The Consulting Effects Of Sandplay Therapy For Romantic Relationships

The present study aimed to investigate the application of sandplay therapy to the issue of love, which could be divided into two parts as followed.Study 1:The analysis of sandplay work made by singles and people in romantic relationshipHaving adopted the Intro-Extroversion subscale of Eysenck Personality Questionnaire(EPQ) to measure the character of 30 participants, the author, who also combined with their original sandplay work, also implemented the Sternberg Triangular Love Scale(STLS) as well as the Lock-Wallace Romantic-Relationship Adjustment and Prediction Test(LWRRAPT) to selectively measure the love-related matter, aiming to obtain the feature of sandplay work made by singles and participants in romantic relationship respectively. The results showed that 1) The fact that the dimension of intimation was the highest and that of passion was the lowest was existed in participants who made sandplay work; 2) Four key features, including the integration, fluency, dynamic ability and richness were found in their sandplay work. To be specific, house, which was the most favorite toy models for all participants, was found in nearly all the sandplay work; 3) The feature of polarization was revealed by sandplay work by singles, saying that some of them were extremely longing for love while some exhibited intense repel to that; 4) Sandplay work made by participants in romantic relationship demonstrated more positive self-image and were more romantic, indicating the clear plan for future; 5) Many negative features, such as non-objective knowledge toward the world, self-centered, puzzling about the future, inappropriate way of communication, were displayed in sandplay work made by participants with mal-relationship in love; 6) Within the three dimensions of love, the sandplay work done by lovers with intimate trait featured the blue, whereas that of lovers within passion trait were much more colorful.Study 2:Investigation of the effect of sandplay therapy on loversBased on study 1,the author selected 5 participants in unhealthy romantic relationship, in the end,3 lovers attended study2. This part was the case study of consultation to lovers by using the romantic sandplay therapy. The effect was assessed through the measurement of EPQ, STLS, LWRRAPT along with the vis-a-vis interview one week after the counseling. Results exhibited that the romantic sandplay therapy exerted significant influence on the counseling. Specifically, the self-knowledge of those lovers was found improved and so was their affect, the dynamics between lovers, the ability of thinking in a manner of exchanging positions, the frequency of their communication, thereby facilitating the further development of their romantic relationship.To sum up, the present study, which analyzed the features of sandplay work made by singles as well as people in romantic relationship, was regarded to be with practical value. The results could be used in the romantic sandplay therapy for lovers to improve their relationship, which could furthermore provide feasible plans for lovers in contemporary China.