Art therapy exists to explore repression and renunciation through artistic expression, using either literal or metaphoric symbolism. As both practising artist and educator Edith Kramer says “Art is a method of widening the range of human experiences by creating equivalents”. The arts have helped man reconcile the eternal conflict between the individual’s instinctive urges and the demands of society.
In the contemporary art world, many artists use the concept of art therapy to create their own pieces, often exploring their own experiences and feelings in a way that projects onto the viewer. Many feel that a successful piece of artwork is one where emotions evoked by the artist are effectively conveyed to the viewer, although where art therapy is concerned, this would be where the analyst is able to see through the symbolism of the work to identify cause and effect of the patient.
Artists such as Nicola Oliver and Amy Cordero use art therapy to explore their own mental health and life experience, although when viewing their work, you are able to see the conscious thought behind each piece; the paintings of Oliver project her anger and frustration of others and Cordero’s anger over her own health. When dealing with the unconscious, art therapy is most useful when interacting with children and the pathologically “insane” such as Adolf Wolfli, as they are removed from many influences in every day life.
William Kurelek’s “The Maze”, a depiction of his tortured youth produced during his time in Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital, clearly becomes an act of autobiography, a way of trying to construct or understand his own identity.
Kurelek himself says of the piece,``The subject, seen as a whole, is of a man (representing me) lying on a barren plain before a wheat field, with his head split open. The point of view is from the top of his head. The subject is then roughly divided into the left hand side of the picture, with the thoughts made in his head represented as a maze; and the right hand side, the view of the rest of his body. The hands and feet are seen through the eyes, nose and mouth, tapering off into the distance and the outside world.
The Maze. An exit-less one, it occupies and divides the inside of the cranium into groups of thoughts, the passageways being calculated to do the grouping. The white rat curled up in the central cavity represents my Spirit I suppose. He is curled up with frustration from having run the passages so long without hope of escaping out of this maze of unhappy thoughts. Outside World. Grasshoppers and drought sun before the clouds) represent the mercilessness of Nature, which bankrupted my father, a farmer, and brought out of him the cornered beast. The thorny, stony ground is a kind of T.S. Eliot Wasteland ± spiritual and cultural barrenness: the pile of excrement with flies on it represents my view of the world and the people that live on it. The loosened red ribbon bound together the head of a T.S. Eliot Hollow Man, and was united by psychotherapy (Dr Cormier), but since the outside world is still unappealing, the rat remains inert. Before the head was opened, burrs (bitter experiences) choked the throat and pricked the sensitive underside of the tongue, and when it was opened the sawdust and shavings (tasteless education) spilled out from on top the tongue: mixed with the sawdust are symbols of to me) equally tasteless Art, painting, literature and music.
The burrs also represent, in the eye socket, the successive evaluations of my character by any friend during the process of acquaintance, all repellant but hopeful till the last, when the heart is discovered to be a grub. On the tongue and in the throat, the Kurelek family big burrs produce little burrs), representing my father as the hard domineering blue burr opening up the mushy yellow burr, my mother, to release a common lot of burrs, my brothers and sisters, and one unique orange one myself. The last burr, spearing culture, is I at the university. The inverted one is I as a child, trapped painfully between two aspects of my father, the one I hated and the one I worshipped.''
This is Kureleks thought about “The Maze” in retrospect, it’s unclear whether he felt this way while the work was in progress. Yet, the painting itself leaves the viewer in no doubt, whether knowing Kureleks history or not, that the artist is troubled and unable to formulate clarity about his life, represented by the maze of rooms and scenes.
Similarly, case studies by Kramer in “Art as Therapy”, children use art therapy as a means of communication and understanding circumstance, particularly shown in the case of Angel, a young boy who stopped speaking and had become increasingly violent. His results from art therapy showed repetitive images of himself as Superman, saving others and showing his strength. Ultimately the metaphor of Superman and his alter-ego Clark Kent, as Angel showed his own self in the hero, is revealing of a young boys feeling of self worth, an unconscious thought that something about him, and his life is lacking, thereby wanting to change himself.
The process of art therapy is similar to Freud’s free association method of analysis. The patient is observed, rather than encouraged or guided in any way. The message conveyed by the work in progress is an intuitive response to the immediate situation, as well as by past experiences. The process encounters two opposing forces; regression and formed expression. These forces are what converts into metaphor and literal representation that the analyst then can explore with the patient, much like Freud’s dream analysis. Daydreams and fantasies can often be enjoyed with a minimum of guilt, even when they contain asocial and forbidden wishes, as they bring about no physical asocial behaviour. Where this does take place, art therapy uses a process of sublimation, where a primitive asocial impulse is transformed into a socially productive act, such as a piece of sculpture or a painting. With maturity and establishment of the superego, sublimation becomes the ego’s method of reconciling the demands of the superego with instinctual demands.
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