Lowenfeld Trust Partnership
Virtual Sandtray is a recognized partner of the Dr Margaret Lowenfeld Trust, which aims to promote and facilitate the innovative work of this important pioneer of child psychotherapy. Virtual Sandtray is taking forward Lowenfeld’s important discovery of Sand play or The World Technique as she called it, in a virtual and accessible format, which has been especially important since the restrictions of Covid 19.
The Dr Lowenfeld Trust also aims to ensure that Key Lowenfeld publications remain in print and that her academic heritage remains available – see www.lowenfeld.org/books-publications for more details.
“Sand tray remains a vital part of current therapeutic work with children, however the precautions and the restrictions of Covid 19 have drawn attention to the importance of the innovation and creativity embedded in the Virtual Sandtray as a way to continue this work both in a clinical setting and in remote work with children. The Dr Margaret Lowenfeld Trust is delighted to be working with the app’s creators to help bring sand play into the 21st Century.”
The Dr Margaret Lowenfeld Trust
“I set for myself as a goal to work out an apparatus which would put into the child’s hand a means of directly expressing his ideas and emotions, one which would allow of the recording of his creations and of abstracting them for study.” (Lowenfeld, 2007, p. 3).
Sand therapy work, including the World Technique and all the derivatives of Dr. Lowenfeld’s work, are currently used internationally with people of all ages.
The projective, creative process of sand therapies, which began with Dr. Lowenfeld, lives on in the Virtual Sandtray; speaking the language of the 21st century while respecting the fundamental tenets of the Lowenfeld intentions.
About Margaret Lowenfeld
Dr Margaret Lowenfeld (1890-1973) was a pediatrician who became a pioneer of child psychology and psychotherapy. Her interest in how children grow and develop and think began when, recently qualified as a doctor, she was involved in relief-work in her ancestral Poland after the First World War. Dr. Lowenfeld wondered what enabled some children to survive and flourish despite their traumatic experiences.
Her outstanding contributions, including the World Technique, Mosaics, Kaleidoblocs, and Poleidoblocs, sprang from her recognition that play is an important activity in children’s development and that language is often an unsatisfactory medium for children to express their experiences. She consequently invented non-verbal techniques that enabled them to convey their thoughts and feelings without resort to words.
The World Technique was developed by Margaret Lowenfeld as a powerful way to engage children in a therapeutic process and to allow them to express themselves non-verbally through play. She allowed them to build a picture of their world using wet and dry sand in separate trays with a selection of miniature toys.
Lowenfeld, M. (2007). Understanding children’s sandplay: Lowenfeld World Technique. Sussex Academic Press.
* Some content adapted from www.lowenfeld.org