Properties of Natalistic Art
and Natalistic Activity

In the East, unstinting recognition has always been accorded to art, as an expression of and not as an escape from reality; could the West bring itself to an acceptance of all forms of creative expression as a universal, normal and integrating experience that is neither effeminate nor neurotic, our culture might again find ways to restore harmony and balance to the disequilibrium of the modern psyche. (p. 90)

NONVERBAL CONSCIOUSNESS

It is clear that birth and prenatal experience occur before the development of language, but not necessarily before the formation of sensations and concepts. Prior to eighteen months, introjected stimulus to an infant and the processing of introjected stimuli is largely nonverbal (Feher, 1981). It is not surprising that prior to eighteen months the right hemisphere of the brain is dominant, as that also happens to be the sphere of the brain which later manages nonverbal experience. Blakeslee (1983) comments that:

Clearly the right brain, which has a consciousness of its own, is an important part of a whole person; yet it is ignored by the verbal consciousness of the left brain.... we must overcome a lifetime habit of acknowledging only thoughts that can be expressed in words. (p. 19).

Pre- and perinatal ideas and thought might be in part, in forms other than language or words. Early experience may be perceived in sense impressions or another type of knowing.

Non-verbal modalities seem to be the most effective means of uncovering and processing material which has been mentally constructed beyond the domain of language. Indeed, largely verbal therapies may have innate limitations for accessing and processing pre-verbal material. Noble (1993) asserts:

Pre- and perinatal psychology has much to offer conventional psychiatrists and psychologists, who traditionally engage in verbal exchanges.... The significant primal material is rarely tapped because, by definition, it is preverbal and inaccessible through ordinary conversation. (p. 40)

Art activity has many levels on which it addresses preverbal content in the psyche, for example, among others: nonverbal expression; altered states of consciousness; a bridge between non-verbal and verbal thought; holistic and multimodal procession; decreasing defenses; fluid access to the unconscious; expression of somatic and sensory experience; discharge of emotions; providing safe psychological containment; nurturance and repatterning; communication; ensoulment; objectification; symbolic and metaphorical expression.

In this list of the qualities of natalistic art in therapy, the therapeutic features of interpretation, symbolism and metaphor are the last category. This is done to avoid over focus on interpretation and symbolism. Cognitive processes tend to lead to the older abstracting and language periods of development. To a large degree the knowledge of the body is the path into the pre- and perinatal realm. Exploring creative process and the experiences of the body during creative activity is likely to be more productive therapeutically than verbally analysing the visual symbols of natalism.

A discussion of the advantages of art and creative activity in therapy does not negate the validity of talking in therapy, but rather demonstrates advantages which art and creative processes can add to "the talking cure." In and of itself art activity will not heal early trauma, but combined with other therapeutic techniques and approaches, the creation of art can greatly enhance many aspects of the therapeutic process, and the outward manifestations of that process. As McNiff (1981) assures, "The arts increase the potency of therapeutic enactments and symbols" (p. 12).

THERAPEUTIC PROPERTIES OF NATALISM

In the order listed, the remainder of this chapter examines the following common therapeutic properties of natalistic art and natalistic activity:

Natalism as a Holistic Process; Psychological Imagery in Natalism; Decreased Defences Through Natalistic Activity; Natalism as Expression of the Unconscious; Permanence of Natalism; Body Expression Through Natalism and Natalistic Activity; Natalism as Objectification; Emotional Release Through Natalism; Assisting Therapeutic Pacing With Natalism; Spatial Matrix in Natalism and Natalistic Activity; Natalistic Activity as Altered State of Consciousness; Natalism Assists the Preverbal to Become verbal; Creative and Physical Energy in Natalism; Repatterning Through Natalism, Physical Repatterning, Repatterning Numbing Qualities of Anaesthesia; Natalism as Psychological Induction and Suggestion; Natalism as Communication; A Life Force in the Womb; and Representation, Symbolism, Metaphor and Interpretation in Natalism.

- NATALISM AS A HOLISTIC PROCESS

There are many levels on which a therapy needs to function and be accessible in order to address the person as a whole. Natalism as a form of artistic expression addresses the person on the levels of psyche, soul, feeling, intellect and body. It is intrinsic to art and art activity to span the many layers of the self. In itself, expressive art is one of the most holistic psychotherapeutic approaches. Creating artwork can allow one to: retrieve memory; have emotional abreactions; bring material to the preconscious; or allow unconscious forces to come forward in order to examine them. Therapy processes involving the production of art integrate right brain and left brain functions. Art activity engages the body, facilitating somatic expression. Art provides a third relationship object to the therapeutic diad. Art as an object or presence in the therapeutic setting can be seen as acting as a third container for the therapeutic relationship. When art is used in the therapeutic relationship there is more fluidity and broader accessibility of both conscious and unconscious material. Both therapist and client interact with the art -- creating a therapeutic triad.

