2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Now, when in psychotherapy the clarification of the role of cognitive symbols and the process of exploitation becomes less important, for all the importance of both, and more and more is recognized the reliance on a specific process of feeling the client, finding methods of direct appeal to the experience and its inner meaning is of undoubted interest and vital need. One of these methods is "Guided Drawing", proposed by one of the founders of existential-initial psychotherapy, Maria Gippius.
The method can be used both in psychotherapy and in problem-oriented counseling, making it not meaningful, but processually filled.
Drawings in Guided Drawing are not judged for their artistic merit. A person is not given the task of drawing “beautifully” and “correctly”. The movement in the process of guided drawing is directed only according to the "internal response".
The practice of "guided drawing" exists in two versions: "drawing primordial forms" and "free drawing".
"Preforms" are simple graphic figures - a square, a circle, a cross, a spiral, etc., the drawing of which is a repeated meditative repetition of the corresponding movement, a certain "inner gesture".
The praform can be suggested by the therapist or chosen by the painter himself. Drawing primitive forms, a person discovers that some movements cause him an “internal response” and they become “his own”, while others leave him indifferent, being those in which he himself “has no place”.
In "free drawing" the therapist does not offer any ready-made shapes. The painter himself also should not be guided by some workpieces, but try to carry out spontaneous movements that are born "in him" here and now. There comes a moment when a person begins to draw "according to the inner feeling" that guides him. Hence the name "slave drawing" - slave "internal master".
The Guided Drawing method should not be confused with projective techniques. In the case of guided drawing, a drawing ceases to be just a "projection" of a state, its expression, but becomes something that takes steps of internal development.
Guided drawing is a method that enables a person to “extort” himself from within his own living experience, revealing its actual meanings.
Yu Gendlin. emphasized that experience is always bodily. Through the body, a person experiences himself as real, living and integral, and “his personality as embodied”.
According to Gendlin, there is a special kind of bodily sensation, which is our sense of the situation. These sensations are vague, not distinct and difficult to verbalize. But it is they who serve as a kind of tuning fork. By focusing on these sensations, trying to clarify them step by step, you can bring about real changes in a person's condition and quality of life.
Gendlin speaks not only about the bodily expression of the experience, but also about the generation of a "bodily sense", which is reliable, although initially "vague, confused, elusive." When it is possible to find a suitable symbol for its expression, it becomes "complete, complete and formed."
The main position of Gendlin is that existence is given in the process of experience, and we can directly refer to our experience through its bodily felt sense.
For Gendlin, the essential question is: how to make a direct appeal to the experience and its perceived meaning? For this purpose, the "Focusing" method has been developed, which allows you to establish contact with the perceived meaning. The focusing method includes observing the sensations of the body and highlighting among them a sensation associated with an actual psychological problem; non-judgmental acceptance of this sensation; dialogue with him, including verbally spoken questions and bodily formulated answers.
A “suitable symbol” can be revealed by the “Guided Drawing” method, during which a person listens to his bodily intention and finds a symbol corresponding to it. Guided painting can be a technique that activates a direct appeal to the bodily experience and its perceived meaning, allowing it to become “complete, complete and formed”.
The process of "Drawing" ends when a person "rests" on the final form, beyond which the process no longer develops here and now. The moment of this “stop” has the quality of inner certainty: an event of gaining experience has occurred - the experience “crystallized in the structure”. Two options are possible here (quoted from 2).
- Simultaneously with the birth of this graphic form, in a “single act with experience,” its clear and precisely verbalized meaning is born. There are not many such cases.
- The final grapheme, into which the drawing process "rests", is not yet correlated for a person with such a definite meaning that he could verbalize it. Most of such cases.
Gendlin also pointed to something similar, describing the possibilities of the "Focusing" method: "Very often it turns out that the found symbol only partially covers the experience." However, "when the inner being starts to move, even if to an insignificant extent, this fact turns out to be more real and important than any diagnostic assessments."
