182 • Introduction to Art Therapy
young man—feeling alienated and staring sadly out the window—(Figure 8.13) showed his
inner state of painful isolation (A).
The one genuine human bond Oliver had—with his mother—was repeatedly torn, first
by the birth of his sister when he was four, then by his mother’s illness, which led to many
separations, and finally by her death from cancer. His last memories of her were of her face
framed in a hospital window, echoing his self-portrait.
Death was present on many pages of his sketchbook, even in otherwise peaceful scenes.
Oliver searched vainly for a passionate, instant “love at first sight”—the adult equivalent of
mother–infant bonding.
He looked for a woman so strong that he could never be hurt, like an aloof “superwoman”
(Figure 8.14) he drew early in treatment (B). Sadly, because of the “repetition compulsion,”
he was attracted to distant, unavailable women—far away like his dad and cold like his
mom. The end of a relationship with one such “Snow Queen” plunged him into the despair
for which he sought therapy. Significantly, he did not return to the male therapist he had
seen some years before, but sought a woman, going first to his lover’s analyst who then
referred him to me.
Though not consciously planned, the transfer involved a reliving of the same loss he
had felt as a child when his mother died, to be replaced first by his grandmother, then by a
stepmother when his father remarried eight years later. It was only when Oliver returned for
Figure 8.13 A lonely boy looking out a window.