Beyond art production, natalistic art in therapy activity employs music, relaxation, writing, verbal dialogue, visualization and guided imagery, therapeutic dissociation and altered states of consciousness, induced regression, catharsis, and movement focused body work. During natalistic art in therapy activity the verbal and preverbal selves are addressed and engaged on a number of levels. Rogers (1993) comments:

More and more we are coming to understand the need to engage in processes that integrate all aspects of self: the body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Simply put, we cannot integrate all aspects of self without involving all aspects of self. (p. 95)

Pre- and perinatal consciousness exists on many levels (Chamberlain, 1988). The numerous roots of what it is to become the adult self are created in the preverbal period. Much of the life experience to follow is, in some form at least, lightly scented by the essence of original marination in gestational waters and the transformative passage of the birth canal. Integrating the wide spectrum of self or consciousness is of particular importance in working the foundational material of the preverbal period.

In working with natalistic imagery and process, the experiences from the preverbal realm finally find an integration with later consciousness. The right brain has a particular facility for identifying and sorting out segmented and incomplete feelings and experiences (Blakeslee, 1983). Zdenek (1985) states, "The right hemisphere can process many kinds of information simultaneously, sees problems holistically, and can make great leaps of insight. It is able to evaluate the whole problem at once" (p. 13). Preverbal feelings and experiences, particularly unresolved ones, form fragmented and incomplete gestalts in the psyche. Zdenek (1985) also acknowledges, "Right-brain knowledge is not achieved through words but through images" (p. 13). The "working through" of early psychological material by employing natalistic art in therapy activity can be unifying for consciousness as a whole.

Natalistic art in therapy approaches have the ability to engage many levels of the self to facilitate the resolution of lifelong core issues which have been foundational to the developing psyche. Johanna, a natalistic art workshop participant's description of her natalistic drawing experience is an eloquent portrayal of the many levels on which one drawing can work:

While drawing I was still feeling I could not get out of my mother. She would not let me out. In the womb I felt I had tremendous power, tremendous force, tremendous push; but at birth she was just as strong at killing me. There was a kind of a poison that was building up inside of me.

I did not consciously think of drawing the poison, but if the poison were in the drawing it would be the green and yellow that are there. The feeling of poisoning started soon after the green and yellow were drawn. There was a feeling of fiery burning with it and a lot of anger.

The red was the pushing rage. As I was drawing I was pounding with my fist, "She wins, I die; she wins, I die." That sense of dying is what the sadness is about. When I released the rage with my body and my pounding it connected me to the sadness of her winning and me having to die. The sadness was over in the blue.

The having to die came out in my life pattern of I always give up myself and my things for other people. I always come second or last. I can not get what I want. I have lots of things that I want and I can not have them. It has been just like a constant tease. I get all the images of what I want, but I can not have any of them.

Through her natalistic drawing and natalistic processes Johanna was unifying conscious, preconscious and unconscious material. Previous understandings and vague felt senses were further extracted and illuminated. Unconscious forces were being expressed and were later discovered and further understood. Johanna worked with body awareness, cognitive and emotional processing. Her later life experiences found a context with her birth and in utero dynamics. Feelings and somatic sensations were finding a form for identification and release. She struggled with insight and repatterning. Within herself and in relationship to others her art became an advocate for her inner experience. Sharing her art and process in a group provided the opportunity for witnessing and social interaction and validation.

In part, natalistic art in therapy serves as a holistic modality through its ability to integrate other growth and healing experiences, and its facility for bridging to other modalities. Psychological healing is a process, not a moment or event. Many experiences preceding or following natalistic activity may add to personal healing and transformation. Indeed important aspects touched on through a natalistic drawing may not fully flower until they are connected with other meaningful experiences months or years later.

Giving birth, like being born is a profound creative act and as such allows for powerful experiences of personal expression and repatterning. In itself, pregnancy and giving birth can be experiences initiating significant psychological growth. In a natalistic art workshop, an artist integrated her natalistic process with her ongoing and previous therapy experiences. In addition she found associations between her natalistic experiences, her own birth and the profoundly transformative life experience of giving birth. In discussing her natalistic experiences she commented:

As I talked about my own birth issues in the workshop groups I became aware that giving birth was a very powerful part of my experience of birth. I suspected having given birth to my three daughters was part of what helped me deal with the sadness of the absence of knowledge of my own birth origins and not having any stories of my own birth. The absence of memory of my birth was not quite as bad because I had been there for their births.

There are a whole lot of reasons that it has been really important that I chose to have two home births. Looking back at it during the natalistic art workshop I wondered if having a home birth was also so central for me because I had an unconscious sense that my own birth was all mucked up. In having a good birth with my children there was a chance for repatterning and rescripting my own negative experiences at birth.

The doctor who caught my two children at home avoided all the language that sounded like the doctor doing the birthing instead of the mother. He would not talk about delivery or patients, he talked about clients and he caught the babies. When Kelly was born we had this big window looking out to the park behind the house. I was in labour all night and the sun was just coming up. He opened the curtains as I turned to the window and he literally caught her as she burst into the sunlight.

For this woman, as with many women, giving birth in part helped her with confronting and resolving feelings and issues left from her own birth. The natalistic art experiences were ingredients in the gestalt of her holistic process of personal growth and self awareness.

