ABSTRACT
In the context of art therapy research (as part of my PhD thesis' theme involving the house) at a psychiatric clinic in Wil, Switzerland in 2016, a repeatedly battered, "almost raped", and alcohol dependent female patient, Ms. L, was invited to create alternative house spaces. This case study incorporates elements of partner induced violence, alcohol addiction, and self-blaming (Reavey & Gough, 2000). Ms L. attended mixed gender art therapy focus group sessions for the duration of four months, once a week, for two hours. The group size was up to four patients.
The applied research methodology consists of triangulation (Denzin, 1978), and phenomenology (Fuchs, 2008), and thus incorporates both qualitative and quantitative material and data.
The discussion draws on approaches developed in respect to art therapy, to gender studies, and to body memory and trauma. By aesthetically transforming Ms L's endured and lived experiences via her partly idyllic, or shell-like houses, her paintings offered her spaces of withdrawal, of "gaining control", and allowed her to be painterly 'above things'. Her paintings permitted Ms L. to project herself into an architecturally secure and elevated glass space (“control tower”), a retreat which is perhaps impossible to access otherwise.
More generally, by incorporating the topic of the house, this art therapy method can allow patients to aesthetically address past traumatic, as well as current distressing life events by constructing, or rebuilding the self via a therapeutic conjoint process of house paintings and narratives.
