Glossary


Countertransference: The full range of the subjective experience of the therapist in relation to his/her client. This may include positive as well as negative experiences or feelings, experienced through body sensations, emotions, images, thoughts, intuitions, experiential states, fantasies and dreams.

Depth psychotherapy: Although usually identified with Jungian theory, depth psychotherapy includes psychoanalytic theories, which also value and describe the territory of the unconscious, and the healing value of working with unconscious phenomena. In Jungian psychology, these areas of “depth” are the layers of personal unconscious, cultural unconscious and collective unconscious.

Early relational trauma: Trauma occurring in infancy from abuse, neglect, or consistent lack of attunement. Early relational trauma may be recognized by the therapist through his/her own countertransference experience. Neuroscience supports this with its findings regarding right brain to right brain communication.

Free and protected space: For Dora Kalff, the founder and creator of sandplay, the free and protected space was the most important function the therapist provides for the client. The free and protected space, formerly called the free and sheltered space, provides containment as well as protection for the client, and freedom from the therapist’s intrusion interpretation.

Healing: In sandplay, it is thought that there are two avenues of moving toward psychological and emotional health: healing and transformation. Healing implies the integration and resolution of early relational trauma. Transformation implies moving forward on the path of individuation.

Individuation: The lifelong process of becoming more and more of who we are, of increasingly living our potentialities, of moving toward psychological wholeness.

Kalffian: Sandplay and Kalffian theory are synonymous. Sandtray, on the other hand, does not embrace Kalffian or sandplay theory, but includes a variety of other theories and methods.

Relational: Relational theories in contemporary psychoanalysis value relatedness as opposed to drives, and may even consider the desire for relationship to be the main drive in human beings. Attachment theory supports the notion that relationship with important others builds emotional security and a sense of physical safety. These are paramount for psychological/ emotional health.

Relational Field: In contemporary psychoanalysis, the relational field is a metaphor for the interwoven conscious and unconscious processes constantly occurring between therapist and client. The quality of the relational field may be felt as a background ambiance of the therapy. Of course, these processes are always occurring between any two human beings who are relating to each other as well. We communicate with each other constantly, through visual cues, through words, through right brain to right brain communication.

Self State Dream: (Kohut, 1977) A dream in which the imagery depicts the state of the self, and aids in binding “the nonverbal tensions of traumatic states” such as dread of overstimulation, or of the disintegration of the self (p. 109).  Kohut (1977) writes: “Dreams of this type portray the dreamer’s dread vis-à-vis some uncontrollable tension-increase or his dread of the dissolution of the self [psychosis])” (p. 109).  Thus, the symbolic understanding has to do with nameless anxieties. Self state dreams or sessions are not interpretable from their contents.  Rather, they may only be symbolically understood in their entirety, in the pervasive feeling tone of fragmentation or annihilation. (Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self. New York: International Universities Press; Kohut, H. (1977). The restoration of the self. New York: International Universities Press.

Shadow: The disowned, undeveloped, unconscious parts of ourselves. When these are made conscious and become integrated into our awareness and way of being, we become more psychologically whole.

Transcendent Function: The union of opposites that spontaneously leads to a new psychological attitude.

Transference/ countertransference: The total subjective experience of the client in relation to the therapist and the therapist in relation to the client. In contemporary psychoanalysis, transference and countertransference are understood to be co-created and inextricably intertwined.

Transformation: In sandplay, it is thought that there are two avenues of moving toward psychological and emotional health: healing and transformation. Healing implies the integration and resolution of early relational trauma. Transformation implies moving forward on the path of individuation.

Unconditional positive regard: Coined by Carl Rogers, the mandate for the therapist to hold each client with respect, and with a loving attitude.

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