By Rina Louw, MSocSc & Jungian Sandplay Practitioner
🌱 A Personal Note: Why I Am Studying Complexes
Over the past months, I have found myself returning again and again to Jung’s writings on complexes—those emotionally charged inner patterns that shape our feelings, behaviours, and relationships. As part of my professional development and my own Jungian studies, I felt drawn to explore complexes more deeply. Not only to understand them intellectually, but to recognise how they appear symbolically in the Sandplay room with the children and adults I support.
In my Sand & Clay Centre, I witness daily how the psyche speaks through symbol—through tiny figures, through the placement of objects, through silence, movement, or chaos. I began asking myself:
- How do I truly recognise when a complex has appeared?
- How does a complex show itself differently in children and adults?
- What does it mean for the therapeutic process when a complex emerges in the sand tray?
This blog grew out of those personal questions.
It is both part of my learning journey and an offering to fellow practitioners, parents, teachers, or anyone curious about the deeper movements of the psyche.
What follows is the clearest summary I have developed so far—rooted in Jung, enriched by Sandplay authors, and grounded in what I witness in practice.
🌟 What Is a Complex? (In Simple Jungian Terms)
A complex is a cluster of emotions, memories, images, and bodily sensations organised around a wound or developmental theme. Complexes are normal. Everyone has them.
But when activated, they can overwhelm the ego—especially in children.
In Sandplay, complexes show themselves not through words but through symbol, pattern, and energy.
🌟 How to Identify a Complex in Sandplay — 12 Signs
Below are the 12 most reliable signs that a complex is constellating in the tray—first explained, then explored in how they may differ between children and adults.
⭐ 1. Disproportionate Emotional Intensity
Children:
Explosive anger, sudden fear, withdrawal, crying, or frantic behaviour.
Adults:
Tears that come “from nowhere,” shame that feels too big, or emotional flooding.
Jung called this surplus affect—emotion that belongs to the past, not the present (CW 8).
⭐ 2. Repetition Across Sessions
Children:
Rebuilding the same war, burying the same figure, recreating chaos.
Adults:
Symbolic repetition: prisons, boats, deserts, abandoned houses, or repeated relational structures.
As Kalff noted, the psyche repeats until it transforms.
⭐ 3. Strong Reactions to Certain Symbols
Children:
Breaking a parent figure, hiding a baby, refusing to touch snakes.
Adults:
Avoiding specific archetypal images, feeling “drawn” or “repelled” by a figure, or becoming emotional when selecting a symbol.
Jacobi described symbols as magnets for complex energy.
⭐ 4. Polarity and Splitting (Good vs Bad)
Children:
Heroes vs monsters, victims vs attackers.
Adults:
Dark vs light landscapes, angels vs demons, moralistic separations.
This shows that opposites are not yet integrated in the psyche.
⭐ 5. Chaos or Fragmentation
Children:
Overturned figures, scattered sand, broken toys.
Adults:
Disjointed tray with no centre, fragmented themes, or dissociated scenes.
Weinrib saw this frequently in trays reflecting trauma.
⭐ 6. Over-Sized or Under-Sized Figures
Children:
Tiny helpless figures or enormous dominating ones.
Adults:
Small self-representation, giant predators, or amplified archetypes.
A sign of power or helplessness complexes.
⭐ 7. Isolation of Key Figures
Children:
A lone child figure, parents far apart, no connection.
Adults:
An isolated home, a figure standing alone, or relational symbols placed out of reach.
Ammann emphasised distance as a symbolic expression of inner emotional separation.
⭐ 8. Control or Destruction
Children:
Knocking down scenes, rigid placement, perfectionistic building.
Adults:
Overly controlled trays, sudden destruction of part of the scene, erasing symbols.
Reflects the ego’s attempt to manage overwhelming inner material.
⭐ 9. Missing Elements
Children:
No caregivers, no home, no protector.
Adults:
No self-figure, no grounding symbol, or an empty tray except for one object.
Absence often speaks louder than presence.
⭐ 10. Overuse of a Quadrant
Children:
Bottom quadrants: unconscious or shadow material.
Adults:
Right side: conflict or trauma
Left side: emotional processing
Bottom right: complex activation
Top left: emerging integration
Ammann’s quadrant framework helps track where the psyche is “working.”
⭐ 11. Protector–Persecutor Dynamics
Children:
Monsters attacking babies, heroes fighting villains.
Adults:
Threatening structures, watchtowers, shadow figures, or symbolic inner protectors.
Kalsched’s trauma theory explains this as the psyche shielding the vulnerable self.
⭐ 12. Body-Based Shifts During Play
Children:
Freeze, hyperactivity, breath changes.
Adults:
Shallow breathing, tension, tears, silence, withdrawal.
The body reacts long before the mind understands (Siegel).
🌿 What It Means When a Complex Appears
For me as a practitioner, identifying a complex in the tray is not about “diagnosing.”
It is about recognising the place where the psyche is alive and seeking healing.
When I see a complex emerging, I understand:
✔ The complex becomes the organising theme of the process
The tray will circle around this emotional centre until integration begins.
✔ My role shifts from directing to witnessing
Kalff insisted that healing emerges from the symbolic process—not interpretation.
✔ The ego begins to separate from the complex
In children, this happens through play.
In adults, through symbolic distance and insight.
✔ The process will move toward a healing image
Eventually, the tray will show:
- a bridge
- a circle or mandala
- a centred tree
- a restored home
- a protector figure
- a unified landscape
These are signs that the psyche is reorganising around wholeness—not the wound.
🌿 Why This Matters to My Own Professional Journey
Studying complexes has become part of my own individuation.
It is teaching me to trust the psyche, to look beneath behaviour, and to honour the deeper movements unfolding in symbol.
Understanding complexes has made me:
- more attuned to subtle emotional cues
- more grounded during chaotic play
- more patient with repetition
- more confident in allowing the tray to “speak for itself”
- more humbled by the intelligence of the Self
This learning deepens not only my clinical work but also my personal path.
📚 References
Jung, C.G. (CW 8 & 9i).
Kalff, D. (1980). Sandplay: A Psychotherapeutic Approach to the Psyche.
Jacobi, J. (1959). Complex/Archetype/Symbol.
Weinrib, E. (1983). Images of the Self.
Ammann, R. (1991). Healing and Transformation in Sandplay.
Bradway, K. & McCoard, B. (1997). Sandplay: Silent Workshop of the Psyche.
Kalsched, D. (1996). The Inner World of Trauma.
Siegel, D. (2012). The Developing Mind.
✨
🌿👑