The psychopathology of everyday art: a quantitative Study - World ...

therapy between what is generally accepted as established theory and the opinions and
beliefs of the author. Moreover, access to the data is impeded because it is difficult to
separate what actually happens from how it is interpreted. This is important because it
affects the types of questions investigated. For example, the question 'where on the
surface of the paper does the patient express?' is not generally addressed. The main
assumption, that it is not on the surface of the paper, but from the interaction of the
client's associations with the work, shapes the presentation of the report and the main
direction of research towards content analysis. Of course, therapy encourages projection
of emotions onto transitional objects 101 , and this may include imagery in artwork, but as
research it is often difficult to form any conclusions about what is reported. Reports
often neglect much practical detail on what actually happened on the paper to generate
the interpretation because they are not concerned with point 2 of 'what we need to know'
- above, but represent the main concerns of the literature with point 1, so this section
concentrates on the first part of what we need to know, the concepts and orientation.
Why consider impressionistic reports?
If the search were limited to properly controlled scientific criteria, very few studies
would qualify. The subsequent picture would therefore be unrepresentative of the bulk
of literature. To neglect these voices is to neglect some serious, if not structured or
proven conclusions from this collected experience about the way art is thought to reflect
101
from psychoanalytic theory: an object or person viewed as a psychological bridge, allowing a person
to make a transition from primary narcissism to a mature emotional attachment to others (adapted from
A.S. Reber (1985), A Dictionary of Psychology , Harmondsorth: Penguin).
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