Art Psychotherapy, Vol. 1. pp. 181-184. Pergamon Press. 197% Printed in the U.S.A.

THE ART THERAPIST’S IMAGERY AS A RESPONSE

TO A THERAPEUTIC DIALOGUE*+

ARTHUR ROBBINS, ED.D.

Graduate School of Art Education, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York

LET ME make you imagine that I stand before you. I am aware of a number of nonverbal cues that seem to emanate around me. I’m aware of the various postures and facial expressions of my audi- ence; I feel and experience a number of body cues that impinge upon me. The room, the smells, the noises - all converge to give a total gestalt that has its own internal rhythm and voice. I try not to be aware of my subject but attempt to lose control and let something happen. At times I seem to approach a new state of existence where various images, fantasies, and feelings swell up inside of me. But first let me reach back on to the conscious level of order and reason and ‘tell you something about myself.

I teach art therapists and my genesis and frame of reference come from the world of psychoanal- ysis. I sculpt, theorize and attempt to make some meaning out of the creative dialogue. My purpose here today is to synthesize some of these experi- ences and talk about the use of the therapist’s imagery as a creative response to a self-actualizing relationship.

Now picture if you will a group of art therapy students sitting in a small seminar. They are meeting in my living room. The room is small and we are aware of one another in spite of ourselves. Some are sitting on chairs, others are sitting on the floor. At first there is a tense, expectant air in the room. No one speaks. I look, I wait and wonder what is going to happen. I feel somewhat tense myself. I feel myself to be pushy and controlling. The students in the group have been aware of this, and have reacted in the past in kind. Now this image of my past, this

dominating, controlling figure lies somewhat sub- dued as a stronger sense of me loosens up and springs towards freedom. This is our last session for the year and the reports are due. Then quietly and poignantly one of the students states that he has something to read. Slowly a volley of poetic images and perceptions flow forth as he describes his work with a young boy. I will read you part of this report by Pierre Boenig. But first a few comments. Pierre works in a school for emotionally disturbed children and his report describes the inner life experience of his work with a particular child. I will not attempt to give any of the history but offer to you one paragraph of his report which so much describes what we have been working towards this year.

“Mark goes with me to get my coffee, pours the coffee and then spits in the cup. Exploring the hallway further and further, visiting the class across the hall for a few minutes, hiding when strangers come into our room or trying to kick them out, cursing anyone inside or outside, demanding to be carried. Now I am walking, protecting, stopping, holding, comforting, an ally; fighting, killing and being killed; and also I am the strength, the power where frustration, anger, fear, cries and tears mix, and melt through my acceptance of him. How much is it me, how much is it him. I give my resources, he gives his will to fight the suffocation, the rigid- ity, the conformity, and all of a sudden he is by himself, with himself, his face dry.

“Two days ago I told Mark that his mother would be coming to visit. For two days he worries what she will do to his position in the school. Now

*Presented at 3rd Annual Art Therapy Conference, October 1971. TRequests for reprints should be sent to Arthur Robbins, Ed.D., Graduate School of Art Education, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York 11205.

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I tell him that when she comes I will be on his side, by his side. When mother came into the room Mark was on my lap, on the floor. He, his face on me, and I held him. He cried and screamed at her to get out, to leave. She told him not to cry, to be a good boy and if he would stop crying she would leave. She threw him kisses and looked paler than I had remembered her. Mark hid in my lap, crying so he could not hear what she had to say, wanting her out, away, out of the confusion, the fusion.”

After hearing the report, the students are moved and deeply touched. I am particularly pleased as it graphically summarizes the course and I feel content that we have communicated. At times all of us wondered whether we were participants in a group therapy seminar. However, this didactic, somewhat overbearing imago in me would often put a stop to the flow of material and once again placed us more certainly in a classroom atmosphere. However nebu- lous our subject, whatever the anxieties and tensions that accrued between us, all of us realized that we had been through ari experience.

As I review the course, one thing seems to stand out. Art was play and all of us started to relearn how to play. Our orientation was not on a conscious, goal-directed level. indeed we sought and drifted to a different level of existence. A shift in ego state, if you will, where we were able to toler- ate the paradoxes and ambiguities of our thoughts. We encountered demons of our past, images of lost days and nights that seemed to be encased with untapped reservoirs ‘of energy and power. I would like to talk briefly about these demons or introjects and relate them to what goes on in the creative dialogue.

