The debate on abortion has tended to avoid the psychological significance of an unwanted pregnancy, dominated instead by the strong emotions the subject excites. In this book Eva Pattis Zoja examines the thoughts and feelings that surround the decision to end a pregnancy, through the dreams, diary entries and reports of the women themselves.
"Abortion" proposes the controversial thesis that although contraception is so readily available that the occurrence of unwanted pregnancy should become nil, abortion has now become a rite of passage in womanhood. While acknowledging the painful nature of the subject, the author suggests that this decision to abort as a way to development is one beyond the explanation of modern, enlightened rationalism.

Sandplay Therapy in Vulnerable Communities offers a new method of therapeutic care for people in acute crisis situations such as natural disasters and war, as well as the long-term care of children and adults in areas of social adversity including slums, refugee camps and high-density urban areas.

This book provides detailed case studies of work carried out in South Africa, China and Colombia and combines practical discussions of expressive sandwork projects with brief overviews of their sociohistoric background. Further topics covered include:

• the social aspect of psychoanalysis
• the importance of play
• pictographic writing and the psyche.

Providing the reader with clear, practical instructions for carrying out their own sandwork project, this book will be essential reading not only for psychotherapists involved with sandplay therapy but also for those with an interest in cross cultural psychotherapy, as well as all professionals working with those in situations of social adversity.

Ten European sandplay therapists describe how severe psychopathologies can be treated in the free and protected space of the sandbox. The sandplay therapy cases in this book illustrate some of the most difficult, yet also most effective applications: psychoses, borderline syndromes, psychosomatic illnesses, drug addictions, or narcissistic character disorders. Sandplay seems to access areas of human suffering which have otherwise always resisted psychotherapeutic treatment. Recent research in neuroscience explains why this is possible: trauma is not remembered in verbal form -- what has never been articulated in words nor ever shaped cannot be outwardly expressed. In sandplay, however, it manifests itself as a form, shaped by the hands. The inexpressible can be seen and touched -- therefore, it can be transformed.