Rivière, Yvon
XENA: HEALING THE ABUSED FEMININE
Montrèal, Canada
Journal of Sandplay Therapy, Volume 17, Number 1, 2008
KEY WORDS: Abuse, counter-dependence, femininity, vessel, Sandplay therapy, psychic healing, counter-dependent, animus, femininity, analysis, defenses, Self, female, adult, clinical example.
ABSTRACT: This article presents the psychic healing of a counter-dependent patient who had been abused in her childhood. Her femininity had been severely wounded and replaced by a powerful animus. In seven years of analysis, the defences of the Self could be unmasked and trust in life rebuilt. Ten sand pictures are landmarks of this process. They show how sandplay can help rebuild a safe vessel that was broken at a preverbal stage. In spite of long periods of time separating some sandplays, the connections between images remain remarkably strong and allow us to see the cohesiveness of one long journey from the first to the last image.