Sandplay: A Psychotherapeutic Approach to the Psyche (The Sandplay Classics series)

Rating:
Summary: A Seminal and Classic Book
Review: The republication of Sandplay: A Psychotherapeutic Approach to the Psyche is an especially important contribution to the field of sandplay. This seminal, classic book had been out of print for several years and sorely missed.
The 2003 edition by Temenos press opens with a new and riveting foreword by Dr. Martin Kalff about the life of his mother, Dora M. Kalff. His "experience near" delivery of thought and feeling brings to the reader a special intimacy with Dora Kalff's personal and professional life experiences.
Temenos is scrupulous in retaining Dora Kalff's original words, but has added useful material which makes it possible to use Sandplay: A Psychotherapeutic Approach to the Psyche as a reference book: a detailed new table of illustrations where chapters, pages and captions are clearly cross referenced, a table of works cited which is also "user friendly," and finally an excellent index.
In chapter 1, Sandplay: A Pathway to the Psyche, Dora Kalff lays out the phases fo psychic development. The reader is immediately struck by her teaching style, an by the generous number of illustrations. Chapters 2 through 10 are case histories. To me these chapters read not only like clinical case histories but also like biographical vignettes that happen to be "clinical." One not only understands but gets the "feel" of how Kalff worked. Some of the chapters are : Kim, a 12-year old- with learning problems; James, a 16-year-old who experienced early trauma; Dede, a 5-year-old with a speech block; Ursula, a young woman suffering from depression; and Eric, a man with a blushing problem. Other chapters deal with issues of anxiety, enuresis, passivity, and isolation. The book's conclusion confirms Kalff's related wisdom.