A person is invited to repeat the "fixed grapheme", listening to his bodily feeling, and, following it, draw what follows from it. The bodily feeling of a “fixed grapheme” is experienced quite definitely, and this opens up the possibility of finding an exact correspondence to it in the image.
The Guided Drawing process requires a person to be fully present within the direct experience. Hand movements are guided only by internal response. Listening to himself, a person opens up to what leads him from within. By acting in this way, he allows the establishment of what is really, lives now; gives way to what sets itself up. The “Drawing” process provides an opportunity to reconnect with your productive capabilities and understand yourself based on your own living experience.
Carrying out procedure.
A man sits down in front of a sheet of white paper (60x40 cm). His eyes are closed; traditionally, black wax crayons are used in the guided drawing method. In my work, I offer clients drawing with fingers, which allows them to participate in the drawing process directly with the body and facilitates the direct continuation of body movement, an obvious expression of the current feeling.
Instruction: “Try to relax and find a moment of inner peace and quiet in yourself. Direct your attention deeper into the interior of the body, primarily to the abdomen and chest. Hear the sensation of this space as you fill it with your breath. Listen to the bodily sense of this space - how it is felt. Don't go deep into his analysis. Ask yourself the question: “What is the main focus of my life now? What is my leading actual meaning that will help me follow this direction?"
Don't answer the question. Stay with him and start Guided Painting. Let your body speak. Start with movements that seem to happen by themselves, and at the same time listen carefully to your inner response to these movements. Nothing should predetermine them - no preliminary images and attitudes. At first you will perform a lot of "unnecessary" movements, but at some point you will feel that you are making some kind of "correct" movement for yourself, "your own movement". Its implementation is in full harmony with what is experienced inside and is accompanied by a sense of correctness. Follow this response with appropriate movements on the sheet of paper; check how his inner voice matches the graph and the expression. With your movements, you seem to recognize and listen to your response. By following this correspondence, you will gradually open up to what is leading you from within. You can say about this: "I am driven."
When you integrate into this flow, you will feel that the voice of the inner leader becomes more and more distinct, the process will begin to unfold according to its own internal logic. Let this logic guide your hand. Allow the process to behave and do not try to control it in any way. On the contrary, let him guide you. Commit yourself to this flow.
Perhaps, over time, you will "run into" a movement that does not develop further. It can be denoted "fixed grapheme". Don't make unnecessary movements. Make sure your process is complete now.
Repeat "grapheme" several times, listening to your body sensation. What word or image follows from this bodily feeling? Can you find a word that conveys the essence of the sensation? Calmly open your eyes. You can write a word or express your feelings in a drawing. What would this experience look like if expressed in a drawing? The drawing can be done in any style and in various ways: only in color, only in lines, be expressed in any graphic and painterly manner.
After the person completes the self-report in the form of a drawing, a clarifying dialogue is needed.
Let me give you an example of a clarifying dialogue. Woman, 37 years old.
P: How did you feel when you were painting?
K: At first there was confusion, but after a while I felt how I "caught" this movement, maybe it caught me. And it felt so good. I felt calm, such an even, pleasant state. I didn’t know that I was drawing just pleasant driving on paper. And then somehow it arose: I sow wheat, sow, sow, and then … a sown field, a field of wheat, my cornfield. I saw this field, at first it was dark for some reason, I began to sow in some kind of dusk, and then, in front, the field is illuminated by the sun.
P: Are you a field sower who started sowing in the semi-darkness?
K: Yes, sower, there is such freedom in this, incomprehensible semi-darkness, but not frightening.
P: Is this a free activity?
K: Free and … optimistic. I even began to draw more freely, moving there, towards the sun, this is a real hymn to the sun. Yes, movement towards freedom and joy.
P: Can we say that it is important for you in life that your activity is free, joyful?
K: Yes. Yes, I need freedom and joy. It's together. There is joy from freedom. They unite. They live together.
