The Projective Use Of Mother-And- Child Drawings: A Manual

A Manual For Clinicians

Jacquelyn Gillespie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134859535
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

A unique and powerful new projective technique is now available to mental health professionals. Based on the most primary of human relationships that between mother and child this technique is able to foster projections and identify perceptions of self and others that carry an unusually strong component of unconscious material. Strikingly clear and accessible, The Projective Use of Mother-and-Child Drawings is one of the few books on projective techniques to provide a consistent theoretical outlook and to address the very significant issues of transference and countertransference as they relate to this technique. While firmly grounded in a psychodynamic view of personality development, the volume also conveys a clinical outlook with applications suitable to a variety of theoretical paradigms. The author comprehensively considers the theoretical and practical aspects of mother-and-child drawings and how to both use and assess them to gain insight into the most fundamental reaches of the self. She consistently cautions against overly simplified interpretations of the drawings and stresses the importance of using conclusions drawn from them only as indications for further assessment, confirmation, or rejection. The book is replete with examples of mother-and-child drawings from all age groups in both average populations and those with both mental and physical pathologies. The volume opens with a careful discussion of the theoretical considerations behind mother-and-child drawings, as well as the development and validation of projective drawing techniques in general. The next section, on research issues, discourages diagnostic labeling in favor of making optimum use of the highly personal and idiosyncratic nature of these drawings. This chapter features an interesting attempt to classify mother-and-child drawings in relation to size of the figures. A particularly fascinating chapter on the impact of art on the therapist focuses on artwork done by professional artists who have addressed the mother-and-child theme. The author explores and analyzes several thematic works of art from varying time periods and cultures. It is her intent to help mental health professionals to explore their responses to pictorial art as individuals and thereby gain new understandings of related transference and countertransference issues with clients. Chapter four provides clear instructions for administering mother-and-child drawings as a projective technique and guidelines for their interpretation. This section provides samples and analyses of age-typical drawings from the general population. They vary greatly in style and artistic proficiency and are included to provide an idea of the usual developmental sequence of drawing characteristics from early childhood through the adult years. Drawings of groups with demonstrated psychological pathologies or physical and developmental abnormalities comprise the final chapter. This section approaches the interpretation of drawings by asking questions about how they communicate basic self and object relations issues. This commanding volume, of interest, to students and professionals alike, will provide art therapists, school psychologists and mental health practitioners of all stripes with a powerful new projective technique to add to their professional armamentarium.

CHAPTER 1

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Theoretical Issues Affecting Mother-and-Child Drawings

The material presented here on mother-and-child drawings differs from the usual material on person and family drawings in that it is based on a particular theoretical notion—the notion that the projective aspect of the drawings can yield a special portrait of the self. Not the social self, or the one that the “I” can recognize as “I,” but the self that is somehow developed in the earliest days and years of life through the link between child and mother. Object relations theory defines that earliest interaction as the source of the self-perceptions and style of relating to others that become part of the maturing and adult personality.^*

A FEW NOTES ON OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY

The Mother and Child in Psychoanalytic Thought

The importance of mother in the psychological development of the child has always been a fundamental tenet of classical psychoanalysis and has been further developed through the work of Fairbairn (1954), Melanie Klein (1948/1975) and her followers, Winnicott (1965,1971/1980) and the “Independent Group” in analysis, and the foundation work in ego psychology as developed by Anna Freud (1965, 1937/1966), Hartmann (1964), Jacobson (1964), and Spitz (1965).

The work of Mahler, Pine, and Bergman (1975) has served to give an impetus to the consideration of mother-and-child issues by others than those steeped in psychoanalytic traditions. For one thing, the work of Mahler and collaborators is based on practical, clinical observation of mothers and children behaving toward each other in ways that can be monitored and objectively assessed. Through their graphic descriptions of children clinging, pulling away, moving toward and/or against mother, leaving her to explore and then rushing back again—all in definable developmental sequences based on satisfyingly large samples—we are presented with a reality of a mother-child developmentally sequential relationship rather like that found in the Piagetian child development literature. The solid ground of observation lends credibility to and provides new interest in Mahler's psychoanalytic formulations concerning early child development.

The major theme of the Mahler and coauthors' (1975) work is the complementarity of symbiosis and individuation in the very early intrapsychic development of the child. They posit a universal initial “symbiotic” phase that is developmentally normal and that slowly gives way to a separation-individuation phase, which is then followed in the normal course of things by other steps toward an individual sense of self and object constancy. Developmental disruption, particularly in the separation-individuation phase, results in identity conflicts that may be reactivated through eliciting events at any stage of life. These conflicts may become the focus of many clinical hours of psychotherapy.

It is not the place of this material to go into the issues of object relations in any detail. There are prominent theorists and a wide variety of publications available for the interested reader. For those who are new to the concept, a useful introductory volume is Guntrip's Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and the Self (1971). The suggested reading list at the end of this book may also prove helpful.

Contrasting Interpersonal Relationships Theory and Object Relations Theory

There are a number of basic issues that underlie the development of mother-and-child drawings that are object relations concerns; there are also certain common misconceptions about object relations that need to be addressed.

