220 • Introduction to Art Therapy
drawings showed how anxious each child was, allowing parents and professionals to bet-
ter prepare them for their operations. Similarly, drawings by transplant patients and their
families reflected how much stress they were feeling about cardiac catheterization, helping
the medical team in case management (Jakab, 1986).
Sometimes drawings have been used as clues to disease processes, and in determining a
person’s possible prognosis. Susan Bach, a Jungian analyst who discovered the prognostic
value of drawings, spelled them out in Life Paints Its Own Span (Bach, 1990). Her student,
Gregg Furth, elaborated them based on his own work with terminally ill patients in The
Secret World of Drawings (2002).
Art Therapy for Psychosomatic Conditions
Art therapy seems to be particularly useful for these ailments, which are physically very
real, but in which stress is known to exacerbate symptoms. The mind–body connection
is especially visible when anxiety triggers a tension headache or a bout of diarrhea. Since
these symptoms are so good at expressing repressed emotional states, art—which bypasses
defenses—can help such patients to feel what they fear.
At a center for respiratory medicine, for example, art therapist Robin Gabriels developed
an interview (K) in which a patient makes a series of drawings—about his asthma. The
drawings help to identify aspects of patients’ coping styles that need to be addressed in order
to promote a good recovery (Malchiodi, 1999a).
Similarly, asking stutterers to draw the stuttering episode helped a speech therapist to
formulate a more effective treatment plan (Jakab, 1970). Although it is not a psychosomatic
disorder, stuttering also tends to run in families, probably reflecting an inherited vulner-
ability. Just as its occurrence can be triggered by stress, it can disappear with relaxation. I
have noticed that stutterers are often fluent while they are using contact media, like clay or
finger paint (Figure 10.4). Similarly, an art therapist serving people with rheumatoid arthri-
tis wrote: “all my patients reported at least partial abatement of physical pain when painting
or sculpting” (cf. Malchiodi, 1999a).
Figure 10.3 Getting a transfusion. Reprinted from Arts in Psychotherapy, vol. 7, p. 31, 1980, with permission from Elsevier
Science.