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International Journal of Art Therapy

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The life and soul of the image

Richard Lanham

To cite this Article Lanham, Richard(1998) 'The life and soul of the image', International Journal of Art Therapy, 3: 2, 48

55

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17454839808413061 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17454839808413061

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THE LIFE AND SOUL OF THE IMAGE

by Richard Lanham
ABSTRACT This paper introduces stories and experiences of images being alive or coming to Me. It considers this phenomenon from perspectives of religion, anthropology and Jungian psychology. The second part of the paper demonstrates an exploration in
word and image which amplifies the theme and which leads to a discussion of the concept of the archetypal image, its function and significance in the practice of art therapy.

This work arises from a long-standing fascination with ideas and experiences of images being alive or coming to life. In my exploration, which includes both personal and cultural perspechves, I look to images which fascinate.This word already reveals something ai, of my concern, for to fascinate (from L t n fascinare) means literally to cast a spell over. Thus to be fascinated by an image implies that the image is the active party, casting a spell over me.

In his development of the practice he came to call active imagination,Jung points us towards an active engagement with image. By implication, if this involves creating a dialogue with the image, not only lo the imagination but a s the image may be active. In the f e d of art therapy, writers such as Joy Schaverien il and Shaun McNiff have explored this area. Schaveriens notion of the embodied image as distinct from the descriptive one (Schaverien, 1992) is important here, as are McNiffs explorations of holding dialogue with image (Maiff, 1992).Such ideas have resonated with my experienceboth as an artist and an art therapist and it is a desire to deepen my understanding of the embodied, alive or fascinating image that motivates t i study. I begm by hs reviewing cultural and theoretical perspechves and go on to present reflections on an example of my own art-making practice. It is my hope that these explorationsmay shed some light on the role of the image in art therapy. As 1have never been happy with the notion of an art therapy which seals itself off and isolates itself from other artistic experience, I intend to spend a good deal of this study outside the therapy studio looking into the art of other times and places. The term art therapy itself seems to point in t i direction. The word therapy comes from the hs Greek therapeutikos meaning to wait upon, or attend to, and whereas we might usually understand art therapy to mean something like attendingto people using art as a tool, we might a s read it as attending lo to ary.
On 29 November 1996 the front page of The Independent carried a photograph of a painting, a head of Christ from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem,which had been observed to be weeping. f Tearsflow from the eyes o Jesus and trickle down the column on which the icon is painted. I see his eyes open and close, said Father Anastasios, the Greek

Orthodox priest in charge of the main altar. There is no doubt in my mind that it is a miracle. Such reports are not uncommon. Another famous example in recent years was when images o the Hindu elephantf headed deity, Ganesh, were reported all over the world to be drinking milk that was offered to them. Predictably, debate on these events focuses around whether they are miracles or hoaxes or whether they are events explicable by rational scientific means. Not surprisingly,the debate is never resolved and what we are left with is that this seems to be an enduring aspect of human experience. I have recollections too of reading childrens thrillers where family portraits come to life; perhaps they wink or speak at the vital moment in the plot and divulge a critical family secret. As I consider these phenomena, I find myself looking at a recurring theme in world creation myths. In Genesis God shaped man from the soil and blew the breath of life into his nostrils. In Greek mythology, Prometheus fashioned the first men and animals from clay and Athene breathed lifeinto them. My son has a picture book which tells the West African creation myth o the Fire Children. In this the sky god Nyame f sneezes and two spirit people fly out of his nostrils and land on the earth. After a while they get bored and hit on the idea of making figures out of clay. They fire them and when theyve made quite a collection they breathe life into them, the ones who stay longer in the fire become black, the ones they take out sooner are white and all the shades in between. One way of seeing these stories from the depths of the collective unconsaous is that first the gods imagine and make images o us, then the images can be brought alive. f Applying this idea to the weeping Christ in Bethlehem might lead us to take seriously the notion that the phenomenon is j~~st imagination on the part of the viewer, and to suggest that one of the functions of imagination, whether of gods or men, i to bring s images alive. This of course is an imaginal rather than a scientificstatement about image and leads me to a consideration of how we might approach researching the image in art therapy. In a recent article in Inscape, Gilroy points to how few art therapists have considered the role and function of the image in their research. She goes on to speak of the discomfort many of us feel seeing research that has sought in some way to measure or categorise ...
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changes in imagery' (Gilroy, 1996).The sense perhaps that such an approach does not honour the image. McNiff, who strikes me as a notable exception to Gilroys observation, writing in an edition of The Arts in Psychotherapy dedicated to research matters, in a paper signhcantly titled "he Authority of Experience', said: one hand and the observations of Gilroy and McNiff on the other?
*Y*

