ABSTRACT
The media is awash with salacious headlines depicting mothers who kill or harm their children as evil monsters. Once convicted their treatment may become worse still, often suffering overt psychological and physical assaults from other prisoners and unconscious attacks from the staff and institution itself. The reactions these women engender make them controversial to work with. Clinicians may feel overwhelmed or disconnected from the reality of their offences and colleagues may unconsciously attack the treatment through invasions of therapeutic space and the disruption of consistent sessions; perhaps re-enacting society’s visceral wish to punish them forcefully and deny them the care they may feel their victims were denied.
Women who have committed crimes against their children are encouraged by the prison to fabricate ‘cover stories’ to protect themselves. While these stories may act superficially to protect the women from immediate threat, they may also illustrate society’s wish to disavow the reality of these unconscionable actions and leave the mothers unable to comprehend or recognise the dreadfulness of their offence. Hyatt-Williams suggested that ‘The story of the crime as told by its perpetrator is nearly always a cover story … the rest is below consciousness’ (Hyatt-Williams 1998).
Art psychotherapy can offer a different language in which these women may begin to uncover the unconscious rage and hatred that may have fuelled their violence. Images can hold the contradictions, nuances and physical acting out the women may struggle to express or contain. This may be particularly important when the harm that has been done is unmentionable or even unthinkable.
This chapter will use images and case material from work that was undertaken in a large city centre women’s prison which itself was closed down in spite of good inspection reports which commended the psychological treatment the women received; perhaps descriptive of another attack on the humane and compassionate treatment of women who commit violence against their children.
