Making Visible: Art Therapy and Intersubjectivity

Abstract

This article argues that art often takes second place to the verbal in our conceptualising of art therapy, and that this may be because of an adherence to psychoanalytic thinking which splits subject and object, or combines notions of intersubjectivity with the idea of an individual psyche. This article returns to the origins of the concept of intersubjectivity in philosophy, and explores the significance for art therapy of Merleau-Ponty's idea of the body as expression and speech. By embracing intersubjectivity in art and in therapeutic relationships, art-making in art therapy may be made more visible. These ideas are explored in relation to art therapy practice in groups.

Round the clock: A therapist's and service user's perspective on the image outside art therapy

“…Referring specifically to art therapy groups, Skaife (2000Skaife ( , 2001Skaife ( , 2008 has written about the tension between the visual and verbal modes of expression in analytic art psychotherapy groups and the tendency for either one to become subordinate to the other in our thinking and clinical practice. In this split we can locate the 'therapy' in art therapy either in the art or the talk and this, Skaife (2008) argues, suppresses our awareness of the wider context of actions of which they are part.…”

“…Skaife (2001) argues that art making needs to be understood as inseparable from our relations with the world and elsewhere, that involvement in visual art making:…”

Dancing Intercorporeality: A Health Humanities Perspective on Dance as a Healing Art

“…While DMT is clearly a bodily/physical practice used in a mental health or psychotherapeutic intervention, the psy-(and sci-) disciplines which currently underpin expressive arts therapy tend to remain locked in a Cartesian framework which struggles to fully integrate our bodily exterior with our psychic interior. The focus on the content of artistic expression as a route to the unconscious and on the co-production of art or movement as a route to a therapeutic relationship means that creative practice is conceptualised as a way to facilitate verbal dialogue, as the true medium of therapy (Skaife 2001).…”

Altered Inquiry: Discovering Arts-Based Research through an Altered Book

“…They understood a similar ethics of embodiment as "being with," and cited Merleau-Ponty's (1964) concept of intersubjectivity. Art therapists are also interested in intersubjectivity as "being-with another" as the nature of art therapy pushes back against notions of dualism Skaife, 2001). "Being-with opens self to the vulnerability of the other, a with that is always affected by and touched by the other … it entangles us, implicating self and other simultaneously creating a network of relations" (La Jevic & Springgay, 2008, p. 70).…”

“…Words I collage into an altered book spread: mixing things up in the studio and beyond, use academic data, rare chance for study; study finds: work of heart. As an art therapy researcher, I am interested in art as a route to the interiorities of people (Hogan & Pink, 2010), our artistic intersubjectivity (Skaife, 2001), our relational knowings, and the emotional knowledge between us. Hoskins (2010a, 2010b) used a relational, artsbased approach in which images and metaphors awakened explication of context and complexity.…”