The Sandtray technique for Swedish children 1945–1960: diagnostics, psychotherapy and processes of individualisation

Abstract

The present article examines the development of a diagnostic and therapeutic technique named The Sandtray at the Erica Foundation, a privately-run child counselling service in Stockholm. Originally it was called The World, developed by the British paediatrician and child psychiatrist Margaret Lowenfeld. In the 1930s it was imported to Sweden, where it gained a central position in child psychotherapy activities. The aim of the article is to discuss how The Sandtray was utilised at the Erica Foundation, both for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. These two approaches are also discussed in relation to Foucauldian theories of the individualisation process. In the diagnostic practice the child was individually assessed and evaluated in relation to normative standards of scientific child developmental psychology, while in the therapeutic practice the individual child was through verbalisation techniques encouraged to reflect and demonstrate introspection as a subject. Two renderings of the individualisation of children are thus discerned in the utilisation of The Sandtray, one as a result of the disciplinary regime of the diagnostic practice, another through technologies of the self in the therapeutic practice. The latter also underwent a change with respect to how children were viewed. The emphasis on notions of children as different in comparison to adults was increasingly played down to the benefit of the notion of children as being the same.

Keywords:

• child psychotherapy
• the Erica Method
• The World
• individualisation process
• history of childhood

Notes

¹Cathy Urwin, “Margaret Lowenfeld”, in Cathy Urwin and John Hood-Williams, eds. Child Psychotherapy, War and the Normal Child: Selected Papers of Margaret Lowenfeld (London: Free Association Books, 1988), 3–140; Cathy Urwin, “Child psychotherapy in historical context: an introduction to the work of Margaret Lowenfeld,” Free Association 2 (1991): 371–394.

²Margaret Lowenfeld, “A new approach to the problem of psychoneurosis in childhood,” British Journal of Medical Psychology 11 (1931); Margaret Lowenfeld “World pictures of children”, in Cathy Urwin and John Hood-Williams, eds. Child Psychotherapy, War and the Normal Child: Selected Papers of Margaret Lowenfeld (London: Free Association Books, 1988), 265–309; see also British Journal of Medical Psychology 18 (1939); Ruth Bowyer, The Lowenfeld World Technique Studies in Personality (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1970); and Phyllis Traill, “Experiences with the use of the world technique in clinical work with children”, in Margaret Lowenfeld, ed. “On the Psychotherapy of Children”: A report of a Conference held at the Institute of Child Psychology, London, August, 1948, on the Theory and Techniques of Direct Objective Therapy (London: E.T. Heron and Co, 1949), 74–81.

³Margaret Lowenfeld, Play in Childhood (London: Victor Gollancz, 1935).

⁴Hanna Bratt, “Ericastiftelsen: Ett institut för psykisk hälsovård” in Nils Antoni et al., eds. Psykologien upptäcker människan (Stockholm: Kooperative förbundets bokförlag, 1945), 82–100.

⁵The Swedish term for The Sandtray is “sandlådan”, which also corresponds to the British term “the sandpit” Today the most common designation for the Sandtray technique is the Erica Method.

⁶Åsa Bergenheim, “Erica-stiftelsen – idébakgrund och tillkomsthistoria”, Psykisk hälsa 31 (1990): 163–185; Britta Blomberg and Gunnar Carlberg, “Ericastiftelsen – En blomma i tiden”, Mellanrummet: Tidskrift om barn- och ungdomspsykoterapi 11 (2004): 62–76; and Siv Boalt Boëthius, Magnus Kihlbom and Ann-Mari Orrenius, Psykoterapi med barn och ungdomar, då, nu och sedan – Några medarbetares reflektioner: Ericastiftelsen 1934–1993 (Stockholm: Ericastiftelsen, 1994).

⁷Åsa Bergenheim, “Ericastiftelsen – hur det fortsatte”, Psykisk Hälsa 31 (4) (1990): 256–277.

⁸See, for instance, Charlotte Bühler, “The World test: a projective technique”, Journal of Child Psychiatry 2 (1951): 4–23; Charlotte Bühler, “The World test: manual of direction”, Journal of Child Psychiatry 2 (1951): 68–81; see also, Rie Rogers Mitchell and Harriet S. Friedmann, Sandplay: Past, Present and Future (London: Routledge, 1994).

