1. Using Sandplay to Explore Inner States
Do you ever wonder what goes on inside an elder with memory loss? Have you ever considered
what is going on it their interior life? Have you ever been confronted by behaviors that you
knew had some meaning but you didn’t know what?
Having spent over 25 years working with elders and the last 10 years engaging those with
memory loss, these questions are front and center in my thinking. I have lost count of the
many times families have come to me to apologize for their spouse/mother/father’s behavior.
S/he was never this way before they insist. They were never rude, cursed or were difficult.
Then there’s the other side. Daughters in particular express relief and amazement that for the
first time they can be with their parent without feeling criticized or judged. What is going on
here?
The eminent psychiatrist, C.G. Jung has something to offer those of us who confront these
questions and statements. In a line often quoted by gerontologists he said: “A human being
would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty year’s old if this longevity had no meaning for
the species”. As I’ve pondered these words and tried to see their meaning in the context of my
work with elders it seemed obvious to me that just because a person has dementia doesn’t
mean their interior life stops. What if the journey of dementia is part of the journey of their
soul? What if the kinds of behaviors and situations these elders find themselves in is precisely
what is needed for them to free themselves of intractable suffering that has been buried deep
within?
As I was contemplating in this way I was also caring for a beloved aunt – the one who, in my
youth, provided me with the love and affection that my mother couldn’t. In her nineties, 3
years into stroke related dementia, she began talking about having ‘rotten parents’. She also
began cursing. How could this be I asked myself? Didn’t she always extol the virtues of her
parents? Never before had she uttered one negative word about them. As for cursing – she
had always been a total Puritan. Even words like ‘shit’ would bring down a wealth of
reprimands on my head. Yet here she was talking about rotten parents and cursing her way
through her days. Thankfully my years of working with elders helped me not dismiss what was
happening for her. But what was the context? What was the meaning? Was there one?
Together we struggled through this period with lots of listening and encouragement on my part
along with developing close relationships with the staff in the facility where she lived. I needed
them to know that there was some meaning to all of this even if we could not understand what
that was. By the time my aunt died, she seemed to have released a good deal of her hurt,
anger and angst. She left me with a commission. What had happened? What could I have
done to better aid her journey?

2. Life answered my query. My spiritual director retired and donated to me her entire collection
of sandplay figures. For those of you not familiar with sandplay, it is a therapeutic technique,
developed by pediatrician Margaret Lowenfeld that has been used mostly with troubled
children since the 1920s. It consists of a box of sand and hundreds of miniatures that represent
life. The sandplayer chooses figures and builds scenes in the sand. It is a creative act and as
such it bypasses the cognitive functions. The unconscious, that which is unknown to us, takes
over. The result is that a deeper part of us is able to be known in a way that is playful,
generative and powerful. What is created is a reflection of the call of the psyche for that
person.
At the time of this gift I was working in a skilled nursing facility. What to do was the question? I
decided to set up a sandplay area and see how elders living in the home responded. Whenever
I had free time I would corral one or another resident and invite him or her to do a tray with
me. I recruited a helper and over the spring and summer we did about 50 trays……enough to
make me realize that something incredibly healing was going on for many of them.
Wanting to more systematically explore this medium with elders in light of Jung’s counsel, I
went back to graduate school in Jungian studies to do a research project on sandplay and elders
with memory loss. This subject has become the focus of my work as I try to bring the results of
what I discovered to the aging and sandplay communities. With some perseverance and grace, I
am presently writing a book on what I’ve learned over these years using this medium. In early
October, I will be sharing some of the sandplays created by elders and the depth of their
process at the 6th International Conference on Aging and Spirituality held in downtown Los
Angeles. For more information on the conference go to the link
http://www.6thinternationalconference.org/
Caring for elders with memory loss is still in its infancy. Recognizing past trauma and/or buried
emotional content and mining its spiritual potential is barely on the radar of care. My hope is
that conferences such as this and the people who flock to them will begin to spread the word
about sandplay and by so doing, change the nature not only of care for elders with memory
loss, but of how we think about the journey of dementia. There is a remarkable array of folks
slated to present at this conference. All are focused on that one part of the psyche, our spirit,
that is central to elderhood but often overlooked because it is not recognized or valued. I hope
to come away with more connections of like-minded people in the field as well as tools I can
put into practice in my work.