At first glance, the issues of the earliest mother-and-child relationships appear to belong to those of a broader constellation of interpersonal relationships, perhaps along the lines established by Harry Stack Sullivan (1953). At a social level, that is true. But for object relations theory, the issues are quite different. And here is the fundamental difference of critical importance to understanding and interpreting mother-and-child drawings from an object relations perspective:

The study of interpersonal relationships is an exercise in social and cognitive psychology, where real people engage in real encounters, real communications, real transactions. Those people are aware of what they are doing, for the most part, and if they are not, then they can be instructed and their ignorance alleviated. New information is accepted and integrated with old, and new behaviors result. Habit patterns may be very difficult to change, but the potential is there and dealt with through practice and new learning or with reward systems.

The study of object relations, in contrast, deals with internal images of external reality that are colored by experience. From this point of view, there are no “real” perceptions of others, since all perceptions are selective in nature and filtered through memories and anticipations. We therefore construct internal representations or “objects” that we relate to as if they accurately represent the persons, and our experience of them, in the external world.

The earliest relationship in life is the mother-and-child relationship. Because the human infant has experienced the nine months before birth in the most intimate contact with mother, and since that contact remains the primary one in the child's introduction to the world, a concept of “mother” gradually develops that represents the first understanding of the world. At that time the world remains simply an extension of the self, and mother is seen as the source of sustenance and soothing. But mother also is not always there, and pain and other unpleasant events occur, and the baby must make some adaptation to that fact. Experiencing mother as both good and bad develops a prototype for later experiences of others and, even more important, for the perception of the self.

The power of that earliest relationship, says object relations theory, can hardly be overestimated. The sense of self derived from that relationship forms the basis for all subsequent relationships and also forms the expectations of the world. In this experience the child develops the first fantasies of the self and the “other,” the object that is the internal subjective representation of mother (later, the “others” out there), who can never be experienced directly. The initial internal object formations are preverbal and largely unconscious and continue to influence later conscious thought processes.

Another related concept is that of self-as-object, a useful way of conceptualizing the ability to identify with the mother and thereby gain control of the child-self (see Bollas, 1987).

The Object Relations Outlook in Psychotherapy

According to Winnicott (1971/1980), “psychotherapy takes place in the overlap of two areas of playing, that of the patient and that of the therapist…two people playing together” (p. 44). Winnicott sees play as the universal activity that opens up creativity and, in the therapy situation, offers the opportunity for communication. In many respects it replicates the early relationship with the mother, in which the mother attends carefully to the exploratory activities of the child and accepts the child's self-expression with pleasure.

Art therapy partakes to an unusually great extent of the kinds of affective interactions that were part of that early mother-and-child experience. The effective art therapist is comfortable in that shared play space, not the physical space in which the art activities occur, but in a shared subjective world space that in later life retains the mutuality of the early mother and child relationship.

Winnicott (1971/1980) calls this space the “transitional space,” which provides safety and the opportunity for self-expression. It is possible for the therapist to show the same kind of acceptance of patient output that mother gave—or should have given—to the young child's creativity.

Assessment settings do not provide the time or opportunity for the mutual exploration that is so powerful an aspect of ongoing therapy, but the impact of a drawing is often strong enough to make it seem that a drawing is indeed worth a thousand words.

The elusive inner self lies somewhere at the heart of psychological assessments. It is also the search for that self that is central to the work of psychotherapy.

“Mommy and I Are One”: A Validation Study

In recent years there have been a number of attempts to validate psychoanalytic concepts through the techniques of experimental psychology. Perhaps the most important of those for the issues raised here are the detailed studies of Silverman, Lachmann, and Milich (1982), summarized with critiques by them in 1984 for an analytic audience, and summarized more generally in Silverman and Weinberger (1985). Through the medium of tachistoscopic presentation of a subliminal stimulus of the phrase “Mommy and I Are One,” along with a pictorial image of two human figures joined at the shoulders, the researchers were able to evoke changes in behavior and test response in schizophrenic and other patient groups.

Designed specifically to test the notions of merger and fusion between mother and child inherent in the concept of symbiosis through the use of a “oneness” stimulus, the results of the primary study with schizophrenics found that “more differentiated” patients showed improvement, whereas “less differentiated” patients showed no reduction in pathology. The more differentiated patients were presumably able to maintain separateness while profiting from the oneness experience; on the other hand, the less differentiated patients were unable to do so because of what seemed to be a threat to the sense of self. Differentiation, in this study, was described as “level of differentiation from mother” and defined through patient rating scales of self and mother and the degree to which the ratings coincided (Silverman, Lachmann, & Milich, 1984).

This ingenious study of schizophrenics and subsequent work with a number of other patient and nonpatient groups provided evidence that issues of symbiosis can be explored usefully in an experimental fashion. The portion of the Silverman material described here, however, has identified the differentiation of self from mother as a relevant variable in the examination of issues of symbiosis and suggests its validity as a clinical concern. It is the Silverman thesis that “oneness gratifications enhance adaptation only if a sense of self is preserved” (Silverman & Weinberger, 1985, p. 1300).

