People We Serve • 171doctor [who will make her] worse and sicker.” She was clearly afraid of this process we had
begun, but how fearful I had yet to discover.
From then on, Ellen was stuck on her theme, drawing only variations of it and turning
her back to me more and more. Her whispered answers stopped, replaced by head nod-
ding, then silence. As the same creature was drawn week after week (F), month after month
(G), Ellen seemed more and more frozen (Figure 8.4). Having unsuccessfully tried music,
silence, and other maneuvers throughout the Fall and Winter, in mid-February I began to
wonder aloud about what was going on, empathizing with her anger and anxiety.
In mid-March, though her therapy-hour behavior was unchanged, her grandmother
brought in a book Ellen had made entitled “From Isolation to Involvement.” With photo-
graphs and poetic text, it seemed a statement of intent. It also included many of the things I
had said in our one-way communication system, leading me to hope that perhaps I was get-
ting through after all. Nevertheless, Ellen continued to face me with her back, and to draw
the same rigid creature for five more sessions, avoiding eye contact more than ever (H).
The last session in late April began like all the others, but at one point in her drawing
Ellen stopped as if immobilized, seeming more openly fearful than usual. I first spoke of,
then acted on, an impulse to put my hand on her shoulder. It was close to the end of the
hour, and Ellen did not respond. She remained tense and frozen, went on with the picture,
and walked out, more rapidly than usual. She went back to her grandmother’s and, for the
first time in almost a year, telephoned her mother. The purpose of the call was to tell her that
she didn’t want to come to the clinic anymore “because I don’t like Mrs. Rubin.”
Although she never opened the note I sent her, and returned no more, Ellen gradually
proceeded to go home—first for weekends, and in a few months for good. When I called
her mother two and a half years later to follow up, she told me that Ellen had come home
warmer and more open than ever in the past, and had done well in school. Most delightful
was the fact that this teenager, who had been so frightened of how dangerous her words
might be, had become a high school cheerleader (!)
Art Therapy Is for All Ages
This chapter is a very general overview of work with people at different age levels, with
brief clinical vignettes like the one about Ellen to give the reader a flavor of how art
Figure 8.4 A later drawing by Ellen of her creature.