ABSTRACT

From the numerous concepts that have been developed in psychotherapy to illuminate the processes involved in both the therapeutic relationship and the therapeutic setting, I should like to select Winnicott’s concept of ‘potential space’, which is particularly valuable to the work of art therapists, especially with this patient group. He describes potential space as a hypothetical area

that exists (but cannot exist) between the baby and the object (mother or part of mother) during the phase of the repudiation of the object as not-me, that is, at the end of being merged in with the object.