All of us at one time or another appear to be captured by introjects. Often they creep up on us and literally transpose us so that we lose ourselves completely. These figures are like foreign islands within the deep reaches of our unconscious and represent the figurative embodiment of our personal lost battles and traumas. They have their own independent existence with a whole set of concomi- tant values, perceptions and notions. These island figures are not integrated into a source of self but emerge from time to time and completely dominate our thinking and behavior.

The prescription for growth often calls upon us to face crisis. Through various deveiopmental con- flicts and encounters, key individuals in our past who are associated with these crises are often incor-

porated fully into ourselves, for they are the resuit of an ability to separate and experience loss. For others, the feeling of being overwhelmed by either hostile or sexual impulses is too much for the child’s self to cope with. He thus submits to the larger force and becomes one with it. losing his true self while his quest for identity is crippled. For many, these introjects have damaged the entire ego

of the individual and we experience in our relation- ship with him a con~omeration of disintegrated imagos that has no central force or direction. Fortu- nately, there exists a reparative need to challenge these past devils and demons by externalizing them on a whole welter of different relationships. Sadly enough, the uncanny force and power of these introjects often push the individual to recreate not only the same conflict of his past but also the same result. Thus, for some, human relationships are all too dangerous, and fantasy and unconscious pro- cesses become the focus of emotional investment. However, for a fortunate few, the world of creativ- ity becomes a major source of externalization. Here in the safety and confines of a sphere in which he is completely in charge, the individual dares to bring forth and concretize the early representations of past conflicts.

Perhaps if I start this description of a journey into the unconscious with the very disturbed and distraught, it will provide a frame of reference that can be easily transferred to a wide range of settings as well as groups. As I approach this patient im- mersed in his own world where there has been damage in many areas of perception, affect as well as integration, I search for the right rhythm and meiody to tune in to. For some, 1 can be but an appendage and impose little of my own self or existence. I stand on the outside observing and allowing myse!f completely to be but a small part of what is happening. As I lose some of my own conscious control, I constantly seek ways of blend- ing or fusing into this totality. Gradually I discover the various nonverbal roots that can establish this very early form of relatedness. Slowly I attempt to pick up on the most sensitive level of the patient’s primary sense .of rhythm and touch. Indeed, hope- fully I may be to the patient a sensitive mother who approaches a young child that has been brutal- ized.

In many respects I witness and feel the beginning of a love relationship that may have ail the ingredi- ents of a piercing adoration, a sweetness, or a sub-

THE ART THERAPIST’S IMAGERY AND THERAPEUTIC DIALOGUE 183

lime blissfulne~ and touches the patient as well as myself. Yet as the patient dares to explore on this primary journey that is mediated through graphic play, I observe that something strange is taking hold of me. Seemingly, from out of nowhere, the terror and hell of the patient’s infant self is felt within me.

At times I experience the parental forces that existed in the patient’s past. The long-felt con- tempt, disdain, or ambivalence possesses me like a demon. I now know, indeed feel, what this patient has gone through in his early life. To have the courage not to act out this externalized introject with the patient, to be able to maintain my sense of self and at the same time allow myself to be en- gulfed by these feelings puts a tremendous burden on me. Yet hopefully, if I can show him that I will not be overwhelmed or lose myself to these devils, perhaps then the patient will learn from me and take on my strength. Perhaps I too would try to harness this force through my own personal art work. I will have to decide whether the patient is ready and willing to see what I experience with him. But maybe all that is necessary is for me to know deeply what is going on, which will in and of itself be a communication to the patient. For per- haps where there is a deep sense of injury, part of the reparative work is for the therapist to feel what the patient has felt in the past as a form of repara- tion for past injuries. Thus, together we experience pain, rage, and a whole range of affects and become whole. Involved in this curative as well as creative process, there is a constant flow of energy release. Thus, as one introject subsides another looms up for both of us to encounter and experience. Over and over again I creatively attempt to access the dis- tance and closeness that are required of our relation- ship and determine the dosage that the patient can take of what I have to offer inside of me. At the same time, I am very much aware of my own personal battles and demons and try to separate them out from the art therapy relationship. What I do relate to has much more to do with what is induced by the patient and his work.

