ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a description of the author’s attempt to adapt what has generally been an individual therapy approach to a group application. The chapter focuses on the Sandplay technique and Jungian psychology. It appears that there is a subgroup of eating disorder patients where a relationship with an emotionally or physically distant father appeared to be the source of their problems. Indeed, some of the patients in this subgroup felt that their fathers wanted a boy child and the female child attempted to oblige him by denying her femaleness by maintaining an athletic bodily physique. The chapter reviews that the effectiveness of the adaptation of Jungian Sandplay to the group setting at the Eating Disorder Clinic is evident. The group discussions that followed the construction of the sand trays allowed them to share their discoveries and to be seen and heard in their authenticity.
