergone or are undergoing their play and/or sandplay training. It's a must on my book shelf, I will likely read it again, and recommend it to other sandplay and play therapists.