- PSYCHOLOGICAL IMAGERY IN NATALISM

Images are fundamental elements of thought and were our thought processes before words. Wood (1984) suggests, "'thinking in pictures' lies at the root of awareness" (p. 65). Chamberlain (1987) notes, "The visual system is relatively advanced at birth, though only a few decades ago authorities were not sure if newborns could see at all. Actually, newborns are all eyes and are constantly looking at things, even in the dark" (p. 74). It seems the newborns are already organizing visual perceptions of their world. Wadeson (1980) suggests that images, which come developmentally before words, are primary foundation blocks of the psyche; and that therefore they are primary tools/assets in restructuring the psyche in the psychotherapeutic process. Wood (1984) elaborates, "There would seem to be general agreement that images are the primary containers of experience. It follows that a representation could convey the content and make a bridge into language" (p. 65).

Images dwell in the right brain. The right brain or nonverbal brain has a particular facility for processing thought outside the container of language [thought]. Blakeslee (1983) notes, "the left brain handles language and logical thinking, while the right does things that are difficult to put into words" (p. 6). Materials from the pre- and perinatal realm is processed in the right brain and working with images or even viewing them can help focus consciousness in right brain processes. Therefore the act of making images or reviewing those images can position the active aspects of the self closer to infancy, birth and in utero consciousness.

Images may be an intermediary stage between the early prenatal somatosensory stage and the later childhood verbal stage. Therapeutically, images may be able to mediate between somatic memory and nonverbal levels of consciousness, and the rational language consciousness. Silverman (1991) believes art expression has a "unique capacity to render or evoke symbols and images related to infantile experience," therefore, "The art therapy modality is particularly effective in supporting the reparative process of those who have experienced early development impairment" p. 83).

Imagery in natalistic art can be the visual portrayals of representative likeness, such as a house, tree or figure; or natalistic imagery can be the scribbles, scrawls, doodles, swirls, patches, marks and other primitive colourings in the drawing. Contained within the imagery of art can be conscious and unconscious expressions of symbolism, metaphor, emotion, historical content, relationship, age, developmental stage, ideas, statements, or questions. A simple or a complex image can address any number of these elements.

Susan was not an artist and previous to her participation in a natalistic art workshop had never used art for personal healing. At her first session she spoke of her reticence to attend and apologized for her lack of skill with drawing. Yet she later describes the multi-layered and intricate facility with which the images of one of her natalistic drawing spoke from her core self:

The red around the outside is rage and the orange circle surround is danger. The red writing below the red scribbling says, "Mother rage." I feel like in the womb I tried to get as far away from the danger of my mother as I could. The small pink figure is like trying to shrink away from danger and my mother's rage. It is like the rage is focused from the angry beating of her heart and I am trying to get as far away as I can. It has a sense of that little bit of green and yellow was as though I tried to focus on a place of hope and light in order to keep going. In the small pink foetal form I am afraid and I am experiencing perilous danger. I am afraid she is trying to kill me. In spite of her trying to kill me, the way that I survived is by holding on to some kind of hope and some kind of light. In my life I am like that. I always kind of hope that things are going to get better and I never seem to learn. I still have that sense of being enveloped in black. My mom tried to abort me by horse back riding, she took some kind of drug and used hot and cold baths and mustard. While doing the drawing of the blackness I started to get a feeling of being sealed in and isolated in blackness which was all over the out side of me, but I also had a sense it gave me some safety. I got a glimmer of maybe I created an envelope of blackness around myself to protect myself. That protection is one of my strengths. It was interesting that two people in the workshop talked about a sense of being in an out of body space, that is what I did through the feeling sense of total isolation.

There was a simplicity to the colours and images in Susan's natalistic drawing. The drawing clearly relates the depth and power with which art imagery can speak.

A person needs to articulate many words with logical rational language to sort out a significant event, issue or feeling. A glance at a therapeutic painting can convey more of an immediate perception of meaning. "A picture says a thousand words", and in the images of a therapeutic art picture there are likely more than a thousand words. When reviewing a series of natalistic pictures the conscious meaning of the works and their images for the artists and therapist expands much further than when each art work is viewed in isolation.

In addition to the power of imagery alone, sometimes more can be said in using art in therapy because there is the possibility of combining words and the images to feel, talk and think through the healing process. Cynthia shares her natalistic expression of written words spread amongst the images of her drawing:

The black writing in this drawing represents part of myself that felt that trauma. The purple scribbly lines represent loss of identity or loss of wholeness. The blue writing is asking "where is that peace?" This sense often represented for me with blue in my drawings. Three colours are used, one colour in the picture and two colours in the writing. It's so simple, yet those three colours really say a lot.

Our culture reveres the rational order of left brain words and language, and tends to place more emphasis on words, particularly the written word. Lake (1981) allows, "The right hemisphere is in our culture the more often despised of the two sides of the brain" (p. 9). Thoughts and ideas expressed in words are sometimes the only ones deemed to be credible. Yet, visual insights, psychological connection and transformation can occur with little or no verbal interpretation. Silverman (1991) acknowledges:

some patients never achieve the capacity to think verbally; they think in images. If they can develop "concrete things" (lines, points, marks on paper, in plastic forms, and so on, they can use those "things" to "think" thoughts in a different way. (p. 83)

Perception and thinking can be visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and tactile. In both children and adults, much thought occurs outside the perimeters of words and language concepts. When adults therapeutically regress to the pre- and perinatal period, their fluency in using words may greatly diminish. During therapeutic preverbal regression it can useful to have nonverbal activity and imagery as a means of expression and conceptualization. One artist describes how nonverbal/nonconceptual art works supported the expression of a felt sense which were beyond the verbally conceptual realm:

In producing the art around my birth I had a pretty strong sense of colour, of what was right and what wasn't. A lot of people in the workshop had words all over their drawings and most of the time mine didn't. It's very hard to talk about...I would have had to go into my head to say this is a painting that's related to my birth, conception or whatever. There wasn't a sense of their being a future or a beginning. I was just there with the picture.... I think in some ways the experience of doing the art and relating to how to do art was how I experienced life prenatally.

