Discussion
The internal and external review proved to be revealing. Many of the intense feelings experienced were shared between participants at similar points in the group. Everyone found that review of video footage revealed how distorted their recall was of what was happening at those moments. Indeed, the video footage showed the inner experience of participants with surprising clarity.
In terms of the effect of the video on the art therapy concerned, the authors felt the effect on the content of what was discussed was greater than on the process of how it was discussed. For example, much of what was discussed related to being videoed (being seen), shame, or to the subject of oxytocin (breast feeding, and love and sex). The participants' processing of the discussion was much more out of conscious awareness and was revealed through viewing the video. The surprise was just how physical many of these processes were.
The authors attempted to make the session as real as possible and the effect of the one-off art therapy session was genuinely powerful for all involved. David Thorne described the journey with his image:
I believe there is an interactional phenomenon that is possible in the discussion, that is present in prototype in the art-making. The phenomenon is a relaxing of the structure of travelling by known outcomes, to be present in untold potentials. This may be oxytocin at work. In the discussion it happened through my material being shown to have made an imprint on another: what is reflected back is an altered version of my material. In the art-making process there is a wilful action to give the work life and so that it gets somewhere near modelling an inner pattern. I experienced the complex interconnectivity in my mind and body, past dilemmas held in muscle and bone tension, present concerns held in pulsed arrangements passing through synapses, and a constant reactivity to internal and external stimuli.
The art of making art is a dance, literally with the surface and substance of the materials, but, I suspect also within, between the cortex and limbic systems, between sympathetic and para-sympathetic, between the specific and the whole. The dance involves times of trance, or gormless attention, times of refinement, a focusing on aspects to bring them more distinct, times of crystallisation, representation and meaning making, and also times of pushing back, perhaps because crystallisation can deaden the work, times where there is an urge to cover over, or smudge out.
Neil said he noticed his arms gesticulating as if remaking my work, as if he were in the work and it was changing through this. This seems incredibly relevant, implying both cortex and limbic system were working in Neil to understand the work produced by my interacting limbic and cortex system.
The skills of exploration seem to me dependent on intention. So the work becomes a layered garden of experience with areas tended and others forgotten. The discussion of the work, then, at best is a respectful conversational stroll around this other's garden. The joint working of Neil and Julie around my work was a sensitivity that returned to me through tone and language conveying congruence with experience travelling quite deep under the surface. For me personally the significance is;
In the instance in mind—yes its right, I don't need to feel guilt for decisiveness.
I experienced a kind of confession of something that deeply troubled my childhood self, and it was not humiliating.
The experiment helped the authors to see how Fonagy's (2012) indication of the importance of the physical basis of cognition in art therapy could be studied.