For me, it takes gentle patience and a restrained presence to contemplate a work of art. I want to give it attention, to take it in and respond, to feel and be touched by it. It is only when contemplator and picture seem to ‘speak’ to each other that a sense of connectedness occurs, akin to loving devotion. Merely taking the picture in while giving nothing of oneself is, I believe, as fruitless as if only the creator of the work were to speak. An exchange happens only in the context of an encounter, however, which in turn is about a sort of relationship – between the beholder and the artwork or between the patient, the artwork and the therapist. To be able to respond to a picture in a productive way – and this, I feel, is what the change processes in aesthetic therapies are all about – artist and therapist alike must first learn to let the work itself speak. This means practising the acts of seeing and describing, knowing full well that individual socialisations are involved in both processes. The faculty of being-able-to-see is usually cultivated in the practice of art itself. To refrain from contemplating one’s own work through the lens of how it felt to create it, or from prematurely searching for symbols in it, however, requires various kinds of support (on these, see Betensky, 1995, p.14; Frohoff, 2019, p.101).

I stand up and ask the patient to do likewise. Together we remove the chairs and thus gain more freedom of movement in front of the drawing to be contemplated. We do not change the original display or hanging positions. I ask the patient to concentrate solely on the lines of the drawing and to reconstruct them using gestures. To lower her inhibition, I ask her if I may join in with her and also allow myself to be moved by the picture. In this way we trace the momentum of the lines and gradually gain a sense of the speed underlying the drawing, exploring which line breaks are in flux and what direction the lines are moving in. We then compose ourselves and allow what we have experienced to flow into after-effects. In a second step, I ask Ms B to ‘feel into’ the lines of which the drawing is composed and to sense any internal lived-body impulses, without translating them into physical movement. According to Sonja Frohoff (2019, p.78), this is an act of finding balance. We pause again in silence. Finally, I ask Ms B where the picture touches her, and she places her right hand on the area between her heart and abdomen.

If patients are quick to make associations, I generally guide their attention toward the synaesthetic qualities in the work in order to achieve a sensing/feeling contemplation. Enabling an experience of sense-based perception is crucial, in my view, to the subsequent course of the exchange and its orientation toward a lived-body experience of the picture. I am convinced that, if perceptions and experiences are formulated in this way, it can make perceptions and world views of those involved accessible through the media that would otherwise be included in subjective experience. When talking to the pictures, not only does something become visible that could not be seen before, but the socialisations involved in the processes of perception also offer the opportunity to see something in something else, which is due to the respective perspective of the viewer. Pictures can thus be understood as a feat of ‘bringing to the present’. As a medium (and in this case a mediator, too) they make visible something between the work of art and the contemplating viewer-ego that would not become apparent without the artwork (Schürmann, 2004, p.73). In my view, such an approach already offers a new, extended way of seeing and thus a change of perspective.

Inhabiting

I invite Ms B to imagine that she is strolling through a gallery or a museum and that she eventually comes to a wall where the drawing is hung. In a museum we all automatically try to find the right distance between ourselves and a picture we want to look at. It is a bit like a dance sometimes: one step forward, one step back, one to the side. Soon enough, though, we settle on a particular position from which we feel the picture is best contemplated. I ask the patient to do just this – to let herself be guided by the picture and to feel her way to the right place to look at it. Ms B does this, positioning herself variously in front of the picture. She tries this for a while and then says she wants to sit down again, in a place that involves the picture hanging a little higher than where she herself is sitting. It wouldn’t do to simply hang the picture higher, she says: the important thing is that she is seated. I invite Ms B to arrange everything as she needs it, and she takes a chair again and places it accordingly. As soon as she is sitting down, a more profound attentiveness alters the atmosphere in the room.

Ms B’s attentiveness was manifested in her sitting posture – or rather, to be more precise, in the posture all three of us (patient, therapist, figure in the picture) had adopted. Her body seemed relaxed on the chair, but it wasn’t. She mimicked the inner tenseness of the figure in the drawing, held her head at a slight angle as well, thus making contact with the figure and establishing a new, steadier connection with her gaze, which remained uninterrupted right through to the end of our exchange.

