Art Therapy and Political Violence

With Art, Without Illusion

Debra Kalmanowitz, Bobby Lloyd, Debra Kalmanowitz, Bobby Lloyd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135444372
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

The impact of political violence, war, civil war and acts of terrorism on the individuals involved can be extensive. Art therapy can provide an effective means of expressing the resulting experiences of fear, loss, separation, instability and disruption. Art Therapy and Political Violence brings together contributions from all over the world and from diverse theoretical backgrounds. With contributions from Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Israel and South Africa, the book includes numerous clinical examples to vividly illustrate the main issues affecting art therapy. The practical issues involved are also discussed, including subjects such as the importance of working with both the internal and external worlds of the individual and sensitivity to cultural issues. Art therapists, psychotherapists and other mental health professionals, particularly those working in the context of political violence or in countries of refuge, will find the experiences recounted in Art Therapy and Political Violence thought-provoking and will welcome the wealth of practical information provided.

Chapter 1 Art therapy and political violence

Debra Kalmanowitz and Bobby Lloyd

Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to place art therapy and art making in the context of political violence and trauma. This chapter takes the form of a number of short sections which can be read separately or together, but ultimately build upon each other. It details many of the themes that are echoed throughout this book and it is hoped that these will form useful building blocks in further thinking about this subject:

• the context and impact of violence
• art therapy, image, memory and trauma
• art therapy, coping and resilience
• art therapy and making meaning
• conclusion.

The context and impact of violence

I think that in this gust of violence we have seen the disintegration of a certain layer of culture that makes possible the illusions that are needed to maintain a more or less tolerable fabric of life . . . Suddenly you see that all sense of shame has disappeared, that even mechanisms of social hypocrisy that are needed to maintain the fabric of life have vanished. And in some way it is all connected to life under terrorism. Because if you live in a reality in which you see people torn apart, in which you see flesh torn, it is very difficult for you to go on believing in something. And then you see how all mechanisms are falling apart: of both the private body and the public body.

(Grossman 2003: 7)

The Israeli novelist Grossman (2003) writes vividly about the impact of violence on his society in which he sees the collapse of both the ‘private’ and the ‘public’. Indeed, recognising the impact that the context has on the individuals with whom we work is essential as the external context lies at the centre of the reality of a people and is paramount to the way in which individuals understand their world. When violence is ongoing, pervasive and unremitting, it may form an integral part of each individual’s internal world, identity, values, beliefs and history and not only affect a part of their present, but also inform whom each person will become. It will invariably inform the community itself.

Normal everyday experiences take place within relationships, within a social, cultural, transpersonal, religious and political context, and traumatic or extreme events occur within this context too. At times of war, ongoing terror or civil conflict there is often disintegration, destruction and breaking down of structures and organisations, families and individuals on both sides. Together with this, however, there may also be a strength, a grasping onto life in a way that does not happen when life is not under threat. This became clear to us when we worked in East Mostar during the Bosnian war in 1994: the men were fighting during the day and returning at night; families were cooped up in houses, unable to go out; society, services, community were broken down and yet the sense of support and humanity from surviving family and friends was intense, the desire to celebrate life almost stifling for us. Indeed, some individuals seemed to experience a sense of regeneration. The events seemed to give new meaning to their lives and allowed them to see their lives differently. Some individuals did however develop mental health problems or trauma reactions as a result of their experiences and these individuals may have benefited from specialist intervention.

Blackwell (1989: 1) writes about the social context of survival and points out that the ‘process of arrest, torture, release, flight and exile involves trauma at many levels’. He suggests that trauma can be understood as an assault not only on the individual but also on the relationships between people. Indeed, many other practitioners writing on trauma hold this view. Herman (2001) suggests that it is the ‘sustaining bonds’ between people that come under attack, while others refer to the connections and structures that ordinarily hold people together and help give meaning to their lives (Gibson 2001; Siegel 2001; Stewart 2001; Straker et al. 1987; Summerfield 2000a, 2000b; Van der Kolk 1987; Woodcock 1995, 2001a, 2001b).

