Previews • 19separation, he had always seemed to prefer going out to “being at home with the family,
which was like being in jail.”
Asked if she herself ever felt that way, she replied, “I’m beginning to wonder if I wasn’t the
one who was missing out!” Suddenly aware of her statement, she quickly said that of course
she liked being at home with her children, and did not like going out as much as Tim. She
concluded that she did not see how anything she could provide at home with the children
could ever really compete with what he could find outside.
Despite a defensive idealization of me as a “good mother,” Mrs. Lord was able to use
weekly art therapy to explore her feelings of rage and hurt toward both her parents and her
husband, and to accept her ambivalence toward her children. She became able to use her
artwork as a valuable source of information about herself. Although saying goodbye was
hard, she coped in part by taking an art class after termination of the 7-month treatment.
Art Draws out Despair in Marital Therapy: MR. & MRS. T.
I once worked with a couple for two years in weekly therapy, at first regarding their blind,
multiply disabled daughter who was being seen by a child psychiatrist. We had used art
during an initial family evaluation and in some of the diagnostic interviews. While not the
main mode of communication for this concerned couple, it was especially useful in dealing
with the most loaded and difficult areas of their relationship, which eventually emerged as
significant factors in the girl’s problems.
During one session, after much veiled expression of resentment from both about disap-
pointment in the partner, I wondered if they could draw each other, working on opposite
sides of an easel. These images actually became reference points for the remainder of the
treatment. Mr. T. represented his wife as “The Rock of Gibraltar” (Figure 1.14), a tower
of strength and stability in the shifting currents of life (S). At first he said that was how
she really was. Then, responding to her hurt and anger at such unrealistic expectations, he
acknowledged that he wished she would never show vulnerability or weakness, but that he
had often been let down.
Meanwhile Mrs. T. was in tears about how impossible it was to please her husband, how
hard it was to get his sympathy and concern when she herself was needy, and how deprived
and lonely she felt. She represented him as “Always Busy” (Figure 1.15), all wrapped up in
his own activities, with no time left for his family—playing his guitar and daydreaming
Figure 1.13 Mrs. Lord’s scale: Family vs. girlfriend.