...in the creative arts therapies ...spontaneous and imaginativeexpression is considered fundamental to the making of art, but these principles have not guided our treatment of art works once they have arrived. Although our profession consistently advocates the primacy of imagination in the creative act, this support ends when it comes to how we think about art in either therapy or research. We encourageflings of fancy and escapades of psychic automatism as ways of generating material for the real 'therapy' or science that happen under the scrutiny of post creative analysis. (McNiff, 1993)
McNiff then seems to invite a more ima@ research as a process which may take us closer or deeper into image, as opposed to more conventionalresearch methods which may tend to move away from it. When Blake (in Auguries o Innocence) said To see a f World in a Grain of Sand' he did not set about measuring and dissecting the grain, rather he was opening the door to the enormity of imagination.

The problem of the role of the image in art therapy, however, goes beyond being a problem of theory and literature, it is a problem of practice. I have heard many art therapists complain, often with sadness, that their patients just don't seem to be making images, or if they do that it doesn't seem to be such an important part of the process. Perhaps in such practice the image making has become merely an adjunct to, or illustration of a psychoanalyt~c relationship, whose primary concern is the analysis of the transference. Both therapist and patient may feel that something is missing.
A review of the history of art therapy indicates that this was not always the case. The pioneers of art therapy in Britain (Hill, Adamson and Edwards et al. at Withymead) were all primarily concerned with images and facilitating image making. Art therapists have understandably come to question both the recreational emphasis of HilI and the role of art therapist as 'handmaiden' to psychiatrist or psychotherapist which was an aspect of the latter examples. We have sought increasing sophistication, developed our understanding and practice of psychotherapeuticprocesses and struggled to justrfy our practice to academic and health institutions demanding rational, measurable justifications and data. We have sought increasing professional status. I wonder how the image has fared in t i process? hs Might there be a l n between t i 'progress' on the ik hs
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Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread. I return to the idea that images and by implication our processes of imagination and image making can be alive or dead and that there may or may not be life in an image. The rhyme that comes to mind here implies that either way we might find nourishment there if we grind it or work at it. I don't wish to offer measurements of the degree of vitality or animation in art therapy images and processes now as compared to 50 years ago, rather (for those of us who experience a waxing and waning of such vitality) to offer an explorationinto the archetypal regions of this phenomenon. This image of grinding bones to make f bread reminds me o the differencein Roman Catholic and Protestant theologies of the nature of the bread and wine. In the former the doctrine is of the transubstantiation: this is the body and blood of Christ; in the latter, it is to 'do ti in remembrance of hs me'. Schaverien explores ti area when she discusses hs the magical origins of religious objeds in the Jewish tradition. She points to the possibility that such objects (knownas the Mezuzah and Tefillin) were originally talismans or amulets, that is to say objects imbued with magical power, which changed in function to something which might be described as tokens or again something which reminds us of something. Schaverien's argument primarily points to the development of consciousness that such a move from magical thinking to representation implies: The client's relationship to the picture may be magical, or if may be diferentinted,and so comparable to the tokens of religious devotion [where]...a distinction is made between the magical origins, which might be seen as unboundaried, and the rabbinical dictates which confer relipous status on the object, and in so doing,frame it and assert a limit to its power. (Schaverien, 1992, p. 141) Another perspective comes from anthropology.Jane Harrison writing in the 1920s in a book called Ancient Art and Ritual describes how ritual practices may evolve into art objects. One of her examples is of rituals surrounding the myth of &iris in ancient Egypt. Osiris, a peaceful corn god of agriculturists, was killed and chopped into pieces by his warlike brother Set and eventually gathered together and brought back to life by his sister/wife Isis. It is a story of death and resurrection fittingly resonant with the seasons of the farming year. Harrison describes the ancient ritual whereby, following the harvest, images of Osiris were fashioned from a mixture of earth and corn and buried in fields as an enactment of the burial of the dead. In the spring the bodies themselves
