Orphan . . . parentless . . . Oliver Twist . . .children of war. . . a lamb being bottle fed. . . aloneness . . .misplaced . . .Dorothy on the yellow brick road . . . outsider . . . Bambi . . . loss . . . Harry Potter . . .
bewilderment . . . Images and emotions touched us as Dr. Punnett invited us into the world of the archetype Orphan.
Audrey Punnett and Dyane Sherwood shared with us a day of immersion into this archetype in Oberlin, Ohio recently with proceeds going as a donation to the Sandplay Therapists of America Diversity Scholarship Fund. During a two hour presentation to Jung Cleveland the night before, watching Punnett's images of orphans evoked the recognizable feel of being orphaned and expanded our sense of the Orphan archetype to include many facets. As we gathered, we shared the ways we had felt drawn to this workshop. We acknowledged losses of parents, discussed how one can be a psychological orphan, alone in a group or family, or an outsider in a culture. One woman acknowledged the synchronicity that was occurring for her, "I saw you were coming and you had a book, just at the time there were lots of things happening in my own life. I'm reading your book for a second time and it's helping” (The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness by Audrey Punnett, 2014).
As the scope of our awareness of the Orphan archetype broadened, there grew a sense of curiosity, of connections in our own histories and experience, which brought us with new insight into the case material which Punnett and Sherwood presented.
We began to remember, with Carl Jung, “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible” (Jung, MDR, pp.327-328).
Punnett began her case presentation with the background of the boy she called “John.” During the morning she invited us to look at John's sandplay process, noting in his sand pictures his presentation of the problem, followed by his growing connection with his Self, and toward the end, his ability to function in society. Punnett involved the whole group as we conferred about John's presenting problems, the effect of his delayed start in therapy, potential difficulties that might arise, and how the co-transference might proceed. There was a rich interchange within the group, tapping a variety of perspectives, experiences, and cultures. In viewing John's sand pictures, we got to watch his progress from feeling himself alone and depressed, into awakening awareness and coming into his own.
By the end of his sandplay process, John had moved out of the grip of the Orphan complex and had made significant progress on his own path of individuation. There were changes in his family which supported his growth, and an acknowledgment of what wasn't changing, both of which helped support John's journey.
In the afternoon, Dyane Sherwood invited us to immerse in pictures of orphans from many cultures and times. We could feel connections with their aloneness and considered how experiencing the Orphan archetype could affect later relational patterns of abandonment. We all became aware of the heaviness that pervaded the room with the presence of this archetype.
Sherwood then shared her own story of parental indifference to her true self and how the Orphan archetype became an invisible part of her psyche. She told us about the year's post doc she did at the UCSF Infant-Parent Program, studying early emotional development and doing intensive clinical work with infants and toddlers and their parents. This experience deepened her own work in analysis and has had a profound effect on how she has practiced during the past thirty years. She brought vividly to life the stories of three children and their mothers from that time. She helped us understand the varied ways these children had been “orphaned.” We got to hear about the coming-to-life which occurred as Sherwood worked with mothers and their relationships to their children. We could feel the push toward health and growth from that activated Orphan archetype which Sherwood was able to support and witness, even as she was being supported and witnessed by her supervisors.
Sherwood finished her presentation by introducing “Suda,” a young Asian girl who had been given up for adoption and then orphaned again when her adoptive mother died. Synchronicity brought her together with May, an Asian woman wanting to adopt. Suda's sandplay process demonstrates this orphan's strengths, and her journey through trauma to increasing strength. Sherwood shared with us know that Suda worked through the issues she was facing as a child. Suda also confronted herself and her life again as a teen, reminding us the process isn't done forever, it is done for now. We will get another chance to work on it when it comes around again.
We came away from this rich experience with a broader feel for how the Orphan archetype shows up, a deeper connection with ourselves and our own experiences of the archetype, and a sense of awe for the strengths that come with being marked with the Orphan archetype: being called to action toward wholeness, learning to thrive regardless, and being who we are more fully.
REFERENCES
Jung, C.G. (1965). Memories Dreams Reflections. New York: Vintage Books.
Punnett, A. (2014). The Orphan: A journey to wholeness. Fisher King Press.
