People We Serve • 169Those Who Are Resistant
Those who are able to talk, but are resistant to verbal therapy, may be more accessible
through art, especially if other avenues have been tried and failed. Despite the anxiety of
most adolescents and adults about their artistic abilities, even wary and hostile patients
can become engaged if the art activity is presented in a nonthreatening way. Those who
are suspicious of verbal therapy and fear that a therapist will “play with their minds,” may
be more willing to use paint or clay than to talk. Like all elective mutes, Ellen refused to
speak, but art was an open avenue of expression. As you will see in the following vignette, it
proved to be the key that unlocked her ability to reconnect with her family and eventually
to recover.
Art Therapy With an Elective Mute: ELLEN (11)
Ellen had seemed quite normal until the day she got mad at her deaf older sister and stopped
talking to her. Shortly after that, she stopped speaking to her alcoholic mother, then to her
father, and then to her best friends. By the time she was admitted to Children’s Hospital of
Pittsburgh for a month of observation, her selective silences had been going on for almost
two years. When Ellen refused to return home, she was sent to live with her grandmother,
one of the few people to whom she still spoke, on the condition that she come to the Child
Guidance Center for psychotherapy.
She had refused to enter the building or to talk to the child psychiatrist assigned to her
case, even when he went to her grandmother’s car. Ellen was therefore referred for the only
nonverbal treatment available—art therapy. I was relieved that she was willing to come to
my office, to use some clay (albeit with her back to me), and to draw, facing me as she did so
(DVD 8.1).
But when I requested, at the end of her first session, that she leave her picture on a shelf
reserved for her, like the others in art therapy, Ellen got very upset. When I asked if we could
photocopy it before she left the clinic, she refused, angrily blurting out “You didn’t tell me!”
She walked out rapidly, clutching the drawing tightly to her chest.
Figure 8.2 Mary Ann Hayden-Shaughnessy.