214 • Introduction to Art Therapy
A few months later, after some frightening experiences with compulsive self-injury (cut-
ting), Elaine discovered that the trancelike states in which she often modeled the clay were a
repetition of the dissociation with which she had defended against early abuse. Like others,
she had developed alters, multiple personalities related to the age and nature of the abuse,
who began slowly to emerge, sometimes while she was creating art.
There is no question that art therapy allowed her to get to know and to express aspects of
her history and disown parts of her self, which she might not have found out about as soon,
or in as comfortable a fashion. Art therapist Patti Prugh, who has worked with patients with
dissociative identity disorder for many years at Sheppard Pratt Hospital, feels that art allows
disparate parts of the self to collaborate more comfortably than they can through words.^1
After many years of work and many images (N) of rebirth (O) and of the therapeutic
situation (P), it was naturally difficult for Elaine to say goodbye to me and the safe space of
the art therapy room (Q). We were ending, not because she wanted to as when she had taken
a break for a summer, but because I was retiring. Even though the grown-up Elaine (host
personality) was understanding, and had made a good attachment to a nurse-therapist who
monitored her medication at her local clinic during a long transition period, her child-parts
were frightened and angry. One of the ways in which art helped her to separate as a “transi-
tional object” (Winnicott, 1971a) was that she was able to take most of it home as well as to
leave a good deal of it with me.
In her very last art therapy session, Elaine made a sculpture that reminded me of the one
she had done four years earlier (L). The tree had not been in her work for a while, perhaps
because she felt more grounded herself. In its place was a hand, cradling a person who is
holding a baby (R). Although she traced the title—“Therapy”—into the wet clay, she called
later asking me to smooth it out, feeling that the sculpture alone said it as well if not better
(Figure 9.14).
I find it an eloquent statement about the nature of therapy through art, where the provi-
sion of a holding environment (Winnicott, 1971b) allows a person to go deep inside, to see
what has been buried out of fear, to get to know and accept it, and to then be able to “go on
being” (ibid.). Making art allows the feared idea or impulse to be literally “seen” and the
Figure 9.13 “Holding Environment” by Elaine.