Dear all,
Thank you for clicking in. Thank you for coming to my presentation in Hippo Lakes and it
Was a lovely experience for me to be there. I promised at the time of the conference to
send you some notes. A bit later than planned.
Sisyphus
The first case was that of the man with a severe stammer.
It started when he was about 6 and so he had normal speech beforehand.
This is important because it suggests that there could be a psychological
Reason for his stammer.
Remember it was a cause of much suffering for him as he said. “You have no
Idea how I suffer from this”
He symbolized the situation by saying in his first tray that he had to get from
Here to there, here being the left side of the tray, the more unconscious and there being an
Elevated area on the right side of the tray. He had what I call a wounded man lying on the
ground on the left side.It was the elevation in particular that
Encouraged me at the time rather than the moving from left to right side but I
Thought just to mention it.
The time between sessions was 6 to 8 weeks, to my frustration some what but what was
right for him.
In his third tray he had two roads meeting to form one and at that point he had an
Old man sitting on a chair, (probably a senex figure) and a small boat and a compass.
Even one of these at the junction would have been encouraging but all three are
Relevant to him finding his way and very encouraging.
In his fourth tray he had a rock and an Irish Round Tower and it looked like a church, and for
me a particular church at Gougane Barra in County Cork. …. A little church on an island. The
rock in my view represented the problem and placed beside the round tower it had become
sacred.
In his final tray he had the rock that Sisyphus pushed placed to one side
Sisyphus was a king in Greek mythology who defeated or deceived Hades, the God of death
and the underworld, on two occasions and for this was condemned to roll a rock up a hill
for all eternity. Albert Camus, a nobel prize winner wrote a play about this.
In his final tray my client takes the rock, which is gold, from Sisyphus and lays it aside and
says more or less that he is finished with this. He is no longer pushing the rock and also he
has got to the place that he described in his first tray.
My client had felt good from his first tray and his stammer improved as we went along. It
took about two years for it to disappear completely. He later became an expert in a
particular specialty in medicine and to quote him “now speaks all over the world.”
Vasectomy
This case was about a man who came to the surgical clinic requesting a vasectomy.
When I questioned this he said that if I had the life he had I would not want to have children
either. He initially refused any therapy but agreed to work with me in Sandplay prior to
having a vasectomy.
He began, if you remember it, with that frightening image of his parents as Day of Death
figures, and himself and his brothers as abandoned babies. However though they look very
scary the Dia de Muertos (Day of Death) figures speak of the resurrection.
During Día de Muertos, the tradition is to build private altars ("ofrendas") containing the
favorite foods and beverages, as well as photos and memorabilia, of the departed. The
intent is to encourage visits by the souls, so the souls will hear the prayers and the words of
the living directed to them. He moved from the abandoned babies to the nest and four eggs,
describing the four eggs as “this is how fragile we were” and at the same time showing a
scenario of nurturing, new life and protection.
This client also brought into the work the mythology of Merlin and the Knights of the Round
Table. This myth, with Arthur and Guinevere as king and queen represents the self and the
knights represent the ego in the service of the self which is how we all should develop.
Another memorable tray showed all the people who had treated him badly crossing a bridge
in order to defaecate on him. But they were on a bridge, a symbol of transformation and
they were in fact approaching a toilet, which processes the shadowy material.
We saw in the end Waldo facing the adventure of life with Merlin in the background and a
man and a woman feeding babies in the foreground.
We also spoke about the possible ritual value of the operating theatre and it’s potential for
healing and how surgery in this context had a very healing effect on the client.
This case is available on the Presentations part of this website.
The Ferryman
This was a presentation about healing of the Anima. You know the theory of this so I don’t
need to go into it. But we saw in slide three a clear depiction of the wounded anima….
Again a day-of-death figure, a figure obviously in pain, which the client described as how he
felt the day his wife left him. But as described above the figure Is also about resurrection
and new life. The figure, alone in the tray represents his own anima and we see at the end
of the process there is a figure in white, a graduates gown, leading to a church as if she were
a bride coming to the church. I suggested that this was similar to the work of John of the
Cross and has been mentioned by Jung. Also the idea of the shadow pieces emerging from
the sea as in the island with the negative figures on it. The best man figure which seemed to
be in the role of the ferryman, Charon, bringing the soul across the Styx to the underworld
or land of the dead. It was also significant that this figure is also part of the marriage and
brings the groom to the wedding, and here it is the union of the soul of the client with
Christ symbolised by the church. In the very first tray there was a boat heading towards that
same church that appeared in this last scene.
The music we played was an old Quaker Hymn which the client liked and which was
recorded by Enya ( How can I keep from singing).
We also saw food used in its spiritual sense to a great degree and we saw how he so
inventively created a music scene himself with a band of musicians. We also saw the
brightness and music and people in the final tray as compared to the bleakness at the
beginning. This case is available on the presentations section on this website.