Problems We Address • 213during the art therapy groups there. Most of them were terrified, felt incompetent, and
afraid of showing the group what art idiots they really were. They had been brainwashed by
their past experiences into thinking that art is only done by artists and they can’t possibly do
this stuff. As time went on things got a little better, but I’m not sure that any but a few would
have actively chosen art. I think this is terribly sad.
Do I choose art all the time? Not any more. Sometimes I know I need to work with the
clay, and other times it is OK to just talk. I have become more flexible about what material I
use in the therapy room, but BROWN CLAY IS STILL MY FIRST CHOICE.
Elaine’s Course of Treatment What Elaine didn’t write about, but what was most vivid
for me in our work together, were the changes in her state of consciousness while creating.
After she was comfortable with me, she would start to work with the clay and would seem to
disengage, with no talking or looking—just intense absorption in the process. Her modeling
process seemed to have a life of its own, as she would first manipulate, find an image in the
clay, and develop it. Then I would ask her to tell me about it, and to say what came to mind
while looking at it (J).
She had also taken to painting or sculpting more at home, most often when dealing with
immense stress and, though rarely, intense joy—in response, in other words, to unbearable
inner pressure. Although she had always thought she would need to see me forever, she was
able to “take a break” for a whole summer, about which she was greatly relieved. She left her
sculptures and paintings behind, perhaps to “hold her place” while she experimented with
independence from me.
For most of Elaine’s therapy, clay was her chosen vehicle of expression, as she struggled
to work through her wordless scream of pain. She not only created art during her therapy
sessions, but also at home—especially at times of deep distress. One of her paintings was a
vivid statement of how imprisoned she felt by her psychic pain and persistent depression,
which had led to a brief voluntary hospitalization because she was feeling suicidal and afraid
of acting on it (K). In the painting, a puffy, sad grey face looks out from behind black bars of
raised paint. It is an eloquent image of helplessness.
For Elaine, art therapy became a way of finding out what was inside, in a place that felt
increasingly secure over time. She called it a “holding environment,” and gave that title to
one of her sculptures (L). In it, a person (Elaine) holding an infant (her small victimized
self), leans against a well-rooted tree, her favorite symbol for support (Figure 9.13).
Within a month of starting art therapy, Elaine had reduced her verbal therapy sessions
to once a week. Even though she liked and trusted both therapists, she requested that we
not talk to each other, but that she be the one to communicate with each of us. After a year
of working on parallel tracks, Elaine decided that she was ready to share her artwork and
space with her talk therapist.
This session was immensely powerful, as she showed him her sculptures and paintings on
display (M). Since her divorced parents had never been able either to deal with her together,
or with each other, the joint meeting resonated on many levels. We agreed to have such ses-
sions whenever Elaine wanted. When her male therapist moved to another city, art therapy
became the primary treatment, twice a week.
Several years later, Elaine decided to join a survivors group at a local agency. As she began
to trust and learn from the group therapist, a nun, she wanted that woman as well to know
and to see her continuing search for healing through art. She, too, visited my office while
Elaine, by then better able to talk about her creative experiences and the images she had
made, gave her a guided tour.