Art Therapy for the Soul

Art therapy, increasingly popular for treating patients recovering from trauma or facing other challenges, builds upon the idea that the capacity for beauty is
built into the structure of human nature. Christians can add to this therapeutic insight the affirmation that part of the capacity for God is
the capacity to recognize the beautiful, and this recognition is itself an
encounter with transcendence that beautifies and heals.

Although there are a variety of
psychotherapies that could be employed as a theoretical framework for art
therapy, one of the more popular approaches has been Jungian ideas of the role
of symbols and the active imagination. This was in part due to early centers of
art therapy like the Withymead Centre in Devon founded by Irene Champernowne in
1942. Chambernowne had received therapy under Carl Jung during which time she
became familiar with his ideas, which she used as the basis for her approach to
art therapy.

In his Mysterium
coniunctionis, Jung described the active imagination in terms of the
symbol-making capacity of the self. Dreams and other images come before the
mind as the means by which the unconscious makes known in non-discursive ways
emotional states and other traumas that may have been repressed. These symbols
mediate between the conscious and unconscious self, which Jung likens unto a
waterfall that connects two pools. The active imagination harnesses the
images that flood the mind by focusing on them and interpreting them in terms
of knowledge about unconscious states.

Art therapy, then, unlocks unconscious states so that they can be integrated into the
self and thus transcended. Symbols allow persons to
begin to perceive the whole self, which represents a move to transcendence. The role of symbols and symbolic modes of thinking is
intrinsic to Christian discourse as well, but it takes on a different function.
While there is an agreement with Jung on the participatory nature of symbols, this
participation is not primarily with the inner recesses of the self. When Hugh
of St. Victor defines a symbol as the “weaving together of visible forms to
show forth what is invisible,” he intends to underscore participation in the
life of the other, the life of the world, and, most importantly, the life of
God. Hugh is drawing on Pseudo-Dionyius’ view that creation and the liturgy
within the church are interlocking symbolic modes of discourse that put humans
in touch with the divine.

Art, then, is ultimately about a participatory
encounter and this is what makes it transcendent. C. S. Lewis referred to this
encounter with the word transposition, which he utilized to underscore how
creation mediates divine joy. The therapeutic value of art is the creation of
the porous self that participates in the life of the other with “sighs too deep
for words.” It validates the social nature of human beings who require the
other to receive wholeness and healing.

Symbols are not simply ways to participate in what is
external to the self. They also shape and order the interior world. The use of
an interior castle by Teresa of Avila, Noah’s ark by Hugh of St. Victor, or the
ark of the covenant by Richard of St. Victor underscore the way in which symbols
identify and organize the movements of the soul. Like an impression made in wax
by a seal, they impress upon the soul a particular shape. This is because these
symbols integrate the story of the self with another narrative, the story of
God’s promises about the self. When Hugh of St. Victor asks his readers to visualize
Noah’s ark, he wants them to internalize the entire history of God’s dealings with
humanity. This cosmic history becomes integrated into the personal history of
the individual to heal.

Many Christian mystical writers will also invoke the use of
images to re-order emotions and desires. The flames of hell become a symbol of
judgment designed to evoke the emotion of ordered fear, which is healthy for
the person when it is balanced with symbols of grace. In these ways symbols not
only express emotion and desire but order it. 

Once one begins to understand symbols as cultivating an
encounter with the other so that the self can be shaped and formed, the ancient
description of creeds as symbols of the faith becomes clear. Creeds are not
simply confessional formulas by which believers declare their loyalty. When one recites the Nicene or Apostles’ Creed, one begins to glimpse
what God says about the world and the self. One begins to look down on one’s
condition from above as it were in the same way that the Book of Revelation
speaks to churches in persecution by taking believers up into heavenly realms
through symbolic discourse. Creeds narrate the self by mediating God’s story and the God who stands behind that story.

Art can become a powerful means of healing the soul because the
incarnation reminds believers that creation can mediate the divine. Yet Jungian theory threatens to become a subtle version of secularity that closes the person off from anything beyond
the self. There are no demons only demonic projections of unconscious states;
there is no disordered desire that leads to sin, only unintegrated emotions. On
the Christian view, however, the crucifix, the rosary, the icon, the works of
human hands remind the self that God is at work by facilitating an encounter
with God. And in this encounter mediated by the image, a beauty can be glimpsed
that re-orders the soul because it communicates a love stronger than death.