Imagination

Our ability to comprehend the depth of children has been profoundly hampered by the beliefs that children are adults in the making, waiting to grow up to claim their wholeness. In reality, children have a much closer access to their truths. Their language is closer to the bone, within reach of what has been referred to as “primitive.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines primitive: “Not derived from something else; relating or belonging to forces of nature; a self-taught artist”. In its root, primitive refers us to coming from the same root as ‘primal’, and ‘primary’, meaning “first, foremost: he who takes first place; chief, leader, from former, original”.  

Linking this up with imagination, which is a child’s own healthy engine of creativity, imagination is “the power of the mind to form images, especially of what is not present to the senses”. Imagination enhances what is available to the senses, expressing images from what is discovered from an implicit reality. In attending to images, we are really making a second swipe at what we mean by primitive, prime, relating to the forces of nature.

When we piece together the absolute requirement that safe relationship be present for imagination to emerge in play, the willingness of the therapist to stand by with full attention on the child enables the child to make use of this acceptance, and trust his imagination as spokesperson. The therapist is not the healer. He is the container to this growing trust in the self of the child. The therapist understands his position as witness and guide within the child’s own story and personal myth. With the full attention of the witness, the child trusts that powerful force that is created both from the child’s personal world and from the felt sense of the child’s meanings. This is the thing: in this moment the therapist is present for this child and this child’s efforts alone. And the child relies on this presence of another to trust herself to an interior world that has veiled itself or closed down for any number of reasons. Relying on someone: the word has come from “leig: to bind”, which is “to have faith in”. It’s so important to truly understand who we ourselves are in the

work, and who we are in service to, in order to remain reliable, our skills in a basket near the door, to this powerful presence within the child. Our own openness brings us the gifts of the child’s use of us. This is the meaning of the third space: the child, ourselves, and the unknown. This third space, the imaginal, governs healing. The child approaches this space of healing through the strength of the unconditional regard within the relationship, when this regard has been built and is ready for the use of the child’s un-languaged and fully knowing vocabulary of self.

Imagination is the linchpin that swivels us from navigating the needs of the world around us, to listening to a different voice that communicates from within, through the body and through imagining what the body and our internal communicator is saying. As imagination guides the child’s work to deeper and deeper levels, a kind of fusion between feelings and toys takes place, which is at the heart of using sandtray and art. The feelings canvassed are deep emotions, which lessens both the use of and the need for words as communication.