Art therapy: from the unknown to oneselves that we are to the unknown about ourselves that we create

Accompaniment in art therapy operates upon a tension departing from the self to the unpredictable, instead of going from the unknown to the known, like conventional psychotherapies. The adventurous journey in art therapy goes from the unknown of the self one is, towards the unknown of the self one creates. Conventional psychotherapies seeking to discover “truths” and make them conscious are stymied by the irreducibility of the unsayable, the unanalyzable, the “primal repressed” they traditionally seek to shed light upon. Art therapy consists in accompanying an enigmatic symbolization figuring allusively. It nurtures this metaphorical representation, which is therapeutic in itself. “The metaphor is not the enigma, but the solution to the enigma,” said Paul Ricoeur. The art therapist imagines that representing the irreducible will transmit coded information to the person’s unconscious instances. Verbal language does not summarize symbolization, which may occur obliquely. Art therapy and artistic mediation offer a game with the unsayable. The subject brings in his or her complex, spontaneous, syncretic productions, ranging from symptoms to dreams, but the therapist does not ask him or her to examine them directly – quite the opposite. During the session, the subject is asked to make other complex productions: pictures, sculptures, collage, installation, made-up stories and tales, vocal, musical, or theatrical expressions, and dances the artistic mediator or art therapist accompanies through creation. Awareness is a possibility, but not a foregone conclusion. The essential point is to accompany symbolization from creation to creation; the subject does not necessarily know the hidden meanings of what he is producing. Creation itself brings about the transformation process.