ELLEN H. SAUL, MS, LP, CST-T, is a psychologist who works with children, families, individuals and couples in a private practice in rural Minnesota. A graduate of Mackinac College, she received her MS from Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is a teaching member of ISST and STA and has been using sandplay since 1993 in her practice. She is using her experience in sandplay to provide Sandplay process with therapists along with training and consultation. She enjoys teaching and sharing her enthusiasm for Sandplay. She has studied with Dr. Agnes Bayley and incorporates “In Touch Again” strategies in her therapeutic work. Her interest in Body, Mind, Spirit connections led her to complete studies and add work as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner to her broad scope of multi-modal approaches to healing work. She is currently serving on the STA Board, after ten years of active participation (as secretary and president) on the Board of the Minnesota Sandplay Therapy Group (MSTG). She chaired the Program Committee for the STA National Conference in 2012. She is a contributor to the Journal of Sandplay Therapy (JST). CORRESPONDENCE: [email protected].
AUDREY PUNNETT, PhD, RPT-S, CST-T, is a Licensed Psychologist, Registered Play Therapist, Supervisor (RPT-S) and Teaching Member (CST-T) of STA (Sandplay Therapists of America) and ISST (International Society for Sandplay Therapy). She is the past chair of the board of trustees of Sandplay Therapists of America (STA). Dr. Punnett is a certified child, adolescent and adult analyst graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich and a member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She is a member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) and served on the executive board of the Association of Graduates in Analytical Psychology (AGAP). She teaches nationally and internationally; her publications include: A Meta-analysis of Antidepressant Outcome Studies Involving Children and Adolescents in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51(3); The Child Evaluation Inventory: An Adaptation for Asthma Camp in Children's Health Care, 23(1); and articles in the Journal of Sandplay Therapy (JST). Her book The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness (2014) is published by Fisher King Press. Dr. Punnett is an Associate Clinical Professor, UCSF-
Fresno, Department of Psychiatry and maintains a private practice in Fresno, CA, USA. CORRESPONDECENCE: [email protected]
DYANE N. SHERWOOD, PhD is a Jungian Psychoanalyst and Certified Sandplay Therapist in private practice in Oberlin, Ohio. She is especially grateful to June Matthews for introducing her to sandplay therapy in 1983, and she dedicated this lecture to her. Dr. Sherwood is a graduate of Wellesley College and received her Ph.D. in Psychology, with a specialization in neuroscience, from the University of California, Berkeley. She later trained as a clinician and received her analytic training at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. There she became a member of the teaching faculty, served as a member of the Board of Trustees, and was for ten years the Editor of the Institute’s international journal, The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, renamed Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche. She co-authored, with the late Joseph Henderson, M.D., Transformation of the Psyche: The Symbolic Alchemy of the Splendor Solis (Routledge, 2003).
ABOUT THE ARTIST DONNA JOHNSON, LCSW, ATR-BC, CST-T, is a Jungian psychotherapist and artist who was born and raised in the southeast United States. She currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. For thirty years she has specialized in art therapy and sandplay therapy. She is a registered and board certified art therapist and a licensed clinical social worker. She is a certified sandplay therapist and a teaching member of the International Society for Sandplay Therapy and is a faculty and board member of the Sandplay Therapy Institute. Simultaneously, she has studied painting, first at Wake Forest University earning a BA in psychology and then at the University of Tennessee where she earned a BFA in 2003. She received an MA in painting at Savannah College of Art & Design specializing in encaustic painting in 2008. A number of her paintings have been published in the Journal of Sandplay Therapy due to their archetypal content. She was showcased to the Atlanta art scene as an emerging artist in 2009 in shows at both Alan Avery Art Company and Bill Lowe Gallery. Her encaustic work has received international acclaim in IEA EncaustiCon 2012 and Metamorphosis: Contemporary Statements in Encaustic. She is a fellow of Hambidge Art Center with residencies in 2011 and 2012. Her work is on view at Reinike Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Donna Johnson’s work explores psychological and spiritual transformation merging her background as artist, art therapist, and Jungian psychotherapist. She is fascinated with abstracting the forms of archetypal motifs from alchemy and Jungian symbolism. Her desire to paint comes from a need to express visually what cannot be concretized into words. www.donnajohnsonart.com
THE ORPHAN: A PRESENTATION BY AUDREY PUNNETT & DYANE SHERWOOD
A Reflection by Ellen H. Saul Faribault, MN, USA
KEY WORDS: Orphan, archetype, sandplay, Jung, image, symbol, individuation, loneliness, Punnett, Sherwood, wholeness, loneliness, Reflection. ABSTRACT: The author reflects on the daylong presentation by Audrey Punnett and Dyane Sherwood “The Orphan: The Psychic Drive for Wholeness" in Oberlin, Ohio (2016). They explored the Jungian archetype of the Orphan, with its widespread connections to loneliness in many circumstances as well as its potential to strive for wholeness and individuation.
