Sand, soul and psyche: A study of fairy tale and the healing imagination in the clinical practice of psychoanalysis

Based on the work of C. G. Jung, this paper uses fairy tales found in the collection of the Brothers Grimm, as wells as clinical cases from analytic practice to develop the thesis that imagery is the language of the psyche, and the human imagination the primordial field in which the seemingly mutually exclusive aspects of mind and matter interpenetrate. The study shows how the spontaneously emergent images of psyche can be used both as primary tools of treatment and as a means for understanding the structure and dynamics of the inter-related developmental schema of life. It demonstrates the way that projective techniques such as sandplay and drawing confirm these ideas and why they should be considered as integral components of psychoanalytical treatment.; Section I introduces the basic concepts of Jungian terminology through the interpretation of a Grimms' fairy tale, The Blue Light, and pursues a comparison of its imagery to cases from my clinical practice. It also describes the way I view the tale as a spontaneous portrayal of the phases of a redemptive process and the activity of an autonomous "otherness" that governs all psychic transformation.; Section II demonstrates through presentation of the case of a young woman whose childhood had been repeatedly marked by trauma, the important implications of Jung's work in the use of projective techniques. Using the Grimm's fairy tale, Hans My Hedgehog as the archetypal background of the case, it shows the way that the engagement of the imaginal in sandplay, drawing, dream and in transference and countertransference dynamics affects psychotherapeutic treatment. The material is related to both Jungian psychology and to object relations theory, showing how such work carries forward the understanding of psychoanalytic issues and clinical technique.