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Linda Cunningham, PhD

Because I have received so many questions about Relational Sandplay Therapy, I have decided to write about it in small, easily digestible bits. I hope that you find this information useful, and please feel free to leave a question or comment.

Note: I wrote these articles in 2010. I no longer update this blog, except for technical changes to keep it useful. I review comments from time to time, and I'll be glad to hear from you.

About Linda Cunningham

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Countertransference as Mystical Experience

    
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In these times, many of our clients suffer from deep anxieties.  Frequently, these anxieties reach into the psychic territory of unsymbolized experience: thoughts that cannot be thought, and feelings that cannot be felt. Use of countertransference as a clinical tool was developed so that psychotherapy could reach a broader range of people, to include the unsymbolized aspects of experience common for those who have suffered early relational trauma.

Even so, in the world of countertransference the therapist is always a beginner. The meaning of countertransference is not truly, definitively knowable. It is ephemeral—a momentary flicker from implicit realms. We can only seek to put fluid symbolic meaning onto the somatic or emotional points of light.

In doing so, we may come to think of countertransference as a form of mystical experience.  Jungian analyst Andrew Samuels explores the similarities between mystical experience and countertransference:

"First, mystical states are ineffable; that is, they cannot be fully described to one who has not experienced something similar.  Second, mystical states lead to knowledge and insight, often delivered with a tremendous sense of authority.  Third, mystical states are transient.  Fourth, mystical states happen to a person; even if he or she prepared him/herself, he or she is gripped by a power that feels quite foreign.  Fifth, there is a sense that everything is connected to everything else, an intimation of purpose.  Sixth, the mystical experience is timeless.  Finally, the familiar ego is sensed not to be the real ‘I.’"  (1989, p. 166)

Even “mundane,” ordinary countertransference  may be experienced as mystical as it delivers understanding in an ineffable, timeless way.

Samuels, A. (1989). The plural psyche: Personality, morality and the father. London: Routledge.

    
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The Four Archetypal Relational Fields: Field Four

    
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Field Four: The Numinous Field of the Transcendent Function

Image by Eric Cheng

Sometimes, Field Three leads us into Field Four (O’Connell, 1986), The Numinous Field, the heart of the transcendent function. The essence of Field Four is a dramatic shift in attitude accompanied by a sense of awe and the constellation of the Self that is so familiar to Jungian sandplay therapists. Field Four is a shared, transcendent, relational experience of the union of conscious and unconscious, and it is an experience completely void of anxiety. In the diagram below, the Field Four area is the outer layer of the Self In Relationship circle. This represents an ever present, numinous psychic holding. The therapeutic goal, within this timeless container of shared psychic experience, is to gradually move into embodied, emotionally connected self-reflection, and to establish fluid oscillation between all four fields. Field Four is the ever present, numinous container.
   

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The Four Archetypal Relational Fields: Field Three

   

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Field Three: The Field of Differentiated Oneness/ Transitional Space

Image by Eric Cheng

Field Three is characterized by the meaningful use of the symbol and deep relational connection. It holds the experience of fluent empathy where the unconscious minds of patient and therapist are aligned. It is a field of rich symbolic meaning, full associations, or meaningful silence. This is the secured-symbolizing field of transitional space (Goodheart, 1980). It is also the field that is most often described in sandplay, and it is usually experienced as a field of fluid, symbolic understanding. Experiences of meaningful resonance with the movement of psychic energies are common in this field. Dreams and sandplay often activate this field of deep meaning and connection. In the diagram below, the Field Three area is represented by the third ring from the center in the Self In Relationship circle. This represents the integrated somatic/ emotional/ symbolic-relational aspect of the Self. The therapeutic goal is to gradually move into easy connection with this field of embodied, emotionally connected self-reflection, and to establish fluid oscillation between all four fields.
   

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The Four Archetypal Relational Fields: Field Two

   

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Field Two: The Field of Twoness/ Rupture

When we find ourselves in Field Two: The Field of Twoness/Rupture, also a field of relational trauma and presymbolic experiencing, our subjective experience is that of intense affective turmoil and discontinuity. In this field we feel “held captive” in relational conflict. We find ourselves embroiled in a struggle with disturbing unconscious contents, intense affect, and mutually activated complexes. It is a field of discomfort, conflict, and difficulty, and often entails a visceral, extremely disturbing experience. A therapist may feel taken over by feelings of anxiety, terror, shame, dread, or physical illness. “Rupture” refers to the ambient anxiety in this field that empathic rupture is imminent. We fear that no matter how hard we try, we will somehow fail to provide holding in a way that avoids this rupture. Yet the sheer dynamic aliveness of this field lends itself to profound transformation. Therapeutic work in this field often requires that the therapist look to her own complexes’ involvement in the field in order to move from, a “feeling against” to a “feeling with.” (The terms “feeling with” and “feeling against” were coined by Kay Bradway (1991; 1997), but she used them in a different context.) The goal is to find within ourselves our own resistance, and to surrender into deep empathy for the primitive, traumatized places we may share with the client.

In the diagram below, the Field Two area is the second ring from the center of the Self In Relationship circle. This represents the emotional core of the Self. The therapeutic goal is to gradually move into embodied, emotionally connected self-reflection, and to establish fluid oscillation between all four fields.

