Sandplay therapy was developed by the British doctor and psychotherapist Margaret Lowenfeld in the late 1920s, a pioneer in child psychotherapy. It was introduced to Europe and enhanced with findings of analytical psychology by a student of Lowenfeld, Dora Kalff, in the late 1950s. Have a look at the website of the Lowenfeld Trust for more information on Margaret Lowenfeld. In the beginnings, sandplay therapy was called World Technique.

In a room with shelves full of symbols of our internal and external world (figurines, cars, plants, miniature houses, phantasy characters, etc.) there are two sandplay trays (round about 50 cm x 70 cm), one filled with dry, the other with wet sand. Similar to dreaming, the client’s subconscious chooses symbols for building an internal world in one of the trays. Thus, a dream image emerges. The advantage of a sand image in comparison to our nocturnal dream images is the fact that the image in the sand tray does not fade. Client and therapist can look at the picture as long as they like. Expressing one’s inner life in sandplay images is a gentle way of activating one’s self-healing forces. Even traumatic experiences find a possibility to be expressed in the sand tray.

Counselling couples with sandplay therapy creates a safe setting to express problems in the relationship for which words do not help anymore.

As sandplay is a non-verbal method, it is very helpful for counselling people who do not find a counselling service in their native tongue.

Sandplay therapy is not the only method that I employ for counselling. For example, I also work with visualization, sculptures, timelines and theatre pedagogy based exercises such as the methods devised by Augusto Boal.

I counsel couples, families, children and teenagers, single persons and groups, young and old people, people from other nations and refugees.