It was like you want to wiggle your big toe, you do so. It was the same experience -- if you want to pick up the pink crayon.

Sculptor Jake Goertzen, whose work is detailed in Chapters 12, 13, 14 and 15, explains about his work with natalistic images, "When I was working on my art it was a prolonged state of mourning and it was deeper and it was a more complete experience because I wasn't trying to verbalize it."

Working with a feeling or issue through imagery encourages a certain degree of inertia and emphasis which sustains and focuses the healing process. Particularly when therapeutic material is preverbal and nonverbal the sustaining activity of developing and refining imagery encourages the artist to continue exploring emotions and experience associated with the imagery which may be outside cognitive perception or conscious thought. Referring to her early memory through natalistic art in therapy, Sarah states:

It is difficult to talk about because I am stuck with trying to describe a wordless state with words. It is easier to do it with art than it is with words. The natalistic art workshop provided a very powerful means by which to explore that wordless place.

For me expressing feelings through colour, line and shape evokes movement which parallels emotion. Emotion is energy moving out. Emote = movement out. The art process bypasses words and concepts and rationalization up in the head. Form, colour, shape, line and movement all address the gut level, the feeling level.

By continued observing and relating to the developing image the client is enables to sort out the preverbal material, to reflect on it and interact with it.

Wadeson (1980) perceives that, "In addition to the reflection of images, the art medium often stimulates the production of images, tapping into primary process material and enhancing the creative process" (p. 9).

Images allow the artist to move beyond the confines of verbal languages. Pre- and perinatal issues in personality have components which are difficult to approach with verbal dialogue and can even be interrupted by the struggle to find accurate language to describe and interpret the early experiences and their legacy in the self. In speaking of the process of preverbal material surfacing through Natalistic images, Cynthia stated:

It feels like it's something that is hard to put words to; I can relate to the phenomena of going through the experience but to put language to it becomes more difficult. I relate the experience in images over words; words are insufficient to describe what I felt. I feel like I can express it with drawing.

Cynthia's experience of the limitations of words is echoed by Edwards (1986) who notes, "verbal language can be inappropriate for certain creative tasks and...words can even hinder certain tasks" (p. xii). The hindering qualities of verbal thought can be particularly acute with preverbal and somatic memory and thought. McNiff (1981) notes art has power, "as a means of furthering the expression of personal feelings that are difficult to share verbally" (p. 155).

For artists to process psychological material behind imagery, neither they nor the clinician necessarily needs to know where the material is coming from or going to; staying with the art process itself will allow inner forces to unfold naturally. After attending several natalistic art workshops, Susan began using the art processes at home to help her deal with emotional issues and feelings. In one experience, Susan did not definitely know the origins of her triggered stress. Nonetheless, she found the art process to be an effective means of dissipating her strong emotions:

Receiving some good financial news and feeling guilt and shame about getting what I wanted, I started to hate myself. I thought the bad feelings were connected with what went on in the birth primal, but I was not sure. It got really bad and I started to feel awful emotionally and physically. I did some drawing and that helped. Using drawing to cope with feelings which were coming up for me was something new for me. I do not fully understand what happens, I found it just worked.

Through the processes of artistic activity healing occurs on conscious and unconscious levels, on verbal and nonverbal levels. Learning to trust working with the nonverbal conscious and preverbal unconscious can have powerful effects on other therapeutic work the artists are undergoing. As Johanna shared:

The workshop was connecting me to another part of myself that I never really knew about. I knew about it in little bits and pieces, but it really scared me. It did not scare me with fear, it scared me with excitement and I was not honouring it very much. It was getting stronger and stronger so that was good; because the stronger it got the more I wanted to move in another direction, but I had no idea where.

It seemed at the time I was not working with my therapist on the birth issues in the same way. I would have my sessions with her under hypnosis and just go back into the space where I was at while doing the natalism. I would go somewhere quite deep, I would not actually sleep, but it might of appeared that way . I was sort of not really aware, I could not really talk and we were not dialoguing at all. She would just leave me in that deep place for an hour. I would just go into early stuff. A lot was happening, but it felt like nothing was happening, I felt I had to do it. Luckily she just did what she did when I was in there.

In working with early preverbal material it is important for client and clinician to trust in the natural unfolding of the healing process. At times there are words, images, movements or sounds, and at other times there is healing and processing through silence.

Beyond the process of creating the images, the very images themselves can act as a reflecting therapist, mirroring back to the artist that which has been consciously and unconsciously manifested in the artwork. Like the acknowledging and validating therapist who reflects back what is being heard, or summarizes a portion or all of the therapy session, the images in therapeutic art convey back to the creator an accurate portrayal of the unfolding therapy process. In reflecting on her natalistic imagery, Sarah, a natalistic art workshop participant, expresses:

I perceive that viewing my art brings back into me what I sent out. The art gives an expression to what I am sensing with my body and acts as an emotional mirror. I can see in the art work what the experience is like inside myself, in my body. In a way the art reflects back to me what I feel.

