150 • Introduction to Art Therapy
These approaches using art materials resemble free association in mental imagery, which in
some ways is what happens in psychoanalysis, but which has also been requested at times by
clinicians. They also resemble Active Imagination as practiced by Jungian analysts (Chodorow,
1997), who encourage not only mental imagery, but also art, movement, and drama as ways
to enhance the associative process. On the DVD (K), you can see Jungian expressive arts
therapist Carolyn Grant Fay inviting her client to move in response to a drawing.
A series of cartoon drawings was proposed by Crowley and Mills, Ericksonian child ther-
apists. Using children’s natural fascination with cartoon characters, they suggested various
exercises to parents and teachers as a way of helping children to deal creatively with stressful
situations in their book, Cartoon Magic (1989).
Facilitating Expression (DVD 7.2)
Motivational Techniques
Although young children are less likely to be inhibited about using art materials than ado-
lescents or adults, they may still have difficulty creating authentically. Edith Kramer has
proposed a classification of ways of using art materials that is relevant for all age levels: (1)
Precursory Activities, (2) Chaotic Discharge, (3) Art in the Service of Defense (stereotypes
or copying), (4) Pictographs, and (5) Formed Expression.
Such an analysis is useful not only in understanding what is produced, but also in
thinking of ways to motivate people to achieve a higher level of artistic expression.
Stereotyped work, for example, is common during what Viktor Lowenfeld (1957) called
the “schematic” stage in normal artistic development, for which he suggested various
motivational techniques.
One of his central ideas was the importance of what he called the child’s “self-identifica-
tion” with whatever was being represented. Lowenfeld recommended that children not only
imagine doing the activity to be drawn (like brushing teeth), but enact it as well, thus acti-
vating the child’s sensory awareness. He also proposed the respectful notion of “extending
the frame of reference”—working within and with the child’s imagery, rather than trying to
suppress even bizarre ideas.
Artistic Interventions
Another set of Lowenfeld techniques involved the use of the worker’s “auxiliary ego” to
assist the child when his own resources are not sufficient to function autonomously. That
is one way to think about closure, which means starting a clay modeling or drawing for the
child to finish. David Henley (1992, 2002) has used Lowenfeld’s ideas in art therapy. He also
noted that pictorial interventions—which Edith Kramer called “using the art therapist’s
third hand”—are compatible, as long as they do not distort. On the DVD (A), you see Shirley
Riley starting a drawing so that a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, who had been unable to
begin drawing, can finish it.
One clinician who used his own drawing and associative processes in order to relate to
children was British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, who took turns making and develop-
ing a series of pencil “squiggles” into pictures. Although playful, the technique penetrates
deeply, and requires considerable expertise on the part of the therapist. It is particularly
effective where time is of the essence, as it often was for Winnicott ( F i g u r e 7. 2), who might
have only one consultation with a child brought to see him from a great distance (Winnicott,
1964–68, 1971b).