ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a way of working in art therapy, which aims to make engagement possible when individuals' disturbance is characterised by radical defences against external reality (Bell 1995, Bion 1957), with all their ramifications. It explores difficulties arising in work with severely psychotic patients in relation to disturbances in their capacities for 'embodiment' (Laing 1960) and 'relatedness' (ibid.), with reference to the existential concept of body image (Pankow 1961, 1981). The chapter focuses on the psychoses as an escape from the irresolvable dilemma of 'being-in-the-world', with the painful experience of limits that this entails. It also focuses upon the physicality of space and art material, and primarily upon issues of form in the making of images from which eventually emerge content and meaning, could constitute an art therapy ontology as a whole, beyond the field of the human experiences.