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sprouted, came alive and confirmed the process of the resurrection. Harrison then points to the later bass relief stone carvings on the outside of Egyptian temples which depict sequentially people carrying out the elements of this ritual. Thus she proposes that ritual gave way to depiction of ritual to become a representation of ritual. Her argument also concerns a movement from a living image, a magically imbued image, to one which stands for something.This strikes me as comparable to the distinction between a symbol, resonant with possibilities, and a sign, pointing more directly to an object or meaning (Harrison, 1913/ 1978). Considering the above example from Schaveriens p e r s p v e , we might reflect on how such an historical development from magical practice to the development of the capacity for representation may indicate a development of consciousness.My hs suggestion here, however, is that it is at t i point, when for example something is projected into stone or concretkd, that something also gets lost. To turn to stone is to p wMany stories point to the danger of e . t i happening to people. If we are petrified, for hs example if foolish enough to look into the Medusas eyes without a mirror, we become lifeless, unable to act. This loss of life in images is a concern of Hillman in Teaks and Vales, where he discusses the role of eighth-century church authorities who in their deliberations about imagery came to insist on the move from image as idol, that is as magically imbued object of worship, to the image as icon or reminder. Thus he says: says: The hatred of the image, the fear of its power and of the imagination, is very old and very deep in our culture (Hillman,1979,p. 56), it seems to me that he is speaking about a culture that exists within a highly developed civilisation.Such a culture might fear the magcally potent image and experience it as regressive. From an undifferentiated or regressed position however, looking at the same image from the other side, we might experience it as enlightening, enabling us to see that which had previously only been felt, containing it and making it safe to view. Given that in ourselves we may develop the capacity to stand in different positions at different times, we might as we move around an image reflect on whether we are asking what it stands for, or are asking what it says. Are we relating rationally, seeking to define it, or ima@y, opening ourselves to what it may reveal? This capacity to move around seems important in a context where linear progress of civilisation or profession may lead to a singularity of perception or a concretisation of image. Thus I propose an imaginal research which looks behind concrete facades and presents orthodoxies (like church dochines or scientific research methodologies) with heresies. My intention is not to develop an alternative position, but to hold a tension between positions.

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***
I begin the illustrative, exploratory section of this paper by introducing an image (Fig. 1). It is one of a series of corbels, that is to say brackets which support
the eaves on the outside of a twelfth-century church in nual Herefordshire. The carver was a member of a group of stone-carvers, known as the Herefordshire School, who were active in the area at the time and whose work is innovative, bold and skilful. Little else is known about it, or the carvers, although both Zarnecki (1953) and Gardner (1937) point to the possible stylistic influence of earlier Spanish, Italian and Scandinavian carvings on the work of the Herefordshire School. Although the work has long attracted the curiosity of antiquarians (in 1842 G. Lewis published two volumes of lithographs depicting the carvings of Kilpeck and the neighbouring Shobdon) and the church has produced a number of guidebooks, I have found nothing in the relatively limited literature that sheds any light on the origins of, or references, which might be embodied in this particular image. The guidebook in my possession ventures to suggest that the series of images on the corbel table and around the door depict Creation. Unlike some other images of the time, for example the nearby figure of a green man, which represents a character of pagan fertility rites, there is
~~ ~

