Celebrating 20 years. This article appeared in the first issue – ANZJAT, volume 1, number 1, 2006.
Open Access
Published: October 2006
Issue: Vol.1, No.1
Word count: 2,002
About the author
The Hero’s Journey: Art therapy in disability
Meena Blesing
Abstract
This article reflects on the creative process of art therapy with a young man with muscular dystrophy, and intellectual impairment. This man inhabited extraordinary realms, which challenged my training in art psychotherapy. I was faced with questions such as: How can the art therapist work insightfully in acute disability? How do you create and hold the space within an agency with different goals? How do you make meaning for the client and yourself when movement and communication are difficult? Painting with this client leads to accessing archetypal imagery, which reveals his heroic journey and deeper levels of narrative and mythic reflection for both client and therapist.
Keywords
Hero’s journey, disability, Duchennes dystrophy
Cite this articleBlesing, M. (2006). The Hero’s Journey: Art therapy in disability. ANZJAT, 1(1), 25–29. https://www.jocat-online.org/a-06-blesing
Introduction
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won. The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. (Campbell, 1973)
Jay, 24, has a rare degenerative condition, Duchennes dystrophy. I first met this man as an art therapy student and we established a means whereby he could paint. Later he requested help from his agency to continue art therapy with me. It took 18 months for this to happen. His goal was to make art, mine was to hold the space for this, support the process and develop our creative communication further around the images in the session. It was an heroic task of intent, expression and movement to achieve painting. I did not expect to be able to work with him. He came I to the first meeting in his wheelchair, prepared to paint immediately. He could not use his left hand and the right flexed inwards. I could not understand his speech then. How could we communicate and how could we paint? Was this art therapy?
The first meeting set a challenge for new creative awareness. The agency was positive about him doing art therapy and the process of this was up to me. Whatever I asked, Jay always agreed. He had learned assent as essential for having his needs meet. We needed to devise effective communication whereby I could assess what he wanted and be aware of not imposing upon him. His goal continued to be paint. My objective was to set a strong and clear therapeutic frame for the artwork (Bull, 1985), which included Bion’s (1961) notion of the therapist as a maternal container for the emotions that may surface. Jay was always clear about what he wanted in terms of subject matter, colours and composition. I offered him different materials to touch and consider for art purposes. He wanted to use wood. Although I attempted on many occasions to engage the agency to assist him, it became my concern to find and keep the wood pieces for him. I became an extension of his hand. I leant over him on his right side assisting him to hold the brush and together we constructed a picture through a series of detailed questions from me, and trial and error.
Themes emerged early in our work together, for almost every picture he painted was about movement. Creatures flew, swam or ran over surreal landscapes. Colours were vibrant and loosely applied. He frequently requested to paint an eagle. His final work was a large collaged eagle spilling over the frame. Together, over three weeks, we had painted, stapled and pasted the eagle onto a brilliant painted landscape (Figure 1). His images of the eagle grew stronger and reminded me of the ‘Cosmic Eagle’, a powerful creation force in mythology across cultures, a symbol of both life and death (Campbell, 1978, p.235). The image was an embodiment of the power and freedom he could not express in real life.
I showed him images of mythic stories as one way of reflecting on his work and he would sagely nod his head. I always showed him the work from the session before and we discussed it as best we could. He was delighted and joyful with his completed work, always saying “Good! Good!”.
Figure 1. Cosmic Eagle.
The second phase of my work with Jay began with the goal of support for his need to do art therapy and have a one-to-one therapeutic relationship. His manager commented that he seemed withdrawn and depressed and kept asking for painting, and the “art lady”. We could have a space in an empty unit used for disability respite, but this was not an arrangement we could guarantee. There was a period where it was difficult to claim space, as the coordinator had moved on, and with her much of our support for the value of the art therapy. My notions of holding the space (Winnicott, 1973) and the necessary containment (Bion, 1961) required for the process were challenged. For months we worked on a kitchen bench, which was the only height suitable and space available. Other times we had sessions in units with other residents looking on, commenting or wanting to join in, or at an outside table as it was the only place available. Holding the space was an issue about which I needed to be constantly assertive. I stated again our need to have a separate and consistent space, yet I sensed it was viewed as a luxury by the agency. At times I lost certainty and questioned what I was doing as an art therapist. I felt despair and was almost at the point of giving up, when, however, a room became available. Another resident had moved and suddenly Jay had an art room.
We began work again in the second phase as if we had never left off. Although the contract had been discussed in terms of a time period, I am not sure on reflection that he understood this. When I asked him what he wanted to do he showed me images of birds, and in the months that followed we painted eagles, parrots and cockatoos, all in flight and often across a stormy wildly coloured sea, with a setting sun. His coordinator reported he seemed much happier.
When I arrived one day I noticed that he looked very dejected and sad. I was told a brother had been killed in an accident. He sat and showed me pictures of his family. That week he painted a black dog jumping over a fence. A series of dog and wolf images followed.
Figure 2. Image from the dog/wolf series: The lone wolf jumps over the fence.
He painted white over the images creating illusive shadowy figures that seemed to reflect he was contemplating the mystery of death. His artwork reflected archetypal motifs of the image of death in appearance of the black dog, which suggested ‘Anubis’, the Egyptian God who weighed the hearts of the dead (von Franz, 1984). He moved onto other images of animals in the wild: wolves, snakes, mountain lions and tigers. He seemed to be contacting a fiercer wilder part of himself. I asked him each week what he wanted to draw and now I noticed that he had thought about images and was prepared with what he wanted to do. We sat with the images of the creatures or birds, and reflected in temeno, or the sacred space created. He was happy with his work and there was a sense of joy in the room despite the effort.
