When Sandplay Therapy Ends Without an Ending: The Sandplay Process of a 10-Year-Old Girl with Separation Anxiety

Ruth Noel-Hermann

Abstract

This article describes the sandplay-process of a 10-year-old girl with separation anxiety, living in a complicated patchwork-family and parents, who separated even before her birth. The beginning of her process shows her deep wish for the reunification of her separated parents as well as her striving for reunion in her inner life. She then proceeds to work on the feelings of anger and sadness, which are hidden behind her symptom of anxiety and are now upcoming in the therapeutic relationship as well. This motivates the therapist to ask the parents for more frequent therapy sessions. After a very difficult conversation, the father is threatens to end the therapy abruptly. As a few more meetings are arranged, the girl’s sandplay therapy now enters into an ending-process, and the girl finds very original ways of expressing her deep fear, sadness and anger through sandplay. The description of this process is related to the path of the labyrinth and is also accompanied by some theoretic reflections about separation anxiety and the technique of ending a therapeutic process. This paper was was presented at the Sandplay Intensive in Switzerland, 2011 and at the 21st ISST Congress: Origins, Evolution, Essentials, 2011, Ittingen, Switzerland.

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