I myself have withdrawn a little: I sit further away, cross-legged on the floor, trying to give the encounter between Ms B and the woman she has drawn as much space as possible. The fact that I am no longer sitting in front of the picture is crucial: it changes the situation. Whereas we had previously each been sitting on a chair in front of the picture now for the first time an intimate scene arises in which both women are really sitting opposite each other and looking at each other – the one in the picture and the one seated in front of it.

The fact that I was sitting lower down than Ms B was intentional. Due to the picture’s hanging position, the gaze from the drawing came from above. As I am taller than Ms B, I wanted to avoid a situation in which she would occupy the lowest level in the room, which would simultaneously have been the most ‘belittling’ position. This would not have been conducive in view of her history and her perception of herself. In addition, though, it enabled me to re-enact in my mind’s eye the way she was looking at the drawing, as I was looking at the picture in a similar way to her, from below. This similar viewing angle, in terms of the aesthetics of reception, helped me to comprehend the patient’s perceptions as well as possible and also to get a felt sense of the overall scene. I was guided by the hope that my vigilant observation of the patient’s perceptions as she was looking at the work would enable me to notice when everything was ready and she could ‘inhabit’ the picture. Referring to Merleau-Ponty and Maldiney, Sonja Frohoff (2019) points out that inhabiting a picture happens when affect becomes involved, when one is emotionally stirred by a picture. According to her, when this happens – once entrancement sets in – one has always already been inside the picture even before one decides to continue walking towards it or to look at it. This is not about a merging, but rather about the special perception of a threshold situation between ‘here’ and ‘there’. Inhabiting takes place at the threshold in the betweenness that exists between oneself and the object. It is in this crack that a space opens up for forming meanings that exist prior to the interpretations of a reflexive process (p.87). In accord with this theory, Ms B seemed to be in two places at once: physically she was still sitting next to me, but her mind wandered the realm of the picture she had drawn weeks ago. The potential for working with the situation sets in once I can perceive the internal structures of the work of art; it requires not only imagination but also a form of contemplative attentiveness.

I ask Ms B to imagine that she is swapping places – and bodies – with the figure, to try to forget what she would like to see in the picture and instead to feel her way into the picture, to inhabit it. “What does it feel like? How are you feeling? How do you look out onto the world from that position?” I ask her. Searchingly, Ms B replies, “Relaxed, maybe… laying herself aside?” She describes in a kind of internal dialogue how the figure feels to her and that the world of the woman in the drawing is empty but that she is looking out as through a window. “What does the figure see when it looks out?” I asked. “Me,” she replied.

Encounter

As soon as the drawing and the author were connected by the bridge of a shared gaze and this bridge had been stabilised to the extent that it seemed the one woman could see the other, my role and the manner of my presence was transformed. As the entire session was based (especially in terms of a performative reading) on the premise of participant observation, I experienced the dynamic alternation between observation and participation all the more intensely. From this point on, I was both part of the proceedings yet at the same time not, as our being together was all about what it was that sought expression in the patient through the figure in the drawing. The process of contemplation simultaneously constituted the deeply shared external and internal product that was being formed by the interaction between the work, the author and me. While I ‘held’ the overall setting, the ‘certain therapeutic something’ occurred in the form of the patient’s internal dialogue as she sat before her counterpart in the picture.

I ask her what kind of a relationship exists between herself and her counterpart in the picture. “An honest one, a friendly one?” she replies in a reconsidering manner. In a soft whisper I encourage Ms B to enter fully into this situation, to allow the picture to come alive, as if it were a freeze-frame image and she could simply press the play button to let the film continue to run, only this time with herself as part of it. She speaks of sitting down next to the figure in a private space, a sitting room. She describes how she slides along closer to the woman, establishing greater proximity and contact. “This happens quite naturally,” she says. Getting a renewed sense of the physical posture of her counterpart, Ms B says, “Now I wouldn’t say ‘relaxed’ anymore. There’s also tension there, like she’s holding herself.” “Are you talking to her?” I whisper, and hear her respond, “Yes.”