... images became allegories ... the image itself has become
subtly depotentiated. Yes, images are allowed, but only if they are oficially approved images illustrative of theological docfrine. W s spontaneous imagery is spurious, demonic, devilish, pagan, henthen. Yes, the image is allozt~edbut only to be venerated foT what it represents: the abstract ideas, configurations, transcendencies behind the image. Images became ways of perceiving doctrine, helps in focusing fantasy. They became representations,no longer presentations, no longer presences of the divine power. (Hillman, 1979, p. 56)
How much this shdt of emphasis is a matter of censorship, as Hillman seems to suggest, and how much a tension or move that is inherent to images is open to question. Some of the later medieval church art which I shall be referring to shortly indicates that the church authorities were far from successful in their bid to control images.

I wish to suggest a view of the image as existing within the tension between the magically imbued object on the one hand and its representation on the other and further to suggest that how we then experience it may depend on where we are standing. When Hillman, in an earlier part of the same paper,

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no suggestion as to what this might 'stand for', although the main figure is reminiscent of the socalled 'beakheads' which occur frequently in medieval church carving of t i period, which I have hs personally tended to associate with crows. However, given that for the members of such an isolated rural community (few of whom would ever have travelled) the images on and in the church were very likely to be the only ones they experienced in their lifetime, it seems likely that t i image once held hs a powerful meaning for the carver and the community. This comes after all from the first floweringof English stone church building and carving. Earlier Saxon churches were frequently wooden or of very simple stone construction. Carvings were of a more rudimentary nature. This was therefore a period of great change, of development, of establishment of fine, solid, lasting architecture. It's a period that has always particularly interested me, perhaps because it was when something that seems to have been profoundly spirited was being projected into stone. By comparison I look at later medieval stone carving from say, the sixteenth century, where images seem more predictable, more repetitive, one could almost say routine. So I am looking towards a time where, whatever its meaning for the individual carver or the community, something profound and vital seems to be being expressed and put into the fabric of the building. In particular in this case, that bit of it which holds the roof up and thus helps to solidrfy and concretise thisbuilding, this institution with its orthodoxy and dogmas. My sense is that although it is stone, although it is something concretised and something now obscure, maybe somethingstill lives within it. It seems to exist at a point of tension between the spirited and the concrete, between the heretical and the orthodox and I am suggesting that it is an example of an image which once had potency, power and vitality, which has largely died off, at least in terms of its function in the community. But my experience (and that of some others to whom I have shown this image) has been of fascination. It will not let me go. It has me in its spell. I photograph it, make drawings that explore it, have fantasies about it, dream about it. It seems to be trymg to say something to me. Thus I have set about engaging the carving in a piece of 'imaginal research'. 'Grinding it' up to see what happens. Giving therapy to (literally: attending to) an image that has become petrified. Seeking the life in something which has been turned to stone, a bit like Chandra in the Indian story o the wizard f Punchkin, who sets out to break the wizard's spell and rescue his petrified brothers from their enchantment. Whilst I regard the notion of 'imaginal research' as
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Figure 1 .

being an ongoing process of making and relating to images and facilitating such processes with people who come to workshops and therapy sessions, I am focrusinghere on a particular and personal process involving my own images. I am indebted to McNiff, who also presents his own artwork and imaginal dialogues. Like him,I feel that, 'In using my own pictures, I can take risks, speak freely, and publish the contents of intimate dialogue' (McNiff, 1992, p. 4). What follows are reflections on a threemonth period of exploration involving painting and imaginal dialogue, the whole process contained and facilitated by a series of recorded meetings with a Jungian analyst. These meetings gave the opportunity for exploration of both the personal material and the archetypal context. None of the paintings were conscious attempts to illustrate the corbel or even aspects of it. They began with spontaneous gesture, attending to movements of hand or arm,later developing or 'drawing out' the emerging images, yet the resonances to the corbel were powerful, not surprisingly given my preoccupation and interest at the time. The process I am describing as imaginal dialogue has played as much a part in the execution of the images as it has in the subsequent relating to the finished image. Ether way, this is a process akin to that which Jung described as active imagination; focusing on the affectthat arises during the work, sinking into reverie and allowing exchanges to take place between characters in the image and between m s l and characters in the image. Paying attention yef to imaginal voices. Thus I might seek to engage such a character in his view of the painting so far, or what he

