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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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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Thank you for visiting Relational Sandplay Therapy. 

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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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