Abstract
The Unconscious, by definition, is unconscious …. Consequently, how do art therapists know that something pertaining to the realm of the unconscious is manifesting itself in a session? Pondering the implications of using a psychoanalytic framework in art therapy while advocating for the validity of such an approach within the contemporary practice of art therapy, this paper proposes a reflection on constituents of the epistemological stance of the psychoanalytically oriented art therapist. By re-visiting Bion's notion of learning through experience (1962) under a postmodernist view of counter-transference, the article demonstrates how the aesthetic experience of the art psychotherapist may lead to meaningful understanding and knowledge about patients and images. Viewing the effect of the image as a presentation event that is beyond its representational content shows how the visual image in art therapy is a particularly apt locus for the transmission and reception of infra-verbal and infra-representational forms of communication. To that end contemporary views of projective identification as a primitive, non-verbal and effective way of communication are reviewed. A case vignette further serves to illustrate how art therapists may have access to a form of visual thinking which is instrumental in acquiring knowledge about unconscious psychic transmissions occurring between patient, image and art therapist.
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