I supported and bore witness to this through my inner participation, when I allowed myself also to be moved sensorily and aesthetically, and later brought this co-movement into the verbal exchange with the patient. Whenever I said something now, I lent Ms B my voice, which, very softly, no longer asked anything, but rather initiated a maieutic process [5] of the patient asking herself, of comprehending her own perceptions. Patients have sometimes told me after such sessions that they can no longer remember me having said anything at all, but that they do remember me being present.

Ms B’s gaze is fixed upon the picture. An ‘as-if’ dialogue unfolds which the patient, engaged in internal dialogue, quietly verbalises. I seem to be largely forgotten. Indeed, I haven’t said anything for quite a while. I no longer take any part in the conversation; I am just a witness to the fact that, by verbalising the thoughts of the woman in the drawing and thus listening to this ‘friend’, Ms B comes into contact with herself. The two women tell each other of the exhaustion, sadness and tiredness they feel when they think about the life they have lived. They also tell each other of their dissatisfaction with this life. The woman in the drawing has missed her chance to leave it behind, to leave the situation, to actively change, to take hold of her life and steer it in a new direction, Ms B whispers into the room and the space in-between her and the picture.

Ms B had not been able to fathom the fact that she was even in therapy at all. Not only did it go completely against her ideal image of herself, but it also awakened memories of her mother, who, despite having been in therapy for a long time, ultimately took her own life. Given this backdrop, the patient’s path seemed to her to be predetermined. For Ms B, accepting the situation meant ‘giving up’, which she didn’t want to do; yet week after week thoughts of this kind prevented the change she yearned for. It was a vicious circle, because it was this very lack of change that contributed to her further self-denigration. Intellectually, it was clear to the patient that she must first accept her situation before it could be changed. Even if this were possible for her, however, and she could allow the realisation of her need for therapy to exist as given in her thoughts, then, I believe, the fundamental problem would remain, that acceptance must come of its own accord and that it cannot be forced.

For some while now Ms B has had tears in her eyes. She is crying over the suffering experienced by this friend; she feels compassion, and in crying for this friend, for her drawing, she is crying for herself. Still sitting in the background, I ask Ms B what she would like to reply to the drawing. The patient cries even more as she speaks directly to the ‘friend’ and tells her it is alright to be sad.

Sentence by sentence, Ms B seemed to be validating her own exhaustion. Amazingly enough, she made no suggestions to her ‘friend’ about how she should change – as the restless patient always did otherwise in relation to herself. Up to now, she had rarely allowed things to stand, to be as they are; out of shame she would constantly come up with ideas for self-improvement or ways she wanted to change, thereby ignoring the imbalance of forces within herself, always acting as her own biggest inner critic. With the figure in the drawing, though, it was different: she was able to allow this woman some peace. She allowed her ‘friend’ in the picture to sense what is there, to feel what has to be felt, to be what desires to be(come). A phrase of Plato’s (1997) is apposite here: thinking is the inner dialogue of the soul with itself (Theaetetus, 189e–190a; Sophist, 263e–264b). As soon as we think, the self that always appears as ‘one’ in the world divides into the two poles of a dialogue. In terms of this Platonic process of differentiation, I would like to say that the triangulation of artist–work–therapist is extended to become a quadrangulation of the proceedings. The art therapist who bears witness to the situation constitutes not the third but the fourth participant. The subject, Ms B, is a threefold one when it speaks to itself through its artwork. Given that, even in an internal dialogue with a painted counterpart, it is the voices of the same ego that are orchestrating the thinking; the process of thinking with oneself constitutes a “compulsory alliance” (v. Redecker, 2013, p.58). If I extract these theories from their specific ancient context, I find that Aristotle (2020) states that this virtually demands of the thought process that it harbours an inherent tendency toward harmony: whereas I can walk away from people I disagree with, I cannot walk away from myself, so it is wise to come to an agreement with myself. Aristotle calls this self-friendship or philautia (Nicomachean Ethics, IX 8: 1166a13). I think that a thinking analysis is a procedure involving dissection; it is good to have a friend at one’s side during it. In other words: consistency with oneself is indispensable, not only for thinking but also in relation to the objects of introspection and the act of scrutinising one’s own actions and judgements. Stillness, or silence, within therapy is equally significant for me, and with it the permission to withdraw into an internal dialogue without any therapeutic assistance. It seems to me that a common denominator of many psychopathologies is the variety of deep-seated fault lines between ‘I’ and ‘I’, a multiplication of human beings’ fundamental sense of being separate, as described by Erich Fromm (2000). This is why I see the process of peacemaking between a patient and him-, her- or themself as being at the heart of my therapeutic work – and as the most beautiful experience of creative activity possible.

