170 • Introduction to Art Therapy
Despite this uncomfortable beginning, Ellen seemed to loosen up a bit during the next four
sessions. She was interested in my portraits of her doing artwork (A), and was willing to engage
in a nonverbal “drawing dialogue,” which became fairly intense (B). She even whispered
responses to some of my questions about her drawings. I thought we were getting somewhere.
After a six-week interruption—due to vacations and scheduling problems in the Fall—
Ellen returned, and created the first versions of what eventually became a rigidly repetitive
visual theme. She began her marker drawing with several tight, geometric, linear designs,
and then continued on the same paper with a fishbowl, a horse’s head, a tree, a geometric
flower pot, and finally three creatures in the center, the last with an angry tongue sticking
out of a twisted mouth (C). I noted with relief that her posture was more relaxed while she
was drawing the creatures (Figure 8.3).
In response to my questions, she told me that all three were female. The one on the left
was older, the one in the middle was younger, and the one on the right was very angry.
Asked who she might be in the drawing, Ellen pointed to the fishbowl, then to the horse.
I was thrilled that her repressed anger—which is usually behind the stubborn symptom of
“elective mutism”—was beginning to emerge.
Ellen spent the following session drawing an enlargement of her odd cephalopod (head-
foot) creature (D), while I drew a sad–angry girl with a long nose and prominent eyes,
similar to but different from Ellen’s creation (E). She said that the girl in her drawing was
both happy and sad. The girl in my drawing, Ellen said, was “sick because she’s going to the
Figure 8.3 Ellen’s first drawings of her creature.