…In sandplay it immediately becomes clear that the human being can come closer to wholeness. It becomes possible to break through the narrowing perspective of our bogged-down conception and fears and to find in play a new relationship to our own depth. Immersed in play, the person succeeds in making an inner picture visible. Thus a link is established between internal and external.

The sandbox corresponds in its extents to the field of vision. In this area the fantasy which strives towards boundlessness is formed and shaped. We can say that fantasy becomes fruitful only where it is obliged to restrict itself within definite forms. The result is the polarity freedom/restriction. Freedom, on the one hand, consists in the fact that few boundaries are set to the client's shaping activity. The client has the possibility of selecting from the variety of figures and to construct a portrayal of the world that is closest to him or her. Restriction, on the one hand, resides in the fact that, out of many figures, a choice must be made. In this way clients succeed in portraying the problematic that is unconscious to them. Now we observe that a process is set in motion in which the unconscious, hidden totality assumes the leadership. When persons begin playing, they submit to the law of the very thing that leads them to that reconciliation of opposites which indeed is the decisive characteristic of the playing. Play is the mediator of the invisible and visible…


Dora M. Kalff
Introduction to Sandplay Therapy
Journal of Sandplay Therapy, Volume 1, Number 1, 1991.


Dora Kalff, Jungian therapist, developed sandplay therapy in Switzerland in the 1950s and '60s based on her studies at the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich, in Tibetan Buddhism, and with Margaret Lowenfeld, in England.