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would like to see happen next. I might imagine that I have given him the paintbrush for a while, allowing him to work on parts of the picture that I may be having difficulty with. At times, particularly when the to be finished, I will sit with the painting painting and write down verbal exchanges as they o m I presenting some of this process here and my c .n subsequent reflections, I again emphasise my purpose by quoting McNiff's introduction to his artwork 'It is the life of imagination that I hope to convey and not the details of the artist's life' (McNiff, 1992, p. 4).

Figure 3.

***
The first painting (Fig. 2), in shades of blue, measures hs about 4 feet by 3. At ti early stage of the work, I found myself resisting the immediate emergence of the beak-headed figure, I tried to paint it out, hoping perhaps for something that felt less personal, but it returned. It developed arms and held out a white disc.

reflect on the tension between t i inspired or spirited hs direct living word of God through the prophet on the one hand and the orthodoxy of the established priesthood of the time on the other. Some time later I 'take' the offered 'host' and paint (Fig. 3). The blue figure seems to have become a mask, with a red, more human figure emerging behind it. In my dialogue with him,he's reticent, doesn't want to show me more, doesn't like visitors, but a nursery rhyme comes to mind:

'What are you bringing me?' I ask. 'This is a host, it doesn't look like much. Take it, keep it in your pocket and eat it when you are ready to paint again.' 'What's your name?' 'Cali me Samuel.'
1

The un'nd, the wind, the wind b l m high, The rain comes scattering down the sky. She is handsome, she is pretty She's the girl from the golden city. She goes a-courting, one, two, three, h Please and tell me w o is she?
The rhyme of c o m e is a riddle and the answer that comes to me now is 'Beelzebub. This painting scares me, as I sit, it seems, on the threshold of an encounter with the prince of darkness. I'm afraid that if I go further, I won't be able to return. I go on with the painting however and after a time ask the emerging figure what it is he's offering me:

I referred earlier in this paper to considerations of the nature of the host. The doctrine of transubstantiation in the Catholic mass compared to the Anglican notion of 'do t i in remembrance of me'. This had been on hs my mind at the time of the painting. Here, already, I am being presented with something central to my project; it is both living symbol and token and in ti hs case there seems to be the suggestion that it has the capacity to inspire the next painting. 'Keep it in your pocket' reminds me of my son, who frequently finds imaginary fleas in my pockets and takes them out to performa multitude of lively t i k .'Call me Samuel' rcs reminds me of God calling Samuel in the Old Testament, a direct communication from God,which confirmed his status as a prophet, charged with confronting the orthodoxy of the hereditary priesthood with their corruption (1 Samuel 3:1-14). I
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'It's my kneecap.' 'Who are you?' 'King Lucy Fisher.'

