Making sense of marking space

Abstract

This chapter investigates clients’ use of physical space and its potential symbolic significance. The people featured in this project were a group of women who have severe learning difficulties and whose home environment at the time of the study was a single-sex locked ward in a large mental handicap hospital. In art therapists working with people who have learning difficulties have found it useful to examine their relationship with clients in the light of various theories of ego development. Theories of ego development imbue the therapeutic process with a sense of direction and purpose; there is always the notion of progress, of working towards something. In the case of the art therapist a major goal would be the client’s first tentative experiences of gestalt, i.e. perception of oneself as a separate, whole and boundaried entity. Art therapists and related practitioners will be familiar with the seemingly unpredictable, unboundaried behaviour of some clients who have severe learning difficulties.