Copywriting / Cloud Ship
Cover / Chai Rice Oil Crispy Tea
-This is the box court you made, right? Why are there four worlds?
- I don't really like being spied on by others in my inner world.
-So can you see your own heart? Are you afraid to face your heart?
-And then what? Teacher, are you really not afraid?
- Not afraid.
- Deception.
This is a dialogue from the movie "The Edge of The Heart". The film tells the story of a young man who was traumatized in his childhood, Tian Sojun, who was found to be schizophrenic through the box court game, and was redeemed and redeemed himself.
After seeing the box court built by Tian, Dr. Katayama found him in the hospital room and had the above conversation. Tian Suo, a schizophrenic patient with a six-fold personality, has a weak self, a strong sense of self-protection, an escape from the pain of the past, but also a hidden desire for crime. And miraculously, it's all projected in a simple box experiment that was recognized by a psychiatrist.
This is what we call psychosocial sand table therapy, also known as box court therapy. The client uses sand, water, and a large number of different kinds of real-world sand to construct a symbolic inner world through which the therapist understands the client's heart and guides the client to understand himself, thus causing the client to make a positive change.
Today we will talk about three important working principles of the sand table.
A high reflection of the unconscious
The sandplay is based on Jung's analytical psychology, in which Jung refers to the totality of personality as the mind, which in turn consists of three levels, namely self-awareness, individual unconsciousness, and collective unconsciousness.
Self-awareness is the only part of the mind that we can perceive directly, and it is made up of various feelings, perceptions, memories, thoughts, and emotions.
The individual unconscious is the mental content that happens to us, is related to our experience but is not perceived, including all forgotten memories, intuitions, and experiences, and so on. The individual unconscious often manifests itself in the form of a "complex", for example, the mind of a depressed patient will suddenly be occupied by a depressed complex and unable to think about other things. Of course, complexes are not only negative, they are also a source of inspiration and creativity.
The collective unconscious is the experience from human ancestors accumulated over the course of a long history, a psychological content that individuals are never aware of, and that produce constant and minimal variations as the times move forward. The main content of the collective unconscious is the original, buried deep in the mind, unable to manifest itself in consciousness, but flashing in dreams and hallucinations.
For example, if the tip of an iceberg is likened to consciousness, then the vast expanse of glaciers hidden deep beneath the surface of the sea is the unconscious, and the part that emerges in the tidal motion is the unconscious awakening. The construction of the psychological sand table requires the visitor to discover the self hidden under the sea in the sand table.
Before the psychological sand table treatment begins, the therapist will let the client put his hand on the sand and feel the sand flowing through the fingertips, but also slowly find the surge of inner feelings, which is a process of finding the inner unconscious.
Everyone should have the experience of sometimes being drawn to something or a field of knowledge that we've never been exposed to, but never having a relevant experience; sometimes being able to intuitively recognize a person but not remember why we knew or didn't remember his name. It's a kind of personal unconsciousness. We seem to be born with a fear of darkness, a reverence for light, a natural disregard for force and justice, but we do not know why. This is a collective unconscious.
These phenomena are unconscious manifestations that cannot be explained in words but are externalized to behavior. This phenomenon also explains why during treatment, the therapist sometimes guides the client to "let the model choose you" rather than "you pick the model." In the process of sandplay, we are slowly attracted to explore the psychological content that can be perceived but has not yet been perceived, and belongs exclusively to ourselves.
Symbolic principles of analysis
At the beginning of the article we mentioned the schizophrenic Tian Suo, whose sandbox world is divided into four parts of the split, each of which symbolizes the personality traits of the various personalities he splits in the stressful situation. In addition, in the film, his doctor also did a sand table experiment for himself, and because he witnessed his loved one being crushed to death by the car, he refused to put the car on his sand table. These are symbolic examples.
One might say: The visitor's activity of building the world is inherently random, right?
Apparently not. After the visitor determines the theme of the sand table, he follows the inner flow to construct the sand table set, at which point the sand table is like a mirror, reflecting the inner unconscious world. Sand, pans, and sandware are all projections of the visitor's mental image, each with its own symbolic meaning, attached to individual emotions and emotions. Sandplay games often have a variety of sand tools such as characters, flora and fauna, buildings, vehicles, cosmic gods, natural landscapes, and events.
Different sand tools often represent different symbolic meanings, and interestingly, the same sand tool will have different symbolic meanings in different situations of the sand table, such as:
Weapons: Weapons represent conflicts and contradictions, are a symbol of aggression, and are also a symbol of self-protection and defense, which can be created or destroyed. In general, the appearance of a weapon in a sandbox can be understood as an attack or defense, but it can also be understood from a sexual point of view if the weapon appears at the same time as some sexual symbol related to an object (such as a snake). In addition, the appearance of weapons in the sand table can also symbolize the anxiety and tension of the visitor's life.
Airplanes: Airplanes travel between heaven and earth, symbolizing in themselves a balance between inclusiveness and separation. When an airplane appears in the sandbox, if the visitor explains that he is only a passenger, he expresses his desire to achieve his purpose quickly; if he explains that he is a pilot, he is doing a risky thing and trying to control the situation. The plane crash symbolizes the disillusionment of a wish, or the denial of the self.
Forest: The forest symbolizes the collective subconscious, which is itself considered a dark, unknown, pristine, disorderly wilderness nature, but at the same time a paradise away from the hustle and bustle of the world, so it is attractive to people. Forests are elusive and somewhat disturbing areas waiting to be explored.
The healing mechanism of empathy
The therapeutic effect of the sand table depends on the unconscious symbolic information from the sand table on the one hand, and on the other hand, the spiritual contact between the therapist and the client. The two sides need to build a certain relationship of mutual trust in order to achieve the desired results.
Peaceful and honest questioning and respectful attitudes help to trust the therapist for the client. In a secure environment, the client can create freely, following the unconscious guidance to construct a real inner world, which makes the creative results more authentic and instructive, and likewise, it can also give the therapist a credible feedback result.
The therapist often needs to empathize with the client throughout the treatment process, after the creation, the two parties use the sand table as an intermediary to enter the same spiritual world, and the healing process is carried out in the mode of conversation, the client will explain his own sand table, and the therapist will guide the client to understand the world of the self more deeply, so that the client can achieve the effect of self-healing.
What cannot be ignored and lamented at the same time is that the knowledge and application of domestic sandbox games are still stagnant, how many people have seen the real sandbox, and how many people have mistakenly regarded the sandbox as a simple game. In the final analysis, the modern society's desire for materials is far more than the spiritual thirst, most people lack the awareness of self-exploration, subject to similar to psychological counseling or or diseased speech, ignoring the importance of mental health, dare not take the step of psychological treatment, psychological counseling audience market is small, the supply is small, so vicious circle, and then lead to psychological science is not valued, it is difficult to develop.
With the continuous development of theoretical basis and practical experience, sandplay has gradually been applied to adult and group therapy from the treatment of children's mental disorders, and its results are remarkable. This psychotherapy does touch our emotional core and allows us to see another true self. Each of us should give ourselves a chance to explore ourselves in the unconscious world and explore another true self.