As a depthful mirror, the images of the art work can act as a form of nurturing therapist to repattern deep wounds. France Fuchs is reported by Rogers (1993) to have said, "Art has the capability of being both the midwife and child of our inner selves" (p. 70). Cynthia's natalistic art in therapy experience demonstrates the effectiveness of the art image and process as therapist. In discussing her drawing it is clear that there are many simultaneous levels on which Cynthia is therapeutically interacting with her art work. The images of the natalistic art work serve or assist as mirror, witness, emotional release, communication, nurturer, safety, containment, repatterning and reframing. The natalistic art process engages Cynthia physically, emotionally, cognitively, spiritually and aesthetically, and socially. According to Cynthia:

The drawing is definitely mother mirroring. The mother and the baby have tears.... The woman was a Madonna image. In the drawing there is a halo or spiritual light that is infusing my body. My infant hand reaches out for the breast which is the giver of life. The mother has nice big breasts and she is cloaking me in a nice blanket. I am nestled in there very secure and warm.

In the security and warmth I just needed silence. I do not need to hear any words. I just want to hear the heart beat and the silence. The silent loving energy that comes through. There is empathy and she is crying. They are both crying at the same time.

The drawing is my ideal mom. After I was finished doing the painting I felt enthusiastic. While talking about the images in the group I began to cry, "I do not have a mother. She is alive but she is not a mother. I could not get that from her. I never had that from her."

I felt like if I could receive from a sense of a mother inside of me I would be different in many facets.

In the reparative phases of the natalistic process artists will often combine artistic visual images and "creative visualization" imageries to nurture and repattern early wounds. As one artist shares:

I did the positive womb drawing in the workshop as a scene from nature. I hoped the womb as nature would not seem facetious to others. There were trees around me and birds and sky. I am not sure if it is ducks or boats in the water. The little black dots up between the green things are a group of Canada geese. The sky overhead is a blue for hope and expansion. Associated with the reddish colour I had an image of myself sort of in the womb sitting and bending my feet in the water. I do not know how to write music, but the little doodley shapes above my head are little music notes.

It is not just the imagery which repatterns, but the larger context of process in which images play a part. When the artist puts away the drawing, the images continue to act upon the psyche, reinforcing and suggesting transformation.

- DECREASED DEFENCES THROUGH NATALISTIC ACTIVITY

Artistic productions are a form of expression and communication. Often expressive art can be a powerful voice from the deeper core self because experience that is processed through art tends to be less inhibited, conditioned and defended than verbal speech and thought. The visual articulation of artistic creations may not have the fluency and ease learned through decades of talking, but for most adults creative expression is likely to be less defended and provides a straighter path between the defended outer self and the deeper wounded inner self.

People communicate and interact continually every day through verbal language. There is such familiarity with language that people are consciously and unconsciously highly aware of its nuances and structures. External and internal stresses and anxieties are continually being filtered through the structures of ongoing speech and language thought processes. To avoid a constant state of anxiety, psychological defences naturally develop around the verbal realm and language conceptual thought. Emotional defenses have most of their practice and habituation in the context of verbal encounters. Sarah discusses her relationship with words and art:

I think working with art and the natalism approach was especially powerful for me because I rely so heavily on words. I use them often as a barrier and as protection. I found doing natalistic art a marvellous tool. Through working with art I sidestepped the defences around words. The art processes allowed me to connect directly with the internal experience, which was very powerful to do.

More and more I have become aware of words and their importance. I think I learned to use words very effectively early on. Words can be both a bridge and a wall. I am very aware of how I can use them in booth ways. For a lot of my life I have deflected people and kept people at bay with words rather than use them as a reaching out and as a means of really communicating.

It was very important for me to use the words with the art work in the way they are meant to be used as communication and not as a barrier.

For most people, expression through the creative arts is not a common occurrence. In day to day social interaction, artwork is used far less for communication than words. People generally spend less time creating art than talking. Because art is not used as a primary form of daily expression and communication it does not necessitate the degree of defences which are required of language. There is less formal structure to art than to language and fewer defenses around the images and processes of creating art. This vulnerability affords greater access to psychological material.

Art activity, having fewer and less developed defenses, can allow unexpected psychological material to surface. Rogers (1993) affirms, "Frequently what we then create comes from the unconscious. We may be surprised by what appears" (p. 43). Wadeson (1980) concurs, "Unexpected things may burst forth in a picture or sculpture, sometimes totally contrary to the intentions of its creator" (p. 9).

The right hemisphere of the brain is the more dominant centre for emotion, spatial and nonverbal thought, and the legacy of pre- and perinatal events and impressions. Spoken language engages left brain activity and therefore does not directly kindle the vestiges of emotion or the preverbal realm. In part, left brain thinking serves as a defense against the emotional qualities of the right brain. Zdenek (1985) states, "Although emotions are actually a product of another part of the brain (the limbic system), it is the right hemisphere that is more in touch with these feelings" (p. 14). Art activity by-passes the defenses of rational thought and left brain linear logic, allowing the fires of birth and the womb to ignite the darkened nonverbal domain of the right brain.