This curious and (like 'Beelzebub' as an answer to the

riddle, 'who is she?') androgynous sounding figure seems to me to be a composite of Lucifer and the Fisher King. The kneecap I associate with a knee capping, a maiming, just as the Fisher King in the hn Grail legend was maimed in his thigh. I t i k too of these wounds to the leg as being literally under-mining
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and in seeing this more human face emerging from behind the bird mask, I find myself in touch with such old wounds. When some time later I 'take' the offered kneecap, I find myself on the floor of the studio working with my hands, scratching at the paper like an animal in the ground (Fig. 4). The image of a fox or mole appears and disappears again. Intensely frustrated I cannot draw it out. It is as if I have entered an instinctual realm and become the fox or the mole, but cannot make the image, cannot give it form or bring it out, cannot make it conscious. It is only on later reflection that I become aware of what has happened; that as fox or mole I have become the 'miner', yet I am feeling an incapacity that I associate with being undennined. On the one hand these images point towards a personal story; how the desire to be a 'miner', to dig into things can be undennined. On the other, they seem to point towards more 'public' stories: myths or archetypes. approached, has become immensely interesting and engaging. On another level it seems profoundly familiar as images, associations and amphfymg material resonate. Continuing to explore Beelzebub's association with Saturn/Cronos, I find how such princes of darkness, like their Celtic counterpart, Bran, are associated with crows. Robert Graves goes so far as to assert that the name Cronos itself derives not as commonly believed from Greek chronos meaning time, but from Greek corom (crow or raven) thus idenhfymg this association (Graves, 1961, p. 66). I have already pointed to my association of the beakheaded image in medieval architecture with crows and my further association to Beelzebub would also seem to be resonant with Christian tradition; according to Von Franz: 'In the Christian world, the raven was thought to be a representation of the sinner, and also of the h i l ' (my emphasis) Won Franz, 1970, p. 119). In this case a further connection is that the name for the architectural feature on which the carving is made is corbel, which is again derived from the Latin corns (crow or raven). What's more, to return to the image on the corbel (Fig. l),I wondered to what extent this inexplicable and seemingly ambiguous relationship between the two figures may reflect something of the tension between the nourishing, nurturing father on the one hand and the devouring or undermining one on the other. In other words, the image may be pointing towards the same archetype as does the image or myth of Cronos. The final, very much alive, quickly drawn, again spontaneously arising image is strongly reminiscent of Hermes or Mercurius with his winged helmet. He is the messenger of the gods and the wayfmder. Speaking of Mercurius, the alchemist writing in 'Verus Hermes' (1620) says 'to a black crow am I a i ' kn (quoted by Jung, 1953, para. 276). It is' as if at every tun\,the image and the associative material are pointing in the Same direction. The image on the church stands as pointer, or like Hermes, as wayfinder. It stands between conscious experience

Taking t i material into sessionswith an analyst hs provided the opportunity to explore both personal and archetypal themes and to use what emerged in the consideration of questions about the life of images. Looking up Beelzebub in Jung I find that in Cabbalistic tradition he is associated with Saturn, whose equivalent in Greek mythology is Cronos (Jung, 1953, para. 276). Here it seems is an archetypal image of an undermining father, for it is he who eats his children, one by one as they are presented to him by his sister/wife, Rhea, after their birth. He couldn't allow them to become themselves, perhaps out of fear that they would supplant him.Thus the personal image resonates with the archetypal one. There is a sense of relief in this at the same time as a feelingof intensificationof engagement with the theme. I continue to draw and feed the material with associationsand amplifications. On one level the f n l ia image (Fig. 5), the winged headed figure who seems to have emerged from behind the mask, is a great surprise to me. For what had been frightening as I

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Figure 4.

Figure 5.

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and the archetype. Working at it, grinding the bones, enables a broader vision of the archetype to enter consciousness. their father had forbidden),we may be petrified. I recall the fear I encountered in the above example when Beelzebub appeared. Fairy stories and myths hold many examples of this phenomenon. Famously, Perseus survived the petnfyIng glunpse or glare of the Medusa by means of the reflective shield that Athene gave him.In his case we could say that h s defence i was that he had the capaaty to reflect.When fascination calls us we may back off for fear of the grip of it. (The word fascism comes from the same root, speafically referring to the grip on a bundle of rods of authority held by the Roman legionnaire, so we are wise to be wary.) Invoking imagination however, flying like Chandra on the eagles back or studying the reflection, protects us from petrification, allowing us to look where we are pointed.

