Studies of the Free Art Expression of Behaviour Problem Children and Adolescents as a means of Diagnosis and Therapy
- Type:
Book Reviews
- Author:
Margaret JNaumberg. roreword
by Nolan D. C. Lewis, M.D., Nervous and Mental Diseases Monographs, 70 Pine Street, New York 5 $5.50.
Unfortunately the cumbersome title of this book is symptomatic of the way in which its interesting contents are presented. In fact so provocative are Miss Naumburg’s long-winded circumlocutions that it is hard to avoid an unfairly critical attitude of the book as a whole.
For instance, in the first paragraph the writer, wishing to state that the psychiatrists disagree on the diagnosis of the case, has to say, ” considerable divergence of opinion concerning this diagnosis was evident among the psychiatrists who examined the patient.” So also throughout the book one finds that work is ” carried through to completion ” instead of just finished; and boys become “increasingly severe disciplinary problems ” instead of just more difficult to manage. It may be that the American reader can take this in his stride, but to the English reader it is very distracting. After ten pages or so I realized that I was more taken up with my own phantasies of teaching Miss Naumburg to write concise English prose (with the aid of marginal notes in blue pencil) than in understanding what she herself had to say.
Case material is usually interesting, and these cases are no exception. The writer presents material from six in-patient cases with which she has worked for varying periods in the New York State Psychiatric Institute; there are 99 monochromatic reproductions of drawings and paintings. From the viewpoint of exact scientific research, the work is unsatisfactory because the conditions under which the material was obtained are difficult to evaluate. For instance, running concurrently with the “art sessions” these children were also having ” play therapy ” with another worker and occasional psychiatric interviews with a psychiatrist. It is the old problem that if you give more than one medicine at the same time you cannot be sure which one is curing the patient.
I find it best, therefore, to disregard the rather tiresome reiterations about “research projects” and “planned investigations ” and to regard this work simply as an exposition of how drawing and painting are valuable in helping the child to formulate his unconscious processes, and the therapist to understand them. To those who have been in the habit of using plastic materials in therapy with children the writer has no particularly original contributions to make. The ground she covers is mostly familiar. But the covering of this ground is nevertheless valuable, especially for those embarking on child therapy.
In her approach to the unconscious through ” art work ” the writer makes some important points which are not always appreciated. For instance, she emphasizes that ” spontaneous expression ” in art is by no means always spontaneously achieved. Frequently the early sessions are taken up with assisting and encouraging a child, who would otherwise have done merely stereotyped copy work, to express his emotional life and reactions in this medium. This inevitably leads to an added interest and a desire for creative expression which, without this initial help, might otherwise not come to light. When this has been achieved the stage is, so to speak, set for the therapeutic work.
She rightly stressed also that the unconscious will reveal itself in painting or drawing long long before it will do so in speech. ” Since the language of images is the speech of the unconscious it serves as a more primitive and direct mode of personal expression than words.” The ability thus to express the unconscious alone is therapeutic, though interpretation, which she uses sparingly, may be essential at certain points. Iri discussing the function of phantasy, she remarks, ” The imaginative life revealed seems to combine aspects of both the Freudian and Jungian interpretation of phantasy. At times it represents in unmistakable Freudian terms an attempt to “escape from reality at others it becomes a projection of “a unifying function ” that deals with a collective past or an individual future in the Jungian sense “.
In some cases Miss Naumburg’s approach was greatly inhibited by her conditions of work. For instance, one boy was undergoing a formal analysis at the time, so observation only was permitted. One cannot help feeling that for a boy of eleven Miss Naumburg’s less verbal therapeutic approach would have been preferable to that of ” formal psychoanalysis Certainly in the cases in which she is given a free hand as therapist the material comes to light in a remarkable manner and makes much more instructive reading. Of course, material obtained in this work depends largely on the attitude (both conscious and unconscious) of the observer, and the role he plays. Often insufficient attention is paid to this point.
Miss Naumburg appears to work mainly within the framework of orthodox psychiatry and psychoanalysis. In her attempt to pay tribute to these intellectual taskmasters she often runs the risk oflosing that ” spontaneous expression ” which she seeks to cultivate in her young patients. The problem of how to handle this delicate type of material within an objective scientific framework, without killing it by intellectual formulations, is indeed a difficult one, and I do not feel Miss Naumburg has fully solved this problem. Much, however, of her work forms a very valuable contribution to the subject of which she has made a special study over many years. R.L.M.
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