Natalistic activity as right brain process moves directly into those areas of the brain which mediate the forces of emotion, nonverbal and preverbal experiences, and the unconscious. Simultaneously, natalistic processes encourage a bridge between the unconscious and the conscious, between preverbal and verbal, between emotion and logic. Sarah relates how the natalistic art experience put her in touch with emotion and the nonverbal realm, and then the natalistic process encouraged movement through to language, internal organization and higher order communication:

The process of choosing colour was very important to me to symbolize different feelings. I was sensitive to the emotional content or feel of a colour. Colours seemed to have a kind of universal symbolism that crossed the barriers of language and that reached me where I live. In some ways, choosing the colour could represent the feelings that I had.

Then placing the words on the drawing allowed an additional kind of claiming to the experience. Putting the words on the pictures was important to me in terms of claiming the feelings and the experience as my own. In a way it was the words for me that acted as kind of a bridge between the non-verbal feeling state and the adult who can articulate the experience and communicate it.

Some of the properties of decreased psychological defence which is associated with art comes about as a result of objectification. A psychologically problematic person, issue or feeling becomes contained in and interacted with, through the representations of the art work and art processes. Birtchnell (1984) allows, "that a picture of a person or thing is not the same as the person or thing, and yet carries some of their characteristics. Thus it represents a safe, half-way stage" (p. 41). Through the protection of art as a half-way stage the artist can begin to deal with some of the overwhelming and painful issues residing in the characteristics of the artwork. According to McNiff (1981) the artworks serve, "as intermediary or 'transitional' objects of communication...when verbal discussion might be too threatening" (p. 155). This form of psychological bridge can serve to enhance relationship and expression to other people or between the outer and inner self.

Transitions, transformation and the unfamiliar can circumvent habituated defenses and allow a burst from the unconscious, bringing forward the psychological forces of birth and the realm of the womb. Janus (1991) explains:

Throughout postnatal development, early experience is covered by later experience and is concealed within one's general attitude to life. However, events of an unusual nature, not only threatening but also pleasant ones, or great changes in life can serve to evoke early experience. (p. 204)

For most people art activity, and in particular natalistic art activity, can provide the kind of unusual change which may evoke expression of early experiences.

- NATALISM AS EXPRESSION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

Art is well known for its ability to express feelings from the deeper self. These deeper layers of the psyche are generally understood to include the realms of the unconscious and of core experience. The psychological foundations of the unconscious and its cores of belief and feelings are experiences from the preverbal period. Rogers (1993) speaks for many in stating, "When people create art -- whether it is a doodle, an expressive painting or sculpture...it always reveals an aspect of the self. It may reveal an aspect of the unconscious self" (p. 77).

A proposal of natalistic theory is that artistic expression also has an affinity for expression of the repressed or dissociated preverbal unconscious.

Birth and prenatal traumas often have a component of psychological shock (Lake, 1981). Shocking or traumatic experiences may, characteristically, be locked out of the conscious mind, but still reverberate in the unconscious mind. Noble (1993) points out that:

During a traumatic event, a person is often in shock, and later in normal consciousness is unable to remember very much at all. Yet under hypnosis, crime victims for example, can recall such details as the numbers on a car license plate. (p. 89)

Natal experiences occur before the organization of cognitive structures. Birth recall may lock visual or auditory details such as numbers or words, but there is a high degree of kinaesthetic and tactile memory in birth regressions. These somatic sensations or body memories are the psychophysiological responses of the preverbal unconscious (Janov, 1983). To work consciously or verbally with early trauma, the individual has to move the psychological material out of the realms of the preverbal unconscious. Noble (1993) continues:

The key is to find a bridge between the physiological and verbal levels of experience. The memory is encoded in a state-bound form and thus a person has to get back into a particular state to access the experience. Regressive association is the process by which we put two and two together, not by reasoning but by spontaneous feeling. (p. 89)

There are numerous routes to regression into the unconscious through encouraging spontaneous feeling. Ross (1986) summarizes:

Arthur Janov used the Gestalt method of bringing infantile relationships with the parents into the present - addressing them directly as "Mummy" and

"Daddy" and getting into the buried feeling. Leonard Orr used a large tub of warm water to simulate the uterine environment. Frank Lake at one stage used cushions to enhance the awareness of the womb but then went on to develop a guided fantasy that reflected, as accurately as possible, the stages of development of the embryo from ovulation on to about the stage of the third month of pregnancy. With this method, a surprisingly high proportion of people appeared to get into touch with personal experiences in the first trimester which seemed to have some meaning and value for them. (p. 54)

Art activity is highly accepted for its ability to speak for the deeper self and unconscious. The pre- and perinatal unconscious is often closely aligned with life long core urges and desires. Representation of those urges can sometimes be a part of the process of uncovering the landscape of prenatal material. Initially, imagery from the preverbal unconscious will not be fully understood by the artist. As the realm of birth and the in utero world became more familiar to the adult consciousness, symbolism of early experience begins to take on more meaning.

