Returning Home: A Woman’s Path to Wholeness

Eunice Stagg

Abstract

This article is about a 44-year-old female patient who presented with deep sadness, inner emptiness, loneliness, and multiple losses in the context of childlessness as well as parenting deficiencies in her own upbringing. The article tracks her sandplay process from an initial presentation of depression, a wounded animus, grief and divided inner world, to a process of psychological of transformation, integration and greater wholeness. In this therapy the place of silence within the sandplay process is revealed as a deep and numinous experience leading to reordering and greater integration of the psyche. The article demonstrates, explores and explains several Jungian concepts such as the shadow, animus, transcendent function and the relationship of the ego to the Self. The alchemical metaphor is also explored. The end of the client’s sandplay process reveals the union of opposites and healing demonstrated by a new positive self reflection and changes in both her inner and outer worlds.

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