Technique(s) • 147by suggesting body movements and sound making, as well as translating their impulses
onto the paper with crayons.
Pictorial Stimuli
Stimulus drawings (B) were originally created by art therapist Rawley Silver for assessment.
Although her initial purpose was diagnostic, she and others have reported that the set of
50 line drawings can be helpful in art therapy with people who have cognitive impairment,
such as chronic schizophrenics or stroke patients (Silver, 2001). They are also useful in over-
coming resistances, as with suspicious adolescents. First, the pictures—of people, animals,
places, and things—are presented. Next, the person chooses some, imagines something
happening, and shows it in a drawing.
Another easily available and frequently used source of visual stimulation are photographs,
which can become all or part of the final product, as in Helen Landgarten’s Magazine Photo
Collage. On the DVD (C), you can see Landgarten’s colleagues, Shirley Riley (1) and Maxine
Junge (2), using photographs to help families to create.
Many art therapists have also used art reproductions in varying forms—from postcards
that can be handled and sorted, to slides that are projected and magnified. On the DVD (D)
you can see Trude Wertheim-Cahen, an art therapist from the Netherlands, describing her
way of using reproductions with her clients.
Visual Starters
These are especially popular with art therapists of all persuasions, since they act as a stimu-
lus for the person’s own creative ideas. Both Prinzhorn (1922) and Cane (1951) referred to the
Renaissance painter, Leonardo da Vinci. His sources of inspiration were ambiguous visual
forms, such as the variegated colors and cracks on stones and walls, or on wet, crumpled-up
paper. The scribble, used interactively by Winnicott (1964–68, 1971b) and after body move-
ment by Cane (1951), is a similar ambiguous stimulus. In fact, it is probably the most widely
used visual prompt in art therapy, and there are many variations on the theme.
Aina Nucho (2003) described several examples of what she called the Free Flow Technique.
Art therapist Evelyn Virshup (1978) invited her patients to drag a kite string soaked in ink
across the paper, then to develop the abstraction into an image. On the DVD (E), she is
doing that with a group of patients in a drug rehabilitation program.
I often suggest “fooling around” with paints on wet paper as a way of getting ideas for
pictures. Brown (1967) “drew out” schizophrenic patients by placing a dot on the paper,
Hays used a dot-to-dot exercise with children too young to use a scribble as a way of develop-
ing an image, and Vick suggested Prestructured Elements^2 for teenagers.
Using the Nondominant Hemisphere
There are other kinds of loosening up or unfreezing techniques, which are thought to
depend on accessing the nondominant hemisphere of the brain. One involves drawing with
the opposite of the preferred hand. On the DVD (F), expressive arts therapist Natalie Rogers
suggests that to Robin, who she is seeing for the first time. Another requires copying a pic-
ture viewed upside down (Edwards, 1979).
Rapidly executed gesture drawings were first suggested by Kimon Nicolaides (1941) in The
Natural Way to Draw. Another of his ideas, contour drawing, was instrumental in curing
Elizabeth “Grandma” Layton’s lifelong depression (Lambert, 1995; Nichols & Garrett, 1995).
Art therapist Robert Ault (1986), who brought Layton’s story to the professional commu-
nity, reported that doing regular contour drawing seems to have an antidepressant effect. He