Noble (1993) portrays her own experience of being asked, at the beginning of her primal regression work with Graham Farrant, to "Draw a scene":

My scene was a sketch of the pond where I lived on Cape Cod. This reflected my desire to live by water. Although I grew up in Australia and looked at the horizon of an ocean, I prefer the perimetry of a lake, a primal feeling to do with borders and zones about which I would learn more as I underwent the process and understood my use of prenatal symbols. (pp. 115-116)

Noble became aware that for her the containment of a lake was much more a prenatal domain than the symbology of an ocean. For each person, the unconscious is uniquely expressed in art and its symbols and images.

Like Noble (1993), Deborah, an artist and natalistic workshop participant, also had art images of water connecting to prenatal experience. In the expressions of the unconscious in Deborah's dream life she also had experiences of unrest and turbulent waters, which she related to the toxicity and turmoil in the watery world of her womb. As Deborah said, "When I am having emotional turbulence I see it in my dreams as water and floods, tidal waves and turbulent seas, and drowning. For me water is a very prominent imagery for strong and overwhelming feelings." Deborah's unconscious relationship to water was distress and life risk. To resolve the deep core relationship of trauma and water Deborah used art to express her fears and distress, but also she used the natalistic art process as a transforming agent for the very symbols of her unconscious fears.

In an interesting process of transformation, rather than deny the basic elements of her internal imagery, Deborah stepped off from where she was and allowed water to continue to represent her core feelings and beliefs. As Deborah explains:

Some of the imagery that I tried to work with to transform the turbulence of water was just being on a raft and flowing, going with it nice and cosy and soft.

My drawing was working with the same images of soft waves; their lulling, flowing, soft, nice, rocking -- like connecting with a soft womb.

Through visualization and art work Deborah allowed water, the element of her nightmares, to take on a more nurturing and embracing function. What was once threatening to her was now beginning to take care of her. Initially the objectified image of water, as a psychological container, was apparently also taking care of Deborah by holding the overwhelming turmoil of her womb period in the unconscious preverbal domain; until she was grown and strong enough to look at and sort through chaos created by the rejection, hate and ambivalence she felt in the world of her beginnings. Now that the imagery of water was released from the feelings and memories it was holding separate; Deborah's core relationship to the familiar object of water could take on a different meaning, providing the lulling, rocking softness of an emotionally nourishing and healing womb.

Susan connected her natalistic drawing to a life-long recurring journey dream. On the drawing was written, "I've got to get there -- it's so hard. I'm tired, can't do it. Have to keep going. So hard, can't do it. Have to feel so weak and helpless and powerless. I've got to get there, never do. The journey that never ends." In talking about the dreams Susan shared:

In my dream of trying to get home there's no colour except grey. The dreams are always very bleak, that's why there's no colour. I sometimes wonder if the dream is related to when I got born. My experiences of reliving birth has been sort of unconscious, it's like I didn't experience my birth, so I didn't know I was born. I'm still going through that struggle because I don't know I was born.

Susan went unconscious from ether which was administrated in the last stage of labour. As an infant she had gone through the labour and then was consciously anaesthetically deadened for the conclusion of her birth. On a preverbal foundational level, being robbed of the conclusion and accomplishment of birth left her with an inner struggle of still trying to finish her journey. Through her art work at the natalistic art workshops and at home Susan began to create pictures of having arrived and being looked after the way she deserved. Through the use of colour in her drawings she also changed the bleak grey journey of birth into a colourful inner path. At the next natalistic art workshop she shared:

After the session where I really relived that early portion of my life, I had quite a long and wonderful dream. In it I had married a man who I'm very attracted to.... In the dream I achieved some really really close relationships.... We had to work through a lot of problems and we ended up with a real closeness. It's what I've always wanted to be able to experience with people and never could. I woke up with a really warm feeling.

Along with the negative feelings which flow from the unconscious while producing art, there are positive healing forces which help with repatterning wounds and with affirming that positive meaning exists within the artist and her world. Furth (1988) writes:

It is interesting to note that when professional artists produce pictures from the unconscious, they frequently become aware of a flow of inner good feelings accompanying their work. They seem to be expressing a freedom that they have not felt in years, or awakening memories of using media associated with good feelings experienced years ago. (p. 12)

As an explorer of human experience the artist balances the command and skill of conscious intent and direction against the power and potency of unconscious forces. As Kramer (1958) considers "The artist's position epitomizes the precarious human situation: while his craft demands the greatest self-discipline and perseverance, he must maintain access to the primitive impulses and fantasies that constitute the raw material for his work" (p. 23).

It can be a very powerful tool to take a component of an artwork to further develop into another new work. Deborah states that:

After one of the natalism sessions I had done another little drawing of one of the large drawings I had left in Michael's office. I was feeling that the workshop drawing, which I did not have at home, had felt so healing to me at the time. So I wanted to have the image around to further the healing. The replacement drawing did not look like just like original one but it worked for me.

Artists often take a section, image or theme of a painting further develop it in new works. In the process of my sculpting I discover forms or elements which are part of a sculpture which I want to explore in another sculpture. Nadeau (1984) states, "artists will testify to the fact that in producing one drawing or painting, ideas are therein born for another ten or more works" (p. 36). Conversely when an artist explores the unconscious forces in one work there will be found dynamics from other previous works. When the artist reflects on the development of unintended themes which occur over a period of time she is observing her unconscious at work.

