The problems of dependency and the value of art therapy as a means of treating alcoholism

Abstract

THIS study was made over a period of eleven months. I was at that time the head of, and the only member of the Art Therapy Department of the Bronx Lebanon Hospital in the South Bronx. I made my office in the Psychiatric Day Hospital, although my program was attended by the inpatients as well. This is a large city hospital, servicing a community made up primarily of Blacks and Puerto Ricans. I was the first art therapist to be employed, and as such was given a great deal of leeway as to how the program should be set up and run. None of the services or facilities and activities enjoyed by the other patients were available to the alcoholics. The new art room had been used for meetings and occasionally by an alcoholic patient in search of a way to pass the time. In among the many posters hanging on the wall, I noticed some poems and a painting. (Fig. 1) The painting caught my eye at once. It was unsigned, and depicted a head and torso with the left side of the face blacked out. The bright yellow on the right side was set off eerily by a single empty sightless eye. On closer inspection there seemed to be another less defined head to the right of this one, seemingly coming from the same body. It, too, was featureless and had an empty, red eye socket in place of an eye. There seemed to be a third black head as well to the far right. I was struck not only by the bizarreness of this painting and the anxiety, fear and anger that it expressed by means of the frag mented lines and angry looking colors, but also by the knowledge and skill in both the composition and in the use of color. Upon examining the other pieces of paper (Figs. 2, 3 and 4) hanging around it, I saw that they followed a pattern. Each poem had some small heads drawn on it. Each head was depicted with rather prominent ears, wore a hat and sported a beard. The right eyes were all sightless, while the left sockets, although not empty, were blacked out, negating vision. All of them were signed Harold. All had haunting melancholy themes reflecting hopelessness and long lost loves whose warmth he seemed never to have known. The eyeless heads on the poems were obviously related to feelings depicted in the painting, despite the fact that they were as dispassionate as the painting was passionate. All were pleading to be seen and understood. They verbally stated many of the observable emotions of the painting; longings for love and warmth, anger and self-pity and selfdenigration. The placement of the word “See” over his head indicated a feeling of being misunderstood and unappreciated, as well as unnoticed and futile. Alienation from people could also be perceived. “I was never deep into anything but wine.” Who was this sad, alienated, lonely person that drifted alone into the art room to pour out his heart to the empty spaces around him? In perusing his chart, I found that Harold was 26, black, and had been admitted three months before my arrival. He had been referred to the clinic by his married sister. At that time he had taken some pills which caused vomiting of blood. When admitted to Bronx