If Silverman and his colleagues have been able to demonstrate issues of symbiosis and differentiation through the use of rating scales and responses to subliminal stimulation, then is it not possible that such concerns may also be clinically accessible through the use of projective mother-and-child drawings?

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROJECTIVE DRAWING TECHNIQUES

Origins of Projective Drawings

Although the work of artists and patient art work had for some time been of interest to psychologists, the systematic use of patient drawings as expressions of self-concept, affective states, and various kinds of pathology originated with the work of Machover (1949), who used draw-a-person figures to evoke evidence of “the impulses, anxieties, conflicts, and compensations characteristic of that individual” (p. 35). In the course of evaluating children with the Goodenough (1926) Draw-a-Man test to determine IQ, she found that the drawings yielded so much clinical data that she soon included person drawings regularly in child assessment batteries and then extended them to adult assessments as well. The drawings were evaluated in conjunction with clinical data and associations given by the subjects, and principles were derived governing interpretation. Those principles were set forth in some detail in Machover's monograph and have set the basic standard for the continuing clinical use of drawings in assessment and psychotherapy.

Variations in Projective Drawing Techniques

There have, of course, been a number of variations over the years on the technique established by Machover. The House-Tree-Person technique, developed by Buck and first published in 1948, appeared at about the same time as Machover's work.

Family drawings have also been used with children for many years (Reznikoff & Reznikoff, 1956; Oster & Gould, 1987). A subsequent and very popular variation, known as the Kinetic Family Drawing (Burns & Kaufman, 1970, 1972; Burns, 1982) specifically focuses on “your family” and the interaction among family members.

There have been other modifications of the basic Draw-a-Person technique, but none has been of particular significance in terms of the type of response required. However, a most creative and different approach to a projective person drawing was developed by Malchiodi (1990) in the course of her work with abused children. Malchiodi has children draw a “full-size person on a large piece of white butcher paper cut to the approximate size of the child” (p. 118). This Life-Size-Body Drawing (LSBD) is not a body tracing, but an actual drawing task that parallels the usual draw-a-person activity. Says Malchiodi,

This may contribute to the level of energy and investment required to engage in and complete such an activity. Preliminary observations indicate that children related more directly to the life-size image, and showed increased verbalization, and a higher interest level in participating in the task. Perhaps the life-size image, because it approximates the child's size and therefore is more like the child, is more projective, (p. 117)

This technique offers considerable promise. However, Malchiodi warns that “confrontational aspects of the large self-image may be overwhelming” (p. 120) in some cases and suggests caution in its use and careful provision for support and follow-up.

None of these techniques appear to have addressed the issues of theory in any depth. In fact, although Machover (1949) comments that there is “an intimate tie-up between the figure drawn and the personality of the individual who is doing the drawing” (p. 4), she is vague on the nature of that tie-up. She goes ahead to say that “some process of selection involving identification through projection and introjection enters at some point” (p. 5). Her speculations largely involve the use of a person drawing as a physical activity, drawing on an inner body image, that provides a “natural vehicle” for the expression of a person's body needs and conflicts. However, she points out that the technique was developed in clinics and hospitals as “a clinical tool for personality analysis, rather than around any theoretical hypotheses” (p. 20).

Validation of Projective Drawing Techniques

In Harris's (1963) evaluation of various materials on children's drawings, he comments on the projective use of drawings: “In terms of theory, this field of research has been quite diffuse. Rather than scientifically analytical, its proponents have tended toward intuitive impressionism” (p. 11).

The terms “projection” and “introjection,” as well as Machover's frequent use of the term “unconscious,” suggest some basic reliance on psychoanalytic thought. In fact, a recent and comprehensive summary of a host of drawing techniques by Oster and Gould (1987) finds the derivations of the procedure in the work of Freud, Kris, and Jung in their concerns with the creative mind and unconscious processes and goes ahead to describe the development of art therapy as, originally, an adjunct to psychoanalysis.

In spite of this bow to psychoanalytic thought, in the interpretation of the material there is nowhere any systematic application of analytic principles. Pictorial representations are often taken at face value, but then they are also often depicted as representing defenses. The interpretation may flow from one to another without acknowledging that important transition. Even more important, perhaps, is the lack of systematic reference to transference, countertransference, and resistance issues in the psychological literature related to drawings. Recently, the art therapy literature, with its roots more specifically in psychoanalytic theory, has begun to address these issues (e.g., Schaverien, 1992; Simon, 1992).

As Harris points out, clinicians appear to work intuitively, referring to other information available about the individual to support or contradict the dat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Theoretical Issues Affecting Mother-and-Child Drawings
• Chapter 2: Research Issues in Mother-and-Child Drawings
• Chapter 3: The Impact of Art on the Therapist: Transference and Countertransference Issues
• Chapter 4: Administering and Interpreting Mother-and-Child Drawings: A Developmental Perspective
• Chapter 5: Clinical Issues
• Recommended Readings
• References
• Index