⁹Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin Books, 1991); Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the self”, in Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton, eds. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (London: Tavistock Press, 1988), 16–49; Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (London: Routledge, 1991); Nikolas Rose, “Engineering the human soul: analyzing psychological expertise”, Science in Context 5:2 (1992): 351–369; Nikolas Rose, Inventing Ourselves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

¹⁰Nick Midgley, “The ‘inseparable bond between cure and research’: clinical case study as a method of psychoanalytic inquiry”, Journal of Child Psychotherapy 32 (2006): 122–147.

¹¹Urwin, “Child psychotherapy in historical context”, 377.

¹²Urwin, “Margaret Lowenfeld” 7–8.

¹³Ibid, 8–9.

¹⁴Ibid, 75–76.

¹⁵For instance, Lowenfeld did not take part in the debate between Melanie Klein and Anna Freud; see Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Anna Freud: A Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); Phyllis Grosskurth, Melanie Klein: Her World and her Work (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986).

¹⁶Urwin, “Margaret Lowenfeld”, 78–80.

¹⁷Ibid, 94.

¹⁸Lowenfeld, “World pictures of children”, 289.

¹⁹Urwin, “Margaret Lowenfeld”, 91–92; see also note 8.

²⁰The Erica Foundation is today an independent institute providing psychotherapy for children and adolescents, professional training at university level, and research. It is largley funded through governmental and county council support.

²¹Bergenheim, “Erica-stiftelsen – idébakgrund…,” 182.

²²Bergenheim, “Erica-stiftelsen – idébakgrund”, 182–183; Boalt Boëthius et al., Psykoterapi med barn och ungdomar; Blomberg and Carlberg, “Ericastiftelsen – En blomma i tiden”, 62–76.

²³Bergenheim, “Erica-stiftelsen”.

²⁴See, for instance, Kathleen Jones, Taming the Troublesome Child: American Families, Child Guidance, and the Limits of Psychiatric Authorities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); John Stewart, “Child guidance in interwar Scotland: international influences and domestic concerns”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 80 (2006): 513–539; Deborah Thom, “Wishes, anxieties, play, and gestures”, in Roger Cooter, ed. In the Name of the Child: Health and Welfare, 1880–1940 (London: Routledge, 1992), 200–219; and Alice Smuts, Science in the Service of Children, 1893–1935 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).

²⁵Ulf Jönsson, Bråkiga, lösaktiga och nagelbitande barn: Om barn och barnproblem vid en rådgivningsbyrå i Stockholm 1933–1950, PhD dissertation, University of Linköping, 1997.

²⁶Bengt Sandin and Gunilla Halldén, eds. Barnets bästa: En antologi om barndomens inne-börder och välfärdens organisering (Stockholm/Stehag: Symposium, 2003); Gena Weiner, De räddade barnen: Om fattiga barn, mödrar och fäder och deras möte med filantropin i Hagalund 1900–1940 (Stockholm: Hjelm, 1995).

²⁷Gösta Harding, Leken som avslöjar: Orientering i lekdiagnostik (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1965), 108.

²⁸Gunnar Nycander, Personlighetsutveckling på avvägar (Stockholm: Tidens förlag, 1950).

²⁹They represented a common scientific approach in child psychiatry, which was formally recognised as a medical speciality in Sweden in 1951.

³⁰Gösta Harding, “Themes with variations”, in Lowenfeld, “On the Psychotherapy of Children”, 82-93.

³¹Ibid, 83.

³²Ibid, 84.

³³Harding, Leken som avslöjar, 249.

³⁴Harding, Leken som avslöjar.

³⁵Barbro Dahlgren-Martell, Sandlådetestet: Metodologisk undersökning rörande teknik för observation, registrering och normering, Stencilerad licentiatavhandling (Stockholms universitet, 1958); Allis Danielsson, Ericametoden (Stockholm: Skandinaviska testförlaget, 1965).

³⁶Britta Blomberg and Anita Dahlgren, Utbildning till barnpsykoterapeut vid Ericastiftelsen 1948–1955 3 (1992): 19–24.