***
I suggested earlier a view of the image as existing in a tension between the magically imbued o b e and its representation. Following these reflections, I am moving towards a view of where the image lives or resides in relation to the archetype. Jung says, for me surprisingly: An archetype so far as we can establish it empirically is an image, but goes on in the Same passage to elucidate what seems to me to be a fundamentally important distinction between the two:
A n archetypal image is like the portrait of an u n k n m man in a gallery. His name, his biography, his existence in general are unknown, but we assume nmerfheless that the h picture portrays a once living subject, a man w o was real ... There is no doubt in my mind that there is an original behind our images,but it is inaccessible. Uung, 1958, p. 706; my emphasis)

I hope that what I have demonstrated in ti paper is hs an example of finding life in an image, allowing or facilitating a symbol to live, and how on a personal level this has enabled the knowing of a wider range of
the images that surround a particular archetype. It can only be a partial account of my experience but one which I hope demonstratessomething about the role of imagination in maintaining or activatingthe animation of image.

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Thus we might regard the archetype as an unknowable entity, but one which may be illuminated by archetypal images. My above reflections are concerned with images, whether in stone, on paper or in myth, which point in the same direction, towards an archetype. Whether alive or dead, they appear to exist in a place between archetype and conscious experience.As we suspend our position in conscious experience and engage in activity which we might describe as h a @ practice or active imagination, so we encounter these images whch in the process may expand or be experienced as more alive. Archetype, though not revealed, feels closer. Perhaps it is feeding the image. Thus it may be that something which, from a position of conscious experience, may have seemed to be the whole picture takes on an additional dimension. As an example, our personal experience of mother and father gives us images of mother and father archetypes, it gives us glunpses, but not whole pictures, though we may mistake thein for such. Attending to the image through imagination may allow other attributes of the archetype to move towards consciousness.
I recall how it was fascination with an image that drew me into ti particular piece of work. It may be hs that when fascination grips us in its spell, we are pointed towards an archetype. Chandra has to go to the dangerous North to seek his brothers just as the prince has to seek Briar Rose in the enchanted tower, where all have penshed before him.We become gripped by an archetype. In such a grip, like Chandras brothers (who had also had to go where

A further aspect of ti exploration has been to hs consider the role of the image in art therapy. Hillman speaks of the hatred and fear of images in our culture and implies that the image as representation is an attribute of the orthodoxy whereas the living image is an attribute of a heresy. Fascism literally holds us in a grip, where fascination invites imagination and an approach to archetypal experience which may be perceived by the orthodoxy as heresy. rf the role of the image in art therapy is waning, or when in ow practice we feel it to be waning, it seems to me that it is important to consider OUT relationship to the orthodoxy on the one hand (which might be represented by our career structure, our scientific research, our state registration) and to heresy and radical practice on the other. This latter may well include our capaaty to respond to the call of the fascinating and keep images alive with the activity of our imagination.

References
Gardner, A. (1937) English MedineVal Sculpture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilroy, A. (1996)Our Own Kind of Evidence, Inscape 1 (2): 52-60. Graves, R. (1961) The White Goddess. London: Faber and Faber. Guide to Kilpeck Church (n.d.)reprinted from Herefordshire: Vol. I - South West. Royal Commission on Historical Monument& Hanison, J. (1913/1978) Ancient Art and Ritual. Bradford on Avon: Moonraker Press. Hillman, J. (1979) Teaks and Vales, Puer Paper. Dallas: Spring Publications.

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Jung,C. G. (1953) The Spirit Mercuriw', CoZZecfed Works, Vol.
13. London: Routledge. Jung, G. (1958) 'Jung and Religious Belief', C0Zlecte.d Works, C. Vol. 18. London: Routledge. McNiff, S. (1992) Art as Medicine. London: Shambala. McNiff, S. (1993) T h e Authority of Expenence', The Arts in P s y c b t k u p y , ZO(1): 3-9. Opie, I. and Opie, P. (1955) The Oxford Book ofNursery Rhymes. Oxford Oxford University Press. Schaverien, J. (1992) The Repealing Image. London: Routledge. Von Franz, M. L.(1970) Interpretation ofFuiy Tales.Dallas: Spring Publications.