As art therapists we therefore cannot simply concentrate on the internal world of the individual. We must remember that it is the context that shapes an individual’s priorities and expectations, as well as the meaning and impact of violence on the individual.

Art therapy, image, memory and trauma

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all . . . Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.

(Luis Buñuel, quoted in Sacks 1986: 22)

We feel it is important to consider some basic theories and research on memory and the significance of loss and distortion of memory in this context. This has presented us with a considerable challenge to link the language of science with the language of art in a way that is useful and digestible.

Cultural memory

Each culture has its own archives, significant cultural artefacts, as well as art forms which symbolically hold cultural meaning. These are ‘the symbols of the gathered memory of individuals and nations, things that give depth and meaning to our collective existence’ (Jenkins 2003). The collective meaning they hold informs individuals about themselves.

The war on Iraq led by the United States in 2003, in which the overthrow of the ‘tyrannical’ regime led by Saddam Hussein took place, saw, among other things, the looting of one of the world’s treasure houses of Western civilisation, a storehouse of art and archaeology. Journalist Simon Jenkins wrote about this catastrophic looting of the sites and museums in Iraq during this war. He made a connection between this destruction of Iraq’s cultural inheritance and a concurrent British Museum exhibition, ‘Museums of the Mind’, in which cultural artefacts from across the world were brought together. He drew from the show that ‘People know who they are only by reference to their past, to group memories and the objects which absorb and reflect them’ (Jenkins 2003).

Cultural artefacts, which are often stored in museums, do come under attack when they are looted, stolen and destroyed at times of war. This destruction may at times seek to erase cultural memory. Jenkins places the implications of this into a poetic context.

Iraq, particularly the green heart of Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent of land between the Tigris and Euphrates, is the cradle of civilization, the land of Nineveh, Babylon, Nimrud and Uruk, the world’s first city. This is where the Samarians invented writing five thousand years ago, where the epic of Gilgamesh – the model for Noah and the flood – was committed to Cuniform a millennium and a half before Homer. It is the land of the Old Testamant, the Tower of Babel and of Ur, where Abraham, the father of three great Monothaeistic religions, was formed.

(Jenkins 2003)

We see how much of civilisation was housed in Iraq and ourselves recognise an immense weight of Western history on its soil. It illuminates for us just how our own individual identities are profoundly linked with culture, that is, ‘with inherited tradition . . . in the common pool of humanity, into which individuals and groups of people may contribute, and from which we may all draw’ (Winnicott 1988 [1971]: 116).

As art therapists we are aware that images may, in the same way as artefacts or objects, hold symbolic meaning in which is implanted personal narrative or memory. When we work through art making we draw not only on the personal unconscious but also on the collective unconscious (Jung 1956, 1959) or collective memories.

In London a client draws the Kurdish hills in Turkey that he longs to see. A client talks about magic and the way in which she understands the world, or the clay she is using which reminds her of the black clay pots she used to make back in Ethiopia with her mother. In refugee camps in Slovenia, Croatia and northern India, traditional music was made with intense emotion as if it held what had been lost or taken away. In kindergartens and homes in East Mostar, Bosnia, we saw images made by children and adults of the historic and politically significant sixteenth-century bridge over the Neretva river, which was destroyed in November 1993. These were images of the bridge standing and destroyed. Its destruction represented not only the utter senselessness and misery of the conflict there but also a threat to a fundamental frame of reference, while the making of images seemed an individual and collective attempt to counter this (Figure 1.1).

These retelling of memories are essential to an individual’s sense of existence. These inherited frames of reference are powerful in restoring a sense of lost identity. As art therapists we can encourage individuals to work through the image to help reclaim a personal relationship to their rich cultural heritage and ways in which this informs them internally.

Traumatic memory

If human beings do not have the capacity to remember, have lost their frame of reference, then an attack on memory has taken place. Indeed, trauma has been described as a ‘disease of memory’.