³⁷Allis Danielson, Erikametoden (Stockholm: Psykologiförlaget, 1965/1976). A revised version was published in 1986, Att bygga sin värld: handbok i Ericametoden (Stockholm: Psykologiförlaget, 1986), which has been translated into English, Building your own world: Manual for the Erica method (Stockholm: Psykologiförlaget AB, 1998).

³⁸Danielson, Ericametoden; Harding, Leken som avslöjar.

⁴⁰Ibid, 26–27.

³⁹Danielson, Ericametoden, 25.

⁴¹Ibid, 28.

⁴²Gösta Harding, Leken som avslöjar, 132–133

⁴³Ibid, 148.

⁴⁴Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 193.

⁴⁵Rose, “Engineering the human soul”; Rose, Inventing Ourselves.

⁴⁶Rose, Governing the Soul.

⁴⁷Ibid, 121.

⁴⁸Bergenheim, “Ericastiftelsen – idébakgrund”, 256–277.

⁴⁹Gudrun Seitz, Lek och lekterapi”, in Nils Antoni et al., eds. Psykologen upptäcker människan (Stockholm: Kooperativa förbundets bokförlag, 1945), 156–182.

⁵⁰Gudrun Seitz, “Teaterterapi på försöksstadiet”, in Per Ekholm, ed. Teater i skolan (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1959), 102–110.

⁵¹Gudrun Seitz, “En barnpsykoterapeutisk metod utvecklad ur C.G. Jungs analytiska psykologi belyst i en psykoterapi med en emotionellt utvecklingshämmad 9-årig flicka” (Uppsats för psykologbehörighet, Erikastiftelsen, 1963).

⁵²Blomberg and Dahlgren, Utbildning till barnpsykoterapeut”, 24; see also Ann Lantzourakis, Willemo Nilsson and Kristina Ånstrand, Att möta barnets inre värld: Barnpsykoterapi med utgångspunkt i C.G. Jungs psykologi. Evy Grabös efterlämnade anteckningar redigerade (av författarna) (Stockholm: Mareld, 2003).

⁵³Barbro Olofgörs and Ulla Sjöström, Barnpsykoterapi: Gudrun Seitz’ barnpsykoterapeutiska metod sådan hon utvecklat den vid Ericastiftelsen: En studie i metodens bakgrund med en härledning av dess hypoteser samt med utvecklingspsykologiska och inlärningspsykologiska paralleller (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1974).

⁵⁴Olofgörs and Sjöström, Barnpsykoterapi, 22.

⁵⁵Ibid.

⁵⁶Seitz, ”Lek och lekterapi”, 156–182.

⁵⁷Ibid, 156.

⁵⁸Ibid, 156–157.

⁵⁹Ibid, 157.

⁶¹Ibid, 179.

⁶⁰Ibid, 178.

⁶²Nycander, Personlighetsutveckling på avvägar.

⁶³Ibid, 37.

⁶⁴Ibid, 38.

⁶⁵Ibid, 23–24.

⁶⁶Ibid.

⁶⁷Olofgörs and Sjöström, Barnpsykoterapi, 34–35.

⁶⁸Ibid, 57–59.

⁶⁹Ibid, 44.

⁷⁰Ibid, 55–56.

⁷¹Roy J. deCarvalho, “Otto Rank, the Rankian circle in Philadelphia, and the origins of Carl Rogers’ person-centered psychotherapy”, History of Psychology 2 (1999): 132–148.

⁷²Ibid.

⁷³Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the self”, 16–49, 19; Rose, “Engineering the human soul”, 363–364.

⁷⁴Ibid.

⁷⁵Gudrun Seitz, “Lek och lekterapi”, 157.

⁷⁶Bengt Sandin, “Barndomens omvandling – från särart till likhet”, in Bengt Sandin and Gunilla Halldén, eds. Barnets bästa. En antologi om barndomens innebörder och välfärdens organisering (Stockholm Stehag; Symposium, 2003), 221–240; Kriste Lindenmeyer and Bengt Sandin, “National citizenship and early policies: shaping ‘the century of the child’ in Sweden and the United States”, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1 (2008): 50–62.