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Jungian sandplay is a specific approach to therapy, in which the client creates scenes or images in a sand tray (28.5 by 19.5 by 3 inches). The genesis of this form of sandplay lies in the World Technique of child psychiatrist Margaret Lowenfeld. In 1928, Lowenfeld opened a Clinic for Nervous and Difficult Children (Turner 2005), desiring to give the children a safe place to express their responses to trauma (Pabon 2001, 124). Recalling H G Wells's Floor Games (1911), Lowenfeld collected small toys and blocks to be put into a wonder box and was amazed at the response of the children. They called the box of toys "the world" and, without prompting, began creating miniature worlds and scenes with the figures in sand boxes that Dr Lowenfeld had in her play area (Turner 2005). Lowenfeld observed that as the children in her care played they seemed to be expressing a state situated between consciousness and unconsciousness (Turner 2005). The World Technique has been modified for use by different therapists, in particular for assessment and diagnostic purposes with children (Turner 2005), though Lowenfeld sometimes expressed disagreement with this use of her ideas and, in fact, found it to be "quite at cross- purposes to her work with the World Technique" (Turner 2005, 692).
Carl Jung encouraged Dora Maria Kalff, a neighbour and a Jungian analyst, to study the World Technique with Lowenfeld in 1956 (Turner 2005). As she studied Lowenfeld's techniques and the sand trays created by children, Kalff believed that she was seeing the Self revealing archetypal material through the symbols in the sand trays (Kalff 2003). Adapting and expanding the technique to her Jungian philosophy, she named it sandplay to distinguish it from other methods (Kalff 2003, 8). Lowenfeld and Kalff agreed on this distinction (Turner 2005). Sandplay therapy is an increasingly popular therapy both for children and adults (Turner 2005). Those who follow Jung and Kalff 's philosophy and practise sandplay are often referred to as Jungian sandplay therapists or Kalffianoriented sandplay therapists (Grubbs 1995).
Jungian psychological concepts are fundamental to Jungian sandplay therapy. Some common notions regarding sand tray therapy are not completely true of Jungian sandplay therapy. As Dora Kalff envisioned it, sandplay therapy is not simply a means...