Ryan D. Foster
Department of Counseling, Tarleton State University
Fort Worth, Texas, USA
For almost 100 years, psychotherapists from around the world have integrated sand therapies into their work with children, adolescents, and adults. Margaret Lowenfeld’s (2007) original world technique had at its foundation a psychodynamically oriented conceptualization of the child psyche. Subsequently, other psychodynamic approaches to sand therapies promulgated in the therapeutic community via Dora Kalff (1980) and sandplay. In 1978, with the publication of Windows to Our Children, Violet Oaklander briefly described her use of sandtray therapy from a Gestalt point of view, and along the way several practitioners developed cross-theoretical approaches to sandtray (Homeyer, n.d.) – in other words, psychotherapists interested in integrating sandtray therapy into their existing theoretical paradigms can choose from a wide range of models.
Moreover, Homeyer and Sweeney (2023) emphasized the importance of operating from a consistent theoretical base when using sandtray as an intervention as well as ensuring that the practitioner’s sandtray approach matched their guiding theory of counseling. Thus, it can be a difficult enterprise for a practitioner to find a good fit between theory and technique because many existing models of sandtray therapy are only loosely related to major accepted psychotherapeutic schools of thought. Similarly, Fall, Holden, and Marquis (2023) noted that it is vital that psychotherapists operate consciously from a sound theoretical point of view while adapting techniques that parallel their philosophy.
Humanistic sandtray therapy (HST; Armstrong, 2008) is one such model that is both grounded in theory and espouses techniques that are internally consistent with its underlying philosophy. HST is a model of sandtray therapy used across almost the entire lifespan, appropriate for children at or over age nine and through adolescence and adulthood. Like other forms of sandtray therapy, HST is designed to engage clients holistically – body, mind, and, for some clients, even spirit. Although HST is a relatively young approach to sandtray, it has its philosophical roots in established theories of psychotherapy: person-centered (Rogers, 1961) and Gestalt (Perls et al., 1951/1994). In this article, I will review the core theoretical tenets underlying HST, basic technical elements of HST, and applications in psychotherapy.