Psychoanalytic and analytic approaches to art therapy are strongly linked to the idea that spontaneous art expression provides access to the unconscious. Spontaneous art expression is any image making which is nondirective; that is, the person is simply re-quested to make a drawing, painting, or sculpture of anything he or she wants to and may also be invited to choose freely whatever materials he or she wishes to use. The purpose of spontaneous expression, like free association, is to help clients express what troubles them as freely as possible (Rubin, 2001).
In the psychoanalytic approach, as well as many other approaches to art
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FIGURE 4.1.“Angry picture” by 6-year-old girl who felt abandoned by the therapist.
apy, the therapist’s role is to facilitate an interpersonal relationship that encourages the individual to create spontaneous images and to discover personal meaning in one’s expressions. While image making may be spontaneous, the therapist is expected to explain art media (such as how to use drawing or painting materials) to individu-als who are inexperienced in art expression. This might even include a brief demon-stration of how to use a chalk pastel or paintbrush, or even a technique such as the
“scribble” (described in more detail later). Emphasis, however, is on art expression as symbolic communication rather than necessarily an aesthetic product, which pro-motes the idea that all expression is acceptable and is intended to encourage more free communication of conflicts and emotions.
While therapists working from a psychoanalytic or analytic stance see spontane-ous expression as central to the process of art therapy, some practitioners believe that it is particularly helpful in specific situations. Furth (1988) and Bach (1966, 1990), who favor a Jungian analytic approach to understanding art expressions, believe that spontaneous expression is most useful when an individual is undergoing a significant life event such as an emotional crisis, physical illness, or the process of dying. They underscore the capacity of extemporaneous expression to reveal not only uncon-scious material but also the psyche’s intuition and the individual’s internal curative potential. Like Jung, both Furth and Bach observe that spontaneous art expressions are containers of repressed emotions as well as sources of transformation.
While it is believed by both psychoanalytic and analytic practitioners that spon-taneous expression has an important place in revealing the unconscious, it is also ob-served by some that more active direction on the part of the therapist is necessary for change to take place. Kramer (1993), who uses a psychoanalytic framework in her work, notes that art therapy should include not only spontaneous expression but also the more time-consuming process of fully formed art expression. Furth (1988), in his analytic work with children and adults with life-threatening illnesses, found that pro-jective drawing tasks (such as requesting a drawing of a house, tree, and person) and other therapist-directed activities were just as revealing of unconscious material as impromptu drawings and had potential to enhance the course of therapy.
One method that has been used as a catalyst for spontaneous expression is the
“scribble technique” (Cane, 1951; Naumburg, 1966). Although it is used in many different approaches to art therapy, it is most often associated with the psychoana-lytic approach. When creating impromptu images is difficult for an individual, intro-ducing the scribble technique often helps the person to generate images and, subse-quently, to project thoughts or feelings through art expression. In its simplest form it involves drawing a series of scribbled lines on paper and then looking at those lines to see shapes, figures, or objects that can be further articulated with details and color to define them. Free association is part of the process in two distinct ways: (1) it pres-ents the possibility of freely associating images to what one sees in the scribble and (2) after completing the activity, the individual may verbally associate thoughts, feelings, and experiences with the images that were created within the scribble.
Winnicott (1971) developed a variation of the scribble technique, the “squiggle game,” as a way to establish rapport with children as well as a tool to encourage cre-ative expression. He would introduce the activity as follows: “Let’s play something. I Psychoanalytic, Analytic, and Object Relations Approaches 47
know what I would like to play and I’ll show you. This game that I like playing has no rules. I just take my pencil and go like that . . . (do squiggle blind). You show me if that looks like anything to you or if you can make it into anything, and afterwards you do the same for me and I will see if I can make something of yours” (Winnicott, 1971, pp. 62–63).
In a similar vein, I use “scribble chase” (Luesbrink, 1990) to engage the child or adult in free expression. To start this “game,” I ask the individual to chose a crayon or chalk and I choose one in a different color. Then I say, “Now I am going to take my crayon and scribble all over the paper. But while I am scribbling I want you to use your crayon to chase my crayon around the page.” After completing this scribble I ask the person to look at the drawing, look for shapes or images, and use drawing materials to add details to make one or more pictures using the scribbled lines as in-spiration. The following vignette provides an example of how this technique was used with a child who was traumatized by violence in his community:
Case Example
Seven-year-old Bobby was a witness to a shooting on a street in the neighborhood in which he lived; a classmate of his was accidentally shot and killed in gang-related gunfire just a few blocks from Bobby’s home. Although there was some trauma de-briefing for Bobby and other children who witnessed or heard about the incident, Bobby became noticeably withdrawn and depressed in the weeks after the death of his classmate. His interest in school and friends diminished and his teacher reported that he was often caught “day dreaming” in class. His parents became worried about his dramatic change in behavior and brought him in to see me for an evaluation.
When Bobby sat down in my art and playroom he seemed disinterested in the toys and games and sat with his eyes looking down into his lap. I asked him if he liked to draw and he mumbled a quiet “yes,” still not looking at me. I said that I had a game that involved drawing that I thought he would be good at and placed a large piece of white paper on the desk at which we both sat. The scribble chase turned out to be a good choice because it allowed Bobby to look at the paper rather than me for the time being. It also allowed him to participate without too much verbal communi-cation and for me to take a neutral, observing stance.
Bobby followed my scribble on the paper for about a minute; I then asked him to look at the scribble we made and to use the drawing materials to make a picture out of the lines. Bobby spent the next 20 minutes of the session carefully creating a series of pictures from the scribble, including a car running over a person and a fire con-suming a building (Figure 4.2). It was easy to see that he was focused on themes of danger and destruction and like many children who are exposed to violence, he was carrying terrifying images in his head but had had no way of communicating them.
He used the activity to “free associate” thoughts and feelings through images that communicated his fears, conflicts, and, possibly, even desires to harm others as a re-sult of his own anxieties. For Bobby, the activity served as a useful way to capitalize on projection as a way for him to safely express his feelings until he was ready to discuss his experiences more directly.
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In subsequent sessions Bobby worked on more “scribble chases” as well as spon-taneously creating images without direction from me. I let Bobby work on his own for several sessions, mostly quietly observing his process and images until one day he began to verbalize what he called “bad feelings” of fear, worry, or guilt about the shooting he had witnessed. In our last session about 11 weeks after the initial meet-ing, Bobby reported that he felt “better” and he was happy that he could talk to his parents about his “bad feelings” when he was apprehensive or sad. His parents also reported that he was socializing with his friends again and that, in general, his demeanor had greatly improved.
This brief example demonstrates how the scribble technique can be used as a way to encourage spontaneous expression and capitalize on projection when the in-dividual may find verbal communication impossible. Finding images within the scrib-ble and then naming the images offered Bobby a way to convey thoughts and feelings without talking about the traumatizing experience directly. Because the scribble tech-nique complements the psychoanalytic principles of projection and free association, it has also become the basis of some art-based evaluations, including procedures developed by Ulman (1992) and Kwiatkowska (1978).
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FIGURE 4.2. Images found in a scribble by 7-year-old Bobby after death of a classmate.