Developmental Considerations: Sandplay Process as a Bridge between Object Relations Psychotherapy and the Transpersonal

Barbara Waterman

Abstract

Drawing on Winnicott’s developmental stages (primary maternal preoccupation, mirroring, transitional phenomena, and creative destruction of the object) on the way to becoming a subject, this article posits that some patients may not be able to avail themselves of sandplay process until they’ve developed enough “true self” in the therapeutic temenos or container. Through a cross section of clinical examples, patients’ developmental capacity to use, in the Winnicottian sense, sandplay process is analyzed. Without the creation of an intersubjective relationship between therapist and patient, by means of the creative destruction of the object, this piece suggests that the patient’s capacity for an I–Thou relationship with Divinity—arrived at via sandplay process—may be curtailed.

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