Zamecki, G. (1953) Inter English Rmnesque Sculpture. London: Tiranti.

The stories of Nyame and Punchkin respectively may be found i the following children's editions: n Maddern, E. (1993) The Fire Children. London: Frances

Lincoln.
Troughton, J.(1982) The Wizard Punchkin. London: Blackie.

Biographical details
Richard Lanham i an artist and art therapist with a s n background i NFIS mental health work. H e is currently a i r n senior led~rer a t therapy at the University of Hertfordshire and has a private practice i Bristol. n

INDIVIDUATION, COUNTERTRANSFERENCE AND THE DEATH OF A CLIENT

by Joy Schaverien
ABSTRACT Many art therapists work with client groups who confront death and dying on a daily basis. My experience is rather different as I work in private practice as a Jungian analyst as well as an art psychotherapist. It was the deaths from cancer, at a relatively early age, of two of my private clients and the diagnosis of a third which led me to consider this topic. The paper is an exploration of boundaries and transference and countertransference issues which emerge when, in the process of therapy, the client becomes terminally ill.It is proposed that

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those who are about to die may form particularly intense erotic attachments and that this is characteristic of a speeding up of the individuation process. The paper is based on the case of a suicidally depressed man who formed an immediate, dependent and erotic transference. After three months, he was diagnosed as having an inoperable lung cancer. From then on the analytic frame was challenged by pressures to act out in a number of different ways. I will argue that maintenance of the analytic frame enabled the individuation process to continue to the end.'

Introduction
As Henry lay dying he was in his house, in a bright room, surrounded by his pIants and cared for by members of his family. At that time I wrote: Henry is housed. He is at home. He says: ' a m more alive now I than I have ever been.' In some part he attributesti hs to the effects of psychotherapy.The fact that he was housed reflectsthe successful outcome of one of the main themes in our work together. His body was at rest in a house - the spiritual parallel of this was that his soul too was housed.

Analysts and psychotherapists are, it seems, increasingly confronted with working with those affected by cancers and HIV-related illnesses. Although there are many common factors,this is different from working in an institution, such as a hospital or hospice, where the terminally ill are the client group. This is more often the situation which art therapists confront (Connell, 1998; Pratt and W o , od 1998).Skaife (1993) reviewed the at therapy literature r on the topic of working with those who are physically ill. She points out some of the boundary issues which need to be considered when the client is physically ill or dying. When an analytic relationship is already established the onset of a lifethreatening illness may have a profound affect on the therapy, posing particular problems, for the therapist, in maintaining the analytic vessel.

I shall propose that when the threat of imminent death emerges in psychotherapy or art psychotherapy, a particularly intense form of erotic engagement may sometimes constellate. It is as if the powerful archetypal state which death evokes holds both therapist and patient in thrall. Plants which are about to die throw off seeds as a last effort at regeneration.Perhaps it is similar in psychotherapy; the individuation process becomes urgent and seems to speed up. It is as if the unconscious responds to the urgency of the situation and the therapist may become unusually engaged. I am also proposing, following on from my previous work in ti area hs that the gender of the (Schaverien,1995,1996,1997), dyad may have an influence on this process. The case I will describe was a heterosexual pairing and, alongside considerable infantile regression, there was a powerful erotic bond which maintained my close involvement and interest throughout what became a challenging encounter. The erotic transference and countertransferenceis, as Jung makes clear, a very necessary and purposeful element in the work (Jung,1946). It is eros transfomed which leads to individuation. Individuation is described by Jung as: 'a pracess of differentiation...having for its goal the development of the individual personali~ (lung, 1913/1989para. 7 7 . This is achieved through the development of a 5) symbolicattitude whereby split off and disowned

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