Center Staff
The Center for Culture and Sandplay: The environment at the Center supports a multicultural milieu. The Center's collection of several thousand carefully chosen symbols represents two decades of searching for elements that represent global, indigenous world views, as well as modern and post-modern constructions of culture.
Dee Preston-Dillon, Director. An approved Association for Play Therapy (APT) Provider 05-161.
"My philosophical interest is to bring a healthy respect for sandplay therapy to the professional community, create quality experiential innovations for training, and open global cultural dialogues through the sandplay process." Dee Preston-Dillon, Ph.D.
Supposition: A healer must have a safe and protected space to do his or her own work in the sand, to express the inner creative, to face the existential moment, and to feel validated for the experience.
Purpose: Our purpose is to create a safe, academically informed, non-judgmental space to support Jungian sandplay training (Kalff, 1980)*. We combine sandplay with other psychotherapeutic modalities such as the Narrative approaches developed by White and Epston (1990)* and Social Constructionism (see McNamee and Gergen, 1992)*. Training at the Center features cross-cultural, humanistic/existential and Jungian perspectives to develop therapist efficacy in the creative arts centered on sandplay.
Participants in the training include social workers, school counselors, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, graduate students, and administrators of mental health centers. Our work at the Center gives therapists an opportunity for deep reflection. Therapists leave with new skills, nourished and revitalized for their own work.
Research: My doctoral research examined ethnocentrism and the emergence of ethnic identity in sandplay for indigenous and multicultural peoples. I developed a qualitative methodology to examine two case studies showing Jungian and cultural dimensions of the sand scenes. The cultural amplifications included Cherokee, Navajo, traditional Hawaiian, and Jewish myth-symbol meanings. Analysis of sandplay scenes becomes quite rich when we apply a multidimensional schema that includes social constructions and pivotal historical moments.
Background: In private practice and university teaching since 1976, my focus has evolved to the development of creative training programs for professionals who seek experience in sandplay therapy and culturally conscious counseling strategies. My initial training in sandplay therapy began in the mid 1980s in Hawaii with Dr. Chonita Larsen, a founding member of the International Sandplay Society.
Presentations:
Training and consultations are done on site at the Center for Culture and Sandplay in College Park, MD, as well as at other locations by prior arrangement.
Previous workshops:
Center Staff:
Loraine Hunsaker, Network Coordinator for Sandplay Voices. Loraine will maintain our email contacts, make sure your questions get a timely response, and update contact lists. Loraine takes the helm to help keep our voyage on course and will bring some extra surprises to our Sandplay Voices Network.
Amy Turner, Sand Scene Archivist. Amy will soon be creating personal files for our participants who have photos on file and who wish to have a copy of the series of scenes they created. We have years of achieved photos and we want to get those to you. When you want to start a file of all your previous sand scenes place Amy in the subject of your email to sandplayvoices@cultureplay.com.
Amanda Jennings, Community Training Liaison. Amanda will coordinate our community presentations, graduate student groups, and clinic staff trainings. If you or your staff would like training or a rejuvenating retreat, contact Amanda at sandplayvoices@cultureplay.com and place Amanda in the subject of your email. Amanda will work to coordinate schedules and provide details on training content. We are available to create a deepening experience for renewal for your teachers, counselors, administrators, and your health care professional staff.
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