22 • Introduction to Art Therapy
Marjorie was eager to share her artwork with me, but was equally resistant to looking at
her creative products with anything but an aesthetic eye. Analyzing was quickly dismissed
as intrusive and possibly destructive. I was surprised at my own willingness to respect her
wishes, and would have expected more inner regret. But in truth, her art developed so nicely
and organically as she found not only her voice (the medium), but also her language (the
style), that I didn’t want to interfere in that process, for it had its own integrity and thera-
peutic benefit.
Her verbal therapy went well, allowing me to leave the art untouched by verbal analysis
with no sense of frustration. Most intriguing was that her tremendous pain, of which she
spoke and wrote eloquently, was not visible in the artwork. Marjorie explained it by refer-
ring to Suzanne Langer (1953), a philosopher whose work appealed to me long before I was a
therapist. Langer’s notion was that art is essentially “forms of human feeling”—not specific
emotions, but a deeper emotional substrate.
Perhaps when someone is grappling with helplessness in the face of a human tragedy,
they need to get in touch with deeper forces in order to find some peace, to come to terms
with an awful reality. Marjorie’s artistic creations, in addition to being highly original and
beautiful, had a sense of harmony, of peace, of the quiet that finally follows even a raging
storm. So for this woman, art became an unexpected by-product of her therapy, something
she was able to keep and continue to develop as her own.
In Her Own Words Marjorie wrote between her sessions, mostly to manage her pain.
Sometimes she wrote about the art and her therapy. Here are a few excerpts, so you can hear
what creating came to mean for her.
“The Art” (written after 8 months of therapy)
• From the beginning—a surprisingly sure sense of what I wanted to do and how I
wanted to do it (in the absence of any knowledge of media or technique).
• An oasis, the process enough in the first few weeks.
• Probably the strongest feeling, initially and throughout, about identity: how quickly
I found my voice, recognized what was mine, discarded what was not ...
• Not much investment in the judgment of others, no real concern. The art has really
been for me, not even for Judy.
• Pleasure and satisfaction at the acceptance, a sense of being an artist ...
• Throughout, experiencing the art as a gift, wanting to return it to Judy, making sure
that there are always “extras,” disappointed when I have only one of something I like.The Different Functions of the Writing and the Art ...
• The writing serving to clarify, express, contain, communicate; a vessel for the articu-
lation of the pain. The art feeling very different, seeming to be primarily expressive,
from a different part of the internal landscape, enhancing the strong and healthy
components, communicating only in the sense that those areas have become more
accessible to Judy as well as to me, no small accomplishment.
• Explaining why I have held onto the art, because it is healthy and satisfying and
diverting, all of which have been important. At a time when I needed to feel healthy,
needed to be diverted ...
• And as quickly and easily as all of the above has flowed when I began writing about
the art, the analysis is removed from the experience. Really a simple decision to