ABSTRACT
This chapter is about my work as an art psychotherapist with emphasis on being ‘art focussed’ as the primary mode of engagement. The clinical work presented tested the boundaries of how I learnt to do art therapy with people who require physical as well as mental containment, where the only way of engaging was to create the concrete boundaries of a safe container to make art. It’s a snapshot of an experience from a particular perspective. Amongst the work, fragments from the therapist’s background provide insight into how, in this demanding work, we are constantly forced back on ourselves to re-examine the fragile resources we carry in order to endure some of the most murderous counter transference feelings, whilst always returning to concentrate on the art object as the only way of maintaining sanity. The chapter highlights, first, the use of concrete interactions around art materials and art objects as a non-threatening way of relating, and second, the primitive feelings of extreme threat to existence (annihilation), infused with old memories of extreme states of fear and violence. The work was about bearing these unbearable feelings and surviving them with the client and the consistency of the art process allowed occasional moments of connection to happen.
