ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the aesthetic imagination: how various art forms can aid in psychological healing. From the deep solitude of the internal world, art transforms internal objects into altered external actuality. As we experience a work of art, we participate in this transformation. The author’s experience in the Jewish Museum Berlin outlines how a physical work of architecture can become a psychological space of transformation. Trauma patients especially can benefit from aesthetic/therapeutic exploration in the arts, allowing them to represent trauma as well as introduce new elements into their experience, achieving a sense of mastery.
The author posits the importance of both therapist and patient finding his or her distinctive, even poetic, voice. The therapist’s use of language – including feeling-tone, sense of aliveness, nuance, voice and musicality – is crucial to the success of the work.
The author describes how one or both sides of the therapeutic dyad can receive help from (1) reading literature, to learn to listen deeply, ameliorate pain and find inspiring language; (2) watching theater, to provide aesthetic distance and a witnessing presence to work through trauma; (3) viewing/creating visual art, to work through conflict as well as ponder metaphorical connections to psychotherapy; and (4) experiencing architecture, as described above. The relationship between Samuel Beckett and Wilfred Bion is explored as an example of the interpenetration of psychoanalysis and art.