Image by Eric Cheng

   

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The Four Archetypal Relational Fields: Field One

   

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Field One: The Field of Original Oneness/Merger

In Field One the therapist’s subjective experience is often a sensory, presymbolic one. Symbolic meaning is difficult or impossible to find, and boredom, confusion, or emptiness are often the predominant countertransference states in this field. This sensory rather than emotional or thinking experience may include a focus of sensation in one’s head; dizziness; confusion; a sense of deadness; a watery feeling; a feeling of dissolving into space; a sense of being disconnected; being unable to think; a distortion of objects or people in space; or feelings of being controlled, empty, or paralyzed. The therapist will often feel held at bay, ineffective, and completely useless. It is the hallmark of the field of Original Oneness/Merger to feel boredom, anxiety, or dissociation. Therapeutic work in this field requires that the therapist tolerate, contain and digest presymbolized experience. This takes time, patience and a full use of the therapist’s reverie, including countertransference images and body sensations. This field takes us into our bodies—or out of our bodies— but always involves sensory experience. In the diagram below, the Field One area is in the center of the Self In Relationship circle. This represents the somatic core of the Self. The therapeutic goal is to gradually move into embodied, emotionally connected self-reflection, and to establish fluid oscillation between all four fields.

Image by Eric Cheng

   

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Relational Sandplay Therapy and Preverbal Trauma

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Relational Sandplay Therapy is an advanced, post-Kalffian[1] theory for working with preverbal trauma. This kind of trauma is usually due to early maternal deprivation, and is also called early relational trauma.

Kalsched (1996, p. 1) defines this kind of trauma as

"any experience that causes the child unbearable psychic pain or anxiety. Trauma of this magnitude varies from the acute, shattering experiences of child abuse to the more ‘cumulative traumas’ of unmet dependency needs that mount up to devastating effect in some children’s development (Khan, 1963), including the more acute deprivations of infancy described by Winnicott as ‘primitive agonies,’ the experience of which is ‘unthinkable’ (1963:90). The distinguishing feature of such trauma is what Heinz Kohut (1977: 104) called ‘disintegration anxiety,’ an unnameable dread associated with the threatened dissolution of a coherent self."

Early relational trauma may be the result of abuse, neglect or a consistent lack of attunement between infant and early caregiver.

Many believe that preverbal trauma may make itself known most immediately through  emotional and bodily resonance with another person (Dahlenberg, 2000). In other words, the therapist may actually have difficult countertransference experiences that indicate the unconscious communication of preverbal trauma. These kinds of experience, to be discussed further, are likely to happen in what I refer to as Field One or Field Two.

References

Dalenberg, C. (2000).  Countertransference and the treatment of trauma.  Washington, DC:  American Psychological Association.

Kalsched, D. (1996). The inner world of trauma: Archetypal defenses of the personal spirit. London: Routledge.

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[1] “Kalffian” refers to “sandplay” as created by Dora Kalff, as opposed to the more generic term “sandtray,” which includes a variety of other approaches and techniques.

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Relational Sandplay Therapy: Expanding Our Capacities for Holding in the Free and Protected Space

    
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Image by Eric Cheng

I discovered the four archetypal relational fields by accident. I was curious about certain kinds of sandplay work that did not seem to meet the classical Kalffian criteria. These sandtrays were difficult to understand, and like Kohut’s self state dream, did not seem to hold symbolic meaning. Sandplay therapists seemed baffled by these sandtrays, and were also quite self-critical, assuming that they “weren’t holding” the process “well enough.” Kalffian ideas about the free and protected space emphasize the therapist’s unconditional positive regard for the client. The Rogerian stance of warmth, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard are, of course, givens in any therapeutic situation. However, when we attend to unconscious processes, other feelings and experiences may arise within this loving psychic embrace. These “other” perhaps more negative experiences often indicate the therapist’s resonance with the client’s preverbal trauma. This resonance provides an important avenue toward healing that is supported by findings in neuroscience.

In my interviews with sandplay therapists, I found that they actually experienced a full range of countertransference experience, from emotions to experiential states and body sensations, to memories, thoughts, images, fantasies and dreams. The diagram below illustrates this full range of subjective experience of the therapist, superimposed on colored bands that each represent one of the four archetypal relational fields.

Relational sandplay therapy was created to help the sandplay therapist expand her/his capacities for holding within the free and protected space.

    
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Current Trends: The Expansion of Sandplay Theory and Practice

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Sandplay therapy is expanding. The trends of expansion are:

• A continuing effort to deeply understand particular symbols. Articles researching particular symbols have a central place in the Journal of Sandplay Therapy.

• A continuing effort to understand the sandplay process through case studies.

• Publication of new research that provides an evidence-based grounding for sandplay.

• Exploration of work with new populations and diverse cultures.

• Documentation of the history of sandplay that provides grounding for expansions of theory.

• The integration of other theoretical stances and modalities. Many writers attempt to integrate concepts from other theories into sandplay work. Sometimes these concepts are named and cited, other times they are left implicit.

• An emerging, more explicit recognition of issues of transference/ countertransference and the nuances of the clinical relationship.

• A more explicit use of countertransference experience to understand preverbal/nonverbal material.

• More emphasis on difficult countertransference experience

• Illuminating examinations of the therapist’s internal struggle to  understand the sandplay process when working with preverbal trauma.

Relational Sandplay Therapy addresses the last four areas of expansion.

This is an excerpt from an article that appeared in The Journal of Sandplay Therapy, Volume XVI, Number 2, 2007. Cunningham, L. But is it Kalffian?

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