Human memory is a complex operation and scientists are still grappling with how memories work. It is agreed by many authors that memory is the way in which past experience is encoded in the brain and shapes present and future functioning (Bremner and Narayan 1998; Schore 1994; Siegel 2001; Van der Kolk 1984). Following traumatic experiences, areas of the brain to do with memory and emotional response may be damaged. Clinicians across disciplines are excited by scientific findings about the potential for reversing neural damage (Bremner 1998; Schore 1994) and have suggested that neural integration, which is fundamental to emotional recovery after traumatic events, can take place through interpersonal relationships and also through play. This research is still in its developmental stage.

Figure 1.1 Child’s drawing of the destroyed bridge(East Mostar, Bosnia)

Many, including Siegel (2001), who takes the basis of his thinking from attachment theory (Bowlby 1969), have written on the centrality of play for the normal social, intellectual and emotional development of the child. Others have written on the healing functions of play and identified this as a key element in the recovery from trauma (Cairns 1996; Terr 1981; Winnicott 1988 [1971]). As we are well aware as art therapists, there are many similarities between play and art making, numerous references to which can be found in the arts therapies literature. The above supports further the relevance of our work as art therapists in the context of political violence, in which play and the arts in the context of therapy and trauma have a role to play in promotion of memory and neural integration.

During times of trauma, experiences may not be processed in symbolic or linguistic forms but may be organised and remembered on sensorimotor or iconic levels ‘as horrific images, visceral sensations, or fight/flight reactions’. These can be ‘reactivated by affective, auditory or visual cues’ leaving people in a state of ‘unspeakable terror’, therefore making it exceedingly difficult to access these events. The experience does not fit into existing conceptual schemata, cannot be accommodated or assimilated, it therefore overwhelms (Van der Kolk 1984: 193).

Art therapist Johnson (1987) explored the ‘role of the creative arts therapies in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological trauma’ and discusses why the creative arts therapies might be a treatment of choice. He describes his work with flashbacks or nightmares – memories which can often appear as an exact replica of the event, down to every detail, as if they were photographed. He echoes Van der Kolk (1984) when he suggests that they are neither integrated conceptually with other memories nor available to be processed, worked through and continually transformed as are other aspects of our memories. He suggests a visual media may offer a unique means by which such traumatic images and memories are made accessible because of their graphic nature.

In London after almost two years of therapy, an adolescent girl from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who had been abducted, placed in a dark room and repeatedly gang-raped, finally managed, with some desperation, to draw and paint the recurring nightmare in which the image of the room appeared and which both woke her every night and daily plagued her. She drew this image many times, each time noting more detail. Once she had externalised this recurring image she was able, with great difficulty and courage, to look closely at the art object and recall auditory memories and bodily sensations which were part of the nightmare and of her experience but which she could not include in a visual form. This it seems was the beginning of her healing process as she gained courage from the fact that she had survived the representation of her nightmare as well as making tangible the sensations, auditory and visual memories that had incapacitated her since the event occurred.

In her art therapy work with Vietnam war veterans, Golub (1984) writes about symbolic expression in relation to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She explores the way in which the art process and product enabled Vietnam veterans to integrate their war experiences into their lives and gain mastery over the trauma even ten years after the event. Golub also suggests that the reliving of the event through the art making is perhaps nece...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Art therapy and political violence
• Chapter 2 Political violence, trauma and mental health interventions
• Chapter 3 ‘The moment in and out of time’
• Chapter 4 Feast of colour
• Chapter 5 From dark black to bright pink
• Chapter 6 Inside the Portable Studio
• Chapter 7 Creativity from chaos
• Chapter 8 A time for healing
• Chapter 9 Expressive arts therapy – healing the traumatized
• Chapter 10 Transforming objects in a transforming South Africa
• Chapter 11 A soldier’s story
• Chapter 12 Silence in exile
• Chapter 13 Art therapy and trauma,a different setting, a different approach
• Epilogue