P: You said: "My cornfield", how do you feel at the same time?
K: It's cool … Mine. Yes. Very cool. I am the hostess.
P: Are you the owner of this field?
K: Yes. That's right, I'm the hostess.
P: Is it important for you to be a mistress?
K: Yes. But this is not a question of owning something material. Be a mistress, have someone subordinate. This … I think I understand what this is all about. It's about being free … answering myself, setting tasks myself, harvesting the most
P: Is the field necessary for this?
K: Yes, space is needed.
P: Is space important to you?
K: Yes. Space - it gives freedom. Space, open space. I understand what this is about. My job, my workplace is a closet. There is no space, no light. Nobody oppresses me. Things are good. But there is no such space …
P: That is, a small piece of land will not suit you? Do you need space, field?
K: Yes, yes. I knew that, of course. I guessed. But now I feel, I feel that I need space.
P: Yes. And your drawing, it took up the whole sheet.
K: Yes. I'm excited. Or maybe even inspired. I understand what I need. It seems clear what to try.
P: "I see"? You started with semi-darkness, is it "clear" now?
K: Yes. Yes, it all started at dusk, in the semi-darkness. It is now clear. It is clear where this inability to breathe (approx. - because sometimes I could not breathe air). Now, by the way, I can breathe well.
P: Are you ready? Ready to go out into the open? Ready to sow?
K: I'm ready to look for space. I am ready to find my cornfield.
Dialogue based on a phenomenological cognitive strategy does not require interpretation, but has the ability to release the power of the whole. The phenomenological cognitive strategy opens the door to this type of understanding, in which to understand means to allow what lives in the client's field of consciousness to be established, to rely on what "grows" out of himself.
Recently, using the Guided Drawing method, I have stopped limiting clients to drawing exclusively with their fingers. You can slightly modify the instructions, informing the client that he is free to choose materials, tools and methods of drawing.
The client has an arsenal for drawing, which includes crayons, felt-tip pens, pencils, gouaches, watercolors, paint brushes of various sizes, sponges, etc. So, in one case, the client started moving using a paint brush, but at a certain moment, without opening her eyes, she began to mix paints in her hand, applying sweeping movements across the entire surface of the sheet with her palm. The client then explained that the brush became small for expressing what is leading it from the inside. In another case, on the contrary, the client, having become interested in drawing with his fingers, really surrendered to the voice of the inner leader, changed the "tool", continuing to draw with a pencil. In another version, the client, drawing with her fingers, after sweeping movements, changed the drawing tool and continued to draw with her fingernail: “I felt that it was something very subtle, but clear, definite and fixed, the fingertips became, as it were, superfluous, unnecessary, I began to draw with my fingernail."
When this ultimate revelation of inner intention, its certainty, happens, a person feels agitated, his whole body becomes the exact expression of his soul. In order to strengthen and root the experience that came from within, you can invite the client to stand up and carry out the found movement with the whole body.
Watching clients, you become a witness of a special exciting state. This special exciting state is obvious to the clients themselves. This excitement informs that a person has now met not just with some kind of knowledge, but is living something significant. Y. Gendlin also reported about this: "When a suitable symbol for bodily sensation is found, a feeling of relief appears, as if the body thanks it for being allowed to show the integrity of its being."
The living of this “depth” is a reliable evidence of an event that grows out of the immediate givenness of the experience itself, and is not a consequence of reasoning. Therefore, it affects the whole person, is experienced by him with his whole being, and, first of all, bodily. When the inner being of a person, his whole, is touched, it becomes possible to undoubtedly declare oneself, at the beginning - in a symbolic form in the form of a grapheme. This, one might say, "a letter written from myself."
Literature:
1. Arkhangelskaya V. V. Guided drawing and symbol manipulation
2. Buyax TM et al. Phenomenological description of the process of creating meanings by the "Guided Drawing" method
3. Gendlin Yu. Focusing. A new psychotherapeutic method of working with experiences
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