I encounter some difficulty in determining the amount of images as well as the kind that I share with a patient. Some experience a sense of intrusion if there is any mutuality. In these instances, I wait until enough time has passed so that he can test out his terrors within the more protective eonfines of his art work. However, at some time or other I wait

for an notation to be sent forth. If none is forth- coming, I wonder if there are feelings inside of me that are interfering in our relationship. On the other hand, there are some who will only enter into an art therapy dialogue when and if I make the first overture. For a few, a self-portrait may be the invitation that is required of me so that the over- ture can begin. Others might be intrigued or touched by a graphic gift. Each has his own starting point and reference and demands all the considera- tion and thought that go on in good child-rearing.

In graphically expressing my own imagery, I am careful not to overwhelm the patient by my skill. indeed, I show my past errors and ask for help. Yet at the same time, it is important that I not be a phony, for he will sense this immediately.

Art imagery that goes on in myself is dealt with differently, depending on the particular problem or issue at hand. I think of the very deprived child, the child that has minimal identification and a vacuum inside of him that speaks of an empty breast. Though he seems depressed, more accurately he is in reality empty. In these instances, my imagery and fantasies are used as a source of stimulation and engagement and at the same time supply the raw food for ego buying. Indeed, I can think of no better way of developing a sense of self than through the exposure of my imagery with the child, which hopefully will touch him at a far deeper level than any verbal dialogue. However, in contrast to the child who has been overwhelmed by a parent, this one will selectively take from me the images and fantasies that will enhance his own sense of genetic destiny.

At times, patients make contact with themselves and learn through a mirror reflection of their own psychic processes. The direct confrontation and verbal dialogue are experienced as wounding. I think in particular of character disorders which fend off anything that is distonic or foreign. In these in- stances, I may outdo the patient’s imagery and exaggerate his defenses, but yet give him distance and control.

One of the areas that lends itself very ,well to the use of mutual imagery sharing is work\ with child- ren. Together we mutually enter a world of fantasy and play. We exchange roles, models, and imagos. Thus together we loosen up, allow our fantasies to travel, and mutually join in the art work. Some- times I cannot do this. I must wait till he has had a long enough period of consolidation through his art

184 ARTHUR ROBBINS

work to go on and act out with me. Yet play therapy should not be confined to

children. Piaying with fantasies and images is what art is all about. Adults need a chance to act out in the safe confines of a therapeutic relationship where there is a joint living out of imagos and roles so that there can be some release of inhibition and constraint.

Thus, as I view the art therapy relationship and its dialogue, the horizons that both patient and therapist can cross appear boundless. The limitation of this journey may well be the therapist’s capacity to experience a whole range of difficult and com- plex feelings that may accrue either from the patient or in himself. The implications of this view point to a different conception of the art therapist than the one that is currently in vogue. Today, for the most part, the art therapist is seen as an adjunc- tive member of a therapeutic team. Often his work is secondary to the main therapeutic process carried on by either the psychiatrist or the psychologist. In addition, he rarely functions in so-called normal settings. Doubtlessly, there will always be a need for

this kind of ancihary work. However, I view the art therapist of the future and his role with many more dimensions. First and foremost. I see him as essen- tially a specialist in the creative process. By implica- tion he must have a very sophisticated knowledge of such processes as fusion. introjection and identifica- tion. At the same time. he must be broad enough to be able to listen to and experience the fantasies of his patients as well as those within himself. Also, he must have a keen understanding of the dynamics of a creative relationship and must know how to enhance this by judiciously sharing and reiating his inner world to that of the patient. Of importnace. he sould be able to work in a wide number of settings and with a broad range of people, for these very same dynamics would seem to apply to most individuals. Thus, the art therapist would no longer limit his creativity to a specific sphere but relate to a whole gestalt of factors and utilize his creativity wherever it is needed. The emerging art therapist should be in deep harmony not only with his patients, his art work, the community, but also himself.