Marble Mindfulness: Unlock Your Family’S Hidden Messages

By George Toth

Have you lost your marbles? The question may imply that you are not thinking clearly, not making sense, or that your brain may need to be rewired. Marble Mindfulness explores the opposite of losing your marbles. It explains how marbles can be used to determine the reality in individual and family relationships.

Author George Toth, a therapist who has been using marbles as a diagnostic tool for more than forty years, provides a simple, step-by-step technique to interpret marbles and other small objects. Quick, creative, and accurate, this method will help you identify conscious and subconscious messages about strength of relationships, personality traits, feelings, beliefs, values, and place within the family or group. In addition, Toth shows how marbles can be used as a tool for assessing and improving team sports performance, small business goals, and corporate functioning.

With charts, instructions, and case studies included, Marble Mindfulness can assist you in unlocking hidden messages, gaining important insights about you and your family, and making plans for change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450282796

George Toth

GEORGE TOTH, LCSW-R is a psychotherapist, a hypnotist, and an adjunct professor of family counseling at Long Island University. Toth is also the author of Marble Mindfulness: Unlock Your Family’s Hidden Messages. He and his wife, Diana, have seven grandchildren and live in Cornwall, New York.

Book preview

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my daughter Tracy Gillespie, for creating the marble relief print art used on the book cover design.

Thank you to Christopher D. my daughter Sarah and Savannah Fahrbach of Mixture Prints, for their support with the book graphics, and thank you Ian Marcus for creating the marble graphic designs.

I want to thank my daughter Emily Underwood, for the Information Technology support.

Thank you to my daughter Megan Christian, for your encouragement and ideas about using marbles in therapy.

I want to thank my wife Diana Marie, for contributing a case analysis using a family marble constellation.

Contents

Part One

Introduction

Marbles as a Psychotherapeutic Tool

Analysis Factors—Color Systems and Family Systems

Case Study #1: Bill’s Volunteer Experience (No Symptoms)

Case Study #2: John’s Anger Management

Case Study #3: Jill’s Anxiety and Depression

Case Study #4: Joan’s Depression

Case Study #5: Bill’s Depression and Anxiety

Case Study #6: Dorothy’s Depression and Suicide Attempt

Part Two

Self-Help Tool

Organized Sports Applications: Case Study #7: The Tennis Team

Organized Sports Applications: Case Studies #8 and #9: The Baseball Team

Case Study #10: Business Family

Case Study #11: Retail Family

Case Study #12: E-Family

Visual Imagery with Marbles

Conclusion

References

Part One: Psychotherapy Assessment

Introduction

The popular question Have you lost your marbles? asks, Have you lost your mind? The question may imply that you are not thinking clearly or not making sense or that your brain may need to be rewired. We often think we are losing our marbles when we are not; we are actually uncovering information about our family.

This book explores the opposite of losing your marbles. It explains how to determine the reality in individual and family relationships by seeking a clear understanding of where you and your family members stand within your family constellation. It helps you to make sense of relationships of your past, present, and future.

Numerous case examples have demonstrated that marbles—real marbles, not mental marbles—can transition the work of addressing serious relationship issues from play to treatment in a split second. Marbles facilitate discussion by providing another dimension to the process of analyzing complex, infinitely varied, and often frustrating family relationships. The use of marbles for this purpose can also be very rewarding and healing. Human behavior and motivation have been studied for centuries, but this tool provides insights into the process of understanding family relationships quickly and accurately.

Of course, it is important to be mindful and sensitive to others, their belief systems, and their values. It is also important to end your session on a positive note, with the feeling of self-worth, growth, hope, and respect for others. I hope that the description of this tool in this book will be helpful to all who use it.

Marbles have been around for thousands of years. The earliest marbles, found in Egypt, were made of stone and clay and date from 2500 BC to 3000 BC, according to carbon-dating technology. Archaeologists have dug up small balls of clay, flint and stone in the caves of Europe and in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs (Ferretti, 1973). Marbles have been found in Rome dating from about 445 BC. Early examples of marbles from around the world are displayed in museums and are considered collectable items (Randall and Webb, 1988).

Marbles are usually made from glass, stone, clay, wood, plastic, steel, or other suitable material. Traditionally used for games and decoration, they have been used more recently in psychotherapy, family counseling, and stress-reduction efforts.

I was first introduced to the use of marbles as a professional tool in May 1969 at a behavioral health training session at the Alsilomar training facility in Monterey, California. This was one of many ongoing training sessions I attended as a clinical social worker at Agnews State Hospital in San Jose, California. At that time, great emphasis was placed on returning long-term psychiatric hospital patients back to the community and to their families. I remember that my first exposure to this tool was so dramatic that it was firmly embedded in my mind.

A hat filled with beautiful and colorful marbles on the floor seemed so out of place in a classroom and particularly uncharacteristic in a training session. At that time, marbles represented play and fun to me, while the classroom represented school and work. In my mind, this was a complete disconnect. However, the arrangement heightened my interest and anticipation before the class started. In fact, everyone who walked into the classroom stared in silence at the hat full of marbles.

What happened next was incredible. The instructor transformed the marbles from toys to a therapeutic tool for a serious case assessment and treatment. That was the defining moment for me; marbles were forever reframed and redefined in my mind in a dramatic transformation from plaything to serious tool.

The instructor explained that each marble could represent a person in your family. If a person thoughtfully selected marbles from the hat and arranged them on the floor, he or she could easily discuss each marble as a person, noting the location and position, color, size and composition, and be led into a discussion of personal and family characteristics.

It was amazing to see marbles used as a clinical assessment tool for individual and family therapy! I was mesmerized! Hypnotized! In one brief session, I saw how quickly and effectively the method could help me and my patients’ understanding of patient and family dynamics. It helped the patient see and clarify relationships among family members and helped the therapist ask specifically targeted questions about past, present, and future family issues. Both patient and