Trauma & Art

DSM musings, an essay and a couple of songs

A. As I mentioned yesterday I haven’t really taken my own DSM-IV book down from the shelf since the completion of the related courses of a Master’s programme, but after looking at Ron Huxley’s creative transformation of it I think it could prove an interesting idea. It would at least definitely bring back memories of tutorials, exams, tutors and colleagues. Anyway today I decided to have a look at it. It is full of highlighted material, exam relevant, and every now and then a comment or brief critical evaluation, probably influenced by the fact that I had to learn a lot of this bulky book by heart! Above are two samples of my initial engagement with DSM-IV. It seems to be all about dogs. The black, very clever and affectionate, 11 year old dog above is our current pet, which unfortunately suffers from epileptic seizures and will be on medication for the rest of her life. Sadly she started having these seizures after we picked her up from a bathing-grooming experience a few years ago.

B. Also as part of the DSM-IV related courses we were asked to view several films selected by our tutor and then write an essay based on one of these. My essay is based on a film presenting PTSD, unlike my colleagues who as I recall now had mostly opted for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Schizophrenia. This essay was written in 2010 and reflects a particular time and educational context, and of course, my past level of understanding and knowledge. I would have a lot more to say today and probably would have written a somewhat different essay.

I will post the essay as soon as I work out how to go about posting it here.

C. James Taylor’s songs

Sarah Maria, a sweet song of parental love by James Taylor, written for his daughter Sarah Maria (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cphVBjF0pj8)

Shower the people by James Taylor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_etU9MED4k)

Shower the people you love with love
Show them the way that you feel
Things are gonna work out fine if you only will, as I said
Shower the people you love with love
Show them the way you feel
Things are gonna be much better if you only will

I have just finished reading Harriet Claire Wadeson’s book – Journaling Cancer in Words nd Images: Caught in the Clutch of the Crab (2011). Harriet Wadeson is considered a pioneer in art therapy and has published many books and received several awards for her work. This particular book includes her cancer written journal and a CD-ROM of the altered book she created during this difficult phase in her life – Cancer Land: An Altered Book for an Altered Life -. Below are some extracts from her book.

‘Writing and painting, however, even if about the pain in your current reality, lifts you beyond that reality into a world of your own creation. There is a strange paradox here. Although the focus is on what may be suffering, perhaps even the reliving of an excruciating experience, that focus is enveloped by another focus, which is the creative experience itself. While writing about nausea from chemotherapy for example, I was also selecting the best words to describe it. Sometimes I could find satisfaction and even pleasure in perhaps pairing just the right words. This same sort of creative involvement was even more intense in making art. Instead of words, I would be selecting and composing images and enjoying the sensual pleasures of manipulating materials with the stroke of a paintbrush or applying glossy satin ribbons. So although writing or painting about nausea, I was enjoying my own creative activity. Afterwards, I would look at my creation and smile. Yes, I would think, that is what it is like’.

‘Although images are static, a book is sequential. It can tell a story. A book seemed to me to be the perfect container for images of my experience…… An altered book is a mixed media artwork that changes a book from its original form by altering its appearance and/ or meaning. Material may be added by drawing, painting, gluing, tying and stitching and subtracted by cutting, tearing or burning. The shape of pages of the entire book may be changed. The original text may be utilized or covered or cut out in whole or part’.

‘Although we speak to one another in words, images surround us. What we see and how we see influences us, perhaps more than we know. As I tell my art therapy students, we think in images as well as in words, but we had images way before we knew the meaning of words. We could recognise our mothers before we had a name for her. Images are a more primitive source of knowing our world’.