Tag Archives: creativity

Celebrate the doodle!

The doodle returns! It has been buried beneath more important and worthy projects such as book writing, editing, printmaking, gardening and even dog walking. But now as the year closes down, in the long dark evenings – kerpow! – doodling is back!

It’s hard, though, not to be dismissive. It’s just a doodle, a repetitive mark making exercise, a trifle, only valuable for using up the backs of old envelopes.

But in a past life of psychotherapy training, wasn’t it a possible route to deciphering ‘the unconscious’? Wasn’t it something that once decoded could provide valuable insights into the mysterious interior processes that shape our lives? So I find myself once more reading passages from Marion Milner’s ‘In the Hands of the Living God’ – a detailed account of her 20+year professional relationship with a female patient where drawing/doodling was a key aspect. In many ways I find it a difficult read now but it is still a fascinating testimony to the communicative power of ‘art’ in a therapeutic relationship.

Most of us, however, are not doodling in that context; we are more likely to be stuck in some situation such as a lecture, meeting, phone call, where our attention is split between what we are supposed to be attending to and the shapes emerging from the end of our pen. For my part the resulting doodle is generally despatched to the recycling box without a second thought these days.

This is the doodle that emerged as I was thinking about this blog post…. probably ripe for analysis!

But here I am, obviously thinking about the process again. There must be some magic pull in the doodle – why does anybody do it?

Often it involves repetitive mark making, going over and over the paper with the same hand movement. There is something soothing in this, but also like many other repetitive movements such as knitting, it seems to free up some part of the mind to wander.

Being ‘just a doodle’ rather than a drawing or a sketch frees it from any judgment of artistic merit, and it can wander where it will, liberated from criticism. In a parallel fashion, our minds can wander too, sometimes making their way to that very mysterious and wonderful place we call creativity. Inspiration can often spring from doodling! (Claudia McGill , artist, is a good example here!)

It works in psychotherapy settings too. I’m thinking of a supervision group for group facilitators where the introduction of ‘doodling’ has had a very liberating and creative effect. It seemed difficult to generate a freely flowing conversation, despite it being a group that was experienced and committed to reflexive practice. When we explored the inhibitions, some were about fears of judgment; not good enough, not thoughtful enough, and some the familiar ‘your business is more important than mine’ theme.

Doodles are not open to either of these restrictions. One person’s doodle is as useful as another’s; doodles are neither good or bad, they just are. Once we got hold of the idea that when we spoke in the group, we were doodling, and that we could doodle together, the conversation could breathe…. And we got to some very interesting and creative places as a result.

Let’s celebrate the doodle!

Imagination and psychotherapy: Drawing things out

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Drawing from the imagination has always been a favourite activity of mine, but because of my skills deficit it usually ends up as some abstract doodle. Now I’m being challenged to take it further, and the results are surprising. The task in the drawing class was to use this collection of dried cordyline leaves as a basis for some imaginative work using charcoal.

After an hour or so of various attempts, largely in the form of landscapes and ponds, this picture emerged. It seemed to draw itself, very quickly in the last thirty minutes of the class and it took me by surprise. It’s not my usual stuff at all, and I felt quite moved by it.

Later it made me think about the phrase ‘drawing out’. In the conversations that make up psychotherapy, we are often drawing things out; trying to see more clearly that which has been obscured, buried, denied. Sometimes what emerges is painful and shocking, but not always. There moments when what emerges is surprising and beautiful. We can think of this as revealing something already present but hidden, or as I would want to claim, as a more creative process. In the conversation, a new possibility or image is co-created by client and therapist. It is a drawn from the interplay of memory, intuition, experiences – and imagination.

The relationship between psychotherapy and imagination has engaged many theorists and practitioners for years. All of the writers that were influential in my development as a psychotherapist find a significant place for it – Marion Milner, Stephen Mitchell, Bob Hobson, and Winnicott, of course, are just a few that spring to mind immediately.

I think of empathy and imagination as different but related. The capacity to tune in to another’s emotional state seems partly hard wired into our neurological systems, although we could all cite examples of people who seem to have missed out on this particular piece of wiring! But imagination takes us beyond this. When I am trying to grasp, intellectually and emotionally, the other’s reality, I am not only tuning in to ‘what is there’, but translating it into language. I use visual imagery a lot, sharing with clients the image that comes to my mind in the attempt to understand them. Sometimes it doesn’t speak to them, and is discarded. At other times the image seems to capture something significant for them, and enables them to see their own experience in a subtly different way.

This can be very powerful in group settings, where one person’s image can serve to draw out others that complement or animate each other in surprising and refreshing ways. Drawing together, whether with charcoal or with pictures in the mind, can bring us to some unexpected and stimulating places. Imagination is fundamental to the task of doing things differently. We can together imagine all sorts of scenarios and emotions that go beyond those familiar rehearsed experiences that often bring people into therapy in the first place. Without this creative element, we could only draw the same picture over and over again.

Psychotherapy and writing fiction.

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Somehow if I go away I do far more drawing. The Peak District looked stunning with the hills streaked in snow, although my attempts to draw the sweeping landscapes were just that – attempts! But I did like this one of my friend’s front garden. Now, back home in a familiar landscape, writing has taken over. At the same time as the next episode of the Wednesday Group is taking shape in my mind, I am busy thinking about the links between psychotherapy and fiction writing.