The dialogue with the picture comes to an end. What does Ms B sense should happen now? How does she want to deal with what she has learned? What does she want to do now with this ‘friend’? For Ms B the answer is clear: “We’re going out. I’ll take her by the hand and we’ll go for a walk together in the park. Nothing else at all.”

Philautia

It may not have been the essence of friendship that was revealed to the patient during the verbal exchange with her drawing, but the intensity of the conversation certainly highlighted for her the possibility of a more forgiving approach toward herself – as between friends. For example, having finished contemplating the work, Ms B noticed that her dialogue with the picture had been a sympathetic dialogue with herself, something that she had not had before. She could now see, she said, that she did not allow herself to be sad: instead, even though she was still feeling exhausted, she was trying to function, to turn everything around, to get back quickly to being alright again, to being worthy. In my experience, a therapeutic truth lies in the converse case to Nietzsche’s (1975) assertion that we stop loving ourselves when we stop loving others (KGBIII/1: 30): it is through my capacity to be a friend to others that I experience myself as an ethical self and can then begin also being a friend to myself (Greek: philautia). The philautic relation to the self is about nurturing friendship, and is distinguished as such from the egoistic self-obsession of narcissism. For this internal dialogue to bear fruit, it would be crucial not to remain stuck in a permanently critical attitude nor in blind self-affirmation. Plato’s concept of friendship [6] offers a middle way here: in the Socratic dialogue of Lysis, Plato considers whether the same (i.e., that which affirms me) or the different (that which calls me into question) is the basic condition of friendship; he finds arguments for and against both positions. Plato transcends the debate by adding a third element, namely, that a friend always wants “the good” (Platon, 2000, p.83). In other words, a friend has an interest in their friend being able to lead life successfully, and this becomes the measure of the relation between affirmation and critique. It is thus important to gain knowledge of what should be abnegated and what affirmed about oneself. To gain such understanding and become self-assured seems to me to be the potential of therapies as well as the elementary challenge of a life lived according to one’s own will. Living one’s own life requires time and again bringing into balance one’s understanding of oneself, in order to live fully and independently even in circumstances of illness. I see a model of this in Aristotle’s (Nicomachean Ethics, IX 8: 1166a13) view that humans are in alignment with themselves when they are their own friend.

Of course, the individual cannot be friends with him-, her- or themself if friendship is understood exclusively as a specific relationship between two people rather than as an attitude. Philosopher Harald Lemke (2005) emphasises, however, that the philautic relation to the self is precisely about nurturing the ability to be oneself, which he describes as befriending oneself. Self-befriending, as a verb, refers to the practice of actively being a friend to oneself: actively taking care of one’s own social needs and having an unconstrained basic attitude toward oneself that is about valuing one’s own well-being. In this ethic, healing therapeutic processes are present intrinsically as possibilities (p.66). I believe this to be true, if it allows us to live and design an autonomous life, even under the circumstances of diseases. Having this in mind…

… I ask Ms B to take away with her what was spoken during the imaginal dialogue and to use her own profound knowledge to treat herself as she had just treated her ‘friend’ in the drawing. Ms B takes a deep in- and out-breath, wipes the tears from her eyes, stresses how unexpectedly intense the session has been, and sums up in a few words that she had not intended anything in particular while creating the drawing: “And all that out of a picture I only drew because I liked the art postcard with Schiele’s drawing.”