14 • Introduction to Art Therapy
As he began to get more comfortable with, and less frightened of, his hostile and com-
petitive impulses, Jack’s performance anxiety lessened. His artwork changed too.
He began a series of acrylic paintings, in which he explored similar themes, but with
more disguise. He received as much attention for these sublimated expressions of his con-
cerns as he had for his sculptures.
He was able to say goodbye after two years, as he entered adolescence. Without clay or a
brush in his hands, I doubt that Jack would have been able to tolerate psychotherapy, despite
his verbal fluency. With art, he was able to master his anxieties almost painlessly.
Betty Jane, the subject of the next story, was well into adolescence and as articulate as
Jack. Like him, she was brought to therapy by her mother and was extremely resistant at
first. Like Jack, she too was able to work comfortably thanks to her interest in art.
Art Therapy Helps a Talented Teenager: BETTY JANE (14)
Betty Jane’s parents had just announced that they were going to split up, her older sister had
just left for college, and Betty Jane was becoming more and more depressed.
She was also skeptical about therapy, since there was no way treatment could change the
reality with which she had to cope. Her mother, however, asked her to come for one inter-
view, and she agreed to my suggestion that she try a few sessions of art therapy and then
decide if she wanted to continue.
A talented artist, Betty Jane enjoyed exploring different media. Although her art was
more attractive than it was revealing (J), the pictures and her answers to my questions about
them gave me clues to feelings she was not yet conscious of (K). Betty Jane continued to be
ambivalent about our weekly meetings, especially disliking the ones where she would break
down and cry or reveal something she later regretted. Nevertheless, she came reluctantly
for several months, using her sessions mainly to express her distress about all the changes
in her life.
Two years later, Betty Jane called, saying that although she was “awfully busy” with plays
and exams and activities, she’d like to come in again to work on some issues related to her
final year of high school. Within a few sessions, drawing as she spoke, Betty Jane told me
about some frightening dissociative episodes, when she had felt as if she were observing
herself—like “out of body” experiences. While she hadn’t said so, I wondered if she was
worried that she had inherited the mental illness in her mother’s family, so I suggested a
diagnostic evaluation.
Happily, both psychological and neurological testing revealed that the cause of her spacey
moments was anxiety and not biology. She was able once again to concentrate on her stud-
ies, and to win a scholarship to a prestigious art school. Betty Jane was also able to say good-
bye to her parents, no longer worried about whether they could manage without her.
And this young woman—so skeptical about the value of therapy when we began, chal-
lenging me to show her how it could possibly help—asked if I knew a therapist in the city
where she was going to college, “just in case.” After her first semester, she reported with
relief that being among other artists she discovered that everyone there was like her, and she
no longer felt “weird”—like the Ugly Duckling when he found the swans.
Art & Drama Therapy Liberate a Depressed Adolescent: JIM (17)
Jim, often depressed, had a hard time expressing himself in the group (L). His first drawings
were of heroes, but they were usually incomplete (Figure 1.10). Almost all of the powerful
athletes were missing parts of their bodies—sometimes an arm, sometimes a leg—and were
often subtly cut off by the edge of the paper. For many sessions, he worked on an elaborate