The Wednesday Group involves creating members of a therapy group and exploring their lives and interactions, as well as those of group therapists. The context of the fiction obviously connects with my working life as a group psychotherapist but I wonder whether, if I was writing a completely different story, it would be all that different.

It is a cliché that in the process of creating a fictitious character they begin to come to life. …. but they do. Writer and characters begin to develop a relationship, and the writer discovers more through giving them time and attention. They reveal themselves, or that’s how it seems to me. When I first wrote about Stevie, the main character, I had a very sketchy idea of who she was. She gradually lets me see different aspects, tells me more about herself, and even acts out in front of my eyes. In many ways it is like getting to know a client; being patient, not jumping to conclusions, working hard to get a sense of what it feels like to be them, trying to see the world through their eyes.

Trying to see the world through another person’s eyes, and being able to hold onto our own vision is for me one of the central aspects of psychotherapy. What I understand about human development, attachment, psychodynamic patterns, thoughts and feelings, embodiment – the assortment of accrued information or even wisdom that I gave gained – this all has to be integrated with a concentrated attempt to sense how it is to be the other.

That is what happens in the writing too. I am trying to get a feel for the characters, looking at the world from their perspective, not mine. Of course, these are all people who live in my head or on a computer screen – rationally I can’t divorce them from my own experiences and perspectives. But it is the magic of creativity that liberates them from those confines and sets them free to be themselves. Then if I want to get to really encounter them, I can’t assume that I already know and understand them. There is always more to be discovered, just as there is more to the people in our lives and to us as well. And as for that maidenhair fern I have been trying to draw, there is obviously far more to get to know there too.

Chris

The colourful therapist

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It’s been a good week for drawing, and for meeting other sketchers. I’ve seen some very impressive painters too, but I’m at the stage where colour seems a step too far – or so I tell myself. But then look at this, from the latest episode of The Wednesday Group. Doodling on the iPad is never colourless. Somehow in my mind this is completely different from the drawing that I do. Is this dissociation? Pencil split off from iPad?

Stevie’s volcano of anger

I had another interesting conversation this week with a poet and writer, talking about styles of writing, and the sorts of books we prefer. I ‘m not very patient with descriptive, carefully crafted prose unless it can carry me along with an energetic story line. I want to know what happens next, rather than how sensuously the voile curtains are catching the breeze through the open French windows…. if you see what I mean. Is this somehow related to my focus on line rather than colour?

Maybe this plays out in the therapy room in my search for a coherent narrative, and a degree of impatience with the colour? I wonder what the colour consists of in this case. It isn’t the same as detail, because those are often fascinating. It’s very hard for the beginner to draw hands and feet, but unless you get them right, the figure never looks real. That carries over into therapy. There are certain details that jar, or don’t make sense, that have to be looked at much more closely. There are key areas that you have to work at repeatedly in order to begin to grasp the whole figure.

So what could colour mean in this context? And what makes a colourful psychotherapist? In our attempt not to overwhelm or impose upon the other person in the room, do we end up as 50 shades of grey? (That would make a great sketch, incidentally!) I’m going to ask Phillipa Perry – she stands out for me as a potentially colourful psychotherapist. Anyone else you can suggest?

Chris

Finding the right artist and or therapist.

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Sketching has morphed into doodling lately, but I did produce one small drawing on the train from Bournemouth to Coventry that gave me hope. At least it had some passing resemblance to the young man working on his laptop across the aisle from me…. but a long way from Lynne Chapman’s wonderful train sketches.

My painting and drawing class was cancelled as the tutor was ill, but we’ve been promised an extra class at the end of term. It’s one of the best classes I’ve been to, and I’ve tried a few. The ones that work for me are always those where I feel OK with the tutor. There is something very exposing about drawing when you are an enthusiastic but clueless beginner, and how the tutor relates to you is crucial.

There’s an obvious parallel here with the relationship between psychotherapist and new client. There needs to be a sense of ‘I could get on with this person’ right from the start, I think. We make a judgement about who we can get on with in a very short space of time – seconds – when we first meet someone. It’s not an infallible system and sometimes we get it wrong, but we all scan the other person for signs of familiarity or threat without even recognising that we are doing it. There’s a very good exercise that gets used in counselling training where a group of strangers walk around the room in silence, and are then asked to form small groups. There is no spoken communication, but what happens is that the strangers sort themselves into groups that have shared experiences – middle children, dominant mothers, absent fathers, only children, and so on. We sniff out the people we feel safe with, and we feel safe with what we know rather than the unknown.

My favourite drawing tutors have a sort of childlike passion for art that they want to share with the class. They are like bounding, energetic dogs, insisting that you take them for a walk and see how great it is out there. Age is irrelevant – one of the best tutors was in her 70’s and going deaf, but was so enthusiastic about the task in hand and my scratchy efforts that I was completely won over.

Does that work in psychotherapy, I wonder? Someone once said I was “evangelical” about group therapy, so if I take that to mean enthusiastic and passionate, then maybe it does. Why work anywhere that does not have those qualities of passion, energy, inspiration and creativity? Surely we would all choose that if we were able to?

Chris