The task at times seemed superhuman, especially when I needed to assist his hand to move as if my hand was a lever. He wore a brace on his right hand for some months, which made the work even more difficult, but then he seemed to have greater use of the hand, and his fingers could now hold and move the brush. In the last sessions I moved the board sideways, up and down, reading his intentions, to help him paint. He would say “Up! Up!'” or “Down!” although he sometimes meant left or right and would he become frustrated if I misinterpreted. I was interpreting all the time to keep a continuous flow in the artwork once he began to paint. He was determined to glean every last moment of his session and would paint until his hand shook with fatigue. Superman and superheroes now entered his work. Superman appeared saving burning buildings and people (Figure 3a and 3b). Was he trying to save himself?
In other images Superman is flying and floating over the sea or land. Then improbable animals were saving Superman as well. As if the untamed animal spirit in him was being released, Superman accomplished his task and was then taken away by an eagle, by an elephant and finally by Spider-Woman.
Figure 3a. Superman saves burning buildings.
Figure 3b. Superman in red.
We needed to complete our time together. His final image, described with remarkable narrative clarity, was Spider-Woman saving Superman who was chained to a rock.
The image recalls the myth of Prometheus, punished for his gift of stealing fire from the gods chained to a rock, his liver devoured daily by an eagle until he is saved by the sacrifice of Chiron, the healer, also a symbol for the therapist (Campbell, 1973, p.37). At the archetypal level the image is the transpersonal hero’s journey. He must pass through a threshold and face self-annihilation to find his real self. There is fire under Jay’s hero who is trying to leap forth, surrounded by mythical creatures (Figure 4). The image reflects his own state, chained to his wheelchair and longing to fly. The image took us several weeks. Spider-Woman is throwing a net to capture Superman who is on the rock with the sea dashing around him and fire under him. The image reflects the role of the art therapist snaring him, perhaps in a role of dependency and yet the fantasy is she will save him from his eternal agony of being an artist enchained in a hopeless situation. Yet, he has found the balance of his inner forces, to rescue himself and survive his unendurable fate. This image suggests, possibly, an alchemical meeting of male and female aspects of the self (Jung, 1973; Schaverien, 1991).
The work carried great emotional power and at times I felt that I was carrying the emotion for this client who could only express his in the imagery. Inevitably we carry unconsciously the emotional burden if it cannot be expressed. There is a constant interplay between transference and countertransference within the therapeutic frame (Bull, 1985; Winnicott, 1971). I continued art responses and supervision and saw shamanic lion masks and mythic creatures appearing in my drawings, brave defences for the exhaustion, frustration and despair I often felt. I returned one week to discover there were glasses placed on the lion of the week before. When I asked him who it was, he laughed and pointed to me. Was I the bold lion tackling the denizens and monsters of the jungle of his struggle to continue to be an artist?
By the end of my time with Jay I felt that I had travelled the heroic journey myself in the dark of unknowing with many issues that the physically able take for granted. The journey required perseverance and determination, qualities of the hero archetype (Mitchell, 1993). The images reflected much energy and movement and the overcoming of insuperable difficulties. The eagles had become bolder and the painting more vivid. We now put paint directly on the board as if the painting itself was the palette.
We had moved from me literally holding and supporting as an extension of his hand, to holding the frame of the artwork, while he painted, with the brush propped between fingers. The outer framework of the therapy was shaky at times in parallel process with our evolving therapeutic relationship. We endured uncertain placement and harsh working conditions until we found a room. Frequently, the space we gained was not respected by others.
Figure 5. Therapist Lion.
In this exploration of an unknown space, Jay’s art images offered embodiment and empowerment in the courageous process of this hero’s journey. For the art therapist, the learning was to negotiate the boundaries of touch, understanding and assistance. This was a new and creative communication, which required ongoing self reflection (Wosket, 1999).
“A hero ventures forth...” (Campbell, 1973). From the beginning I had seen my client as heroic, arriving in his wheelchair with paintbrushes stashed in his backpack. The journey was arduous and testing, but full of supernatural wonders and joy revealed to us both through the final promethean imagery of fire and redemption (Figure 4). My goal was to follow the process in which he came to acknowledge the fullness of his heroic inner strength, ultimately released from the torture of his condition, “a boon to his fellow man...” (Campbell, 1973) a Prometheus with a gift of fire revealed through the powerful embodied mythic images.
References
Bion, W. (1961). A theory of thinking. In E. Bott-Spillius. (Ed.), Melanie Klein today. London: Routledge.
Bull, A. (1985). The psychotherapeutic frame. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 19(2), 172–175. https://doi.org/10.3109/00048678509161315
Campbell, J. (1973). The hero with a thousand faces. New York: Princeton.
Edwards, D. (1992). Certainty and uncertainty in art therapy practice. Inscape, Spring, pp.2–7.
Green, L & Sharman-Burke, J. (1999). The mythic journey: The meaning of myth as a guide to life. Sydney: Simon and Schuster.
Mitchell. M.B. (1993). Hero or victim? California: Sherman Oaks.
Schaverien, J. (1992). The revealing Image: Analytical art psychotherapy in theory and practice. London: Tavistock.
von Franz, M-L. (1987). On dreams and death: A Jungian interpretation. Boston: Shambhala.
Winnicott, D.W. (1971). Playing and reality. London: Routledge.
Wosket, V. (1999). The therapeutic use of self: Counselling practice, research and supervision. Hong Kong: Brunner Routledge.
Author
Meena Blesing
DFA, MA ATh, MC, BFA, AATR
Meena has specialised in art psychotherapy, eduction, counselling and healing modalities. She has worked in education, mental health, disability, youth and family counselling and aged care. She is also a practising artist, author and is currently involved in private practice and the setting up of art psychotherapy groups.