Synthesis of Photography, Art and Neuropsychological Concepts Within Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: An Illustrated Case Study

Abstract

The integration of non‐verbal, creative/implicit processes into ongoing psychoanalytic treatment as a highly effective modality to process trauma, also understood as Mentalization as a core element in the correction of pathological thinking caused by trauma (Allen et al., 2008. Mentalizing in clinical practice. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publication) will be presented. This clinical approach is designed to gain access to deeper unconscious, implicit, pre‐verbal memories and material that may have been otherwise inaccessible for clinical processing on a purely verbal level. The author will offer an ongoing case study of a client who was initially resistant to direct verbal processing of traumatic memories. He will then demonstrate how the communication of implicit stimuli, in the form of photographs and drawings, can be structured as the primary initial communication of non‐verbal material within this treatment. Images were presented by the patient at the beginning of each virtual session, allowed her to access traumatic material without triggering overwhelming anxiety allowing adequate affect regulation and enabling successful clinical processing of this previously inaccessible material. The author offers, from both a neurological and psychoanalytic perspective, demonstrations of clinical processing and intervention techniques that have, up until now, been utilized within the clinical fields of creative art therapy and psychoanalysis on an intuitive level without having a firmer foundation in demonstrable neuroscience. It is the intended purpose of this article to bridge this gap between previous intuitive interventions and neuroscientific research, within our clinical work.