ABSTRACT
When I look at a child’s sandplay series, I find it helpful to relate the scenes to the stages of ego development that were initially described by Neumann (1973) and Kalff (1971 and 1980). Neumann distinguishes five stages. In the first two of these, the ego is primarily in participationmystique with the mother archetype. He describes the initial “phallicchthonian” period, for example, as follows: “Its vegetative and animal form is still in high degree passive…. It has not yet freed itself from the dominance of the matriarchal power of nature and the unconscious.” Although in the next “phallic-magic” stage the ego begins to have “considerable activity of its own,” it is only when the child enters the third or “magic-warlike” stage that the ego
first overcomes its dependence on the matriarchate, so much so that it effects the transition to the patriarchate with which the ensuing “solar ego” is correlated. In the solar-warlike phase, the ego identifies itself with the father archetype. It is followed by the solar-rational stage of the adult patriarchal ego, whose independence culminates in relative freedom of the will, and by the likewise relatively free cognitive ego.
(Neumann 1973:139)