Preverbal material is particularly susceptible to artistic exploration which is nonverbal, therefore non-cognitive and seemingly unconscious. Before language and cognition become fluid with the surfacing dynamics, the non-language mind may significantly approach and address preverbal feelings and issues. As one professional sculptor, who created natalistic imagery before ever attending a natalistic art workshop relates:

The sculpture, Wounded Mother, with the larger hole and the crack is to me no doubt an expression of prenatal experience. On one hand it is a sculpture of a mother and her empty womb. On the other hand, when it is turned upside down it looks like a sculpture of a fetus. I did not consciously see the fetus while I was doing the mother. Initially I missed seeing all the significance of that dynamic.

Each piece that I have done since then has seemed like a variation on the theme of the narcissistic mother and the damage she unconsciously does to her child. The primary theme was picked up in Wounded Mother and then it has been elucidated and developed through various pieces over the last eight years. In some ways there is a number of layers in that initial sculpture. I have sort of been exploring some of the themes with further work.

It has been remarkable to observe the degree of detail which adopted individuals have worked with in natalistic productions. With little or no historical details of birth, a significant portrait of the birth experience can unfold over a series of natalistic drawings and experiential birth regressions. The sense of another realm which is typically associated with birth and womb regression must be all the more poignant for the adoptee who not only left the womb, but left the first family. It may be that this dual loss provides all the more reason to uncover and work through early pre- and perinatal material. As Brigette, an adoptee, reflects of birth and her natalistic experiences:

There had been a lot of birth things that had flashed in and out of my head as I settled into the workshop series. [Being adopted,] there is little that I empirically know about my birth and origins. I know I was born in the General Hospital and I was five pounds. As an infant they had great difficulty finding food that I could tolerate. That is about all I know of myself as a little infant.

Throughout history and cultures art has been associated with the search for meaning and the origins of the self or society. Art does not always give answers, but it does send forth flares which momentarily brighten the night of the unconscious. Each art work illuminates an unto now hidden part of the unconscious. Like the professional artist, the therapy client struggles to confront and make order out of the unconscious imagery released over a series of pieces. Brigette said:

There was something about the blank spot in the second drawing that was different from the blank spot in the previous drawing. I needed to talk more about it in the group go around. It was definitely supposed to be blank. I thought about that a lot as I drew, there was not supposed to be any thing there. The blank may be twin stuff. I think the poking might have been like the abortion stuff. I do not know if there was an attempted abortion or if it got a twin. It was like there was no distressed feeling there. It was like the was just nothing over there, like it was not my space. It was bordered by black with a faint bit of purple in the space.

Something with the yellow circle was like that was the only friendly thing in the whole place. It was coloured in kind of pretty. Green for me is very nurturing, so it was the only nurturing something. I wondered if it was the twin in the nurturing light. If the whole drawing is viewed as three dimensional, the twin could be kind of in behind.

The rational conscious mind can be quite challenged by the breath and depth with which unconscious material is presented in art and dreams. In waking from the realm of dreams the unconscious content of the dream can dissolve. In completing a work of art the forces which became represented in the art still call out from the visual images which do not fade as easily as dreams. In approaching and dialoguing about the therapeutic art work the artist is approaching and discussing the realm of her unconscious.

In addition the listening to the artwork speaking back to the artist is a condition of listening to the voice of the inner mind. Brigette shares:

I got this really clear picture that I did not particularly want to draw a womb like shape.

I knew the drawing I wanted had to have really firm boundaries. I set out to draw something that would be enclosed and has some circles in it as opposed to sharp angles. What intrigued me, at the time, was it was almost more like the two lobes of the heart.

The one circle drew itself and then the other one wanted to be drawn under and around. I think it is probably supposed to be three dimensional.... An image came of an arm and I knew I needed it to be enclosed and to be circular in some way. That was kind of the only plan.

I did the squiggle and then somehow I knew it needed to be black and strong. I was frustrated with the crayon because I could not make it dark enough. I spent a lot of time getting the lines as distinct as I could. I think that had something to do with boundaries, safety and security; like in my ideal place the areas would be clearly delineated. It would be safe and there would be no pokers coming in.

The artwork both acts upon, and mirrors, that which is occurring in the deeper self. Jung (1977) concurs that when clients "look at" their works of art:

they feel that their unconscious is expressed. The objective form works back on them and they become enchanted. The suggestive influence of the picture [sculpture] reacts on the psychological system of the patients and induces the same effect which they put into the picture. That is the reason for idols, for the magic use of sacred images, of icons. They cast their magic into our system and put us right, providing we put ourselves into them. (Vol. 18, p. 181)

As the client gains familiarity in working with the preverbal unconscious through natalistic processes, voyage into the inner mind becomes more fluid and productive. Brigette shares:

I started getting keener at being able to sense what I wanted to do, what I needed to do, or what the drawing was meaning. I was getting keener, through not having to think as much. I was getting better at connecting with unconscious levels of knowing. I had very little sense of thinking before I drew. Michael talked the first night about maybe there's a colour that's just calling out to you and things like that. I guess I had some sense of that the first night, but later that just happened quickly and I would look at the colours and knowing what I needed just happened quickly and I remember one time I needed a purple and I didn't have a purple and I had to go charging across the room to get a purple, because I just knew that something else wasn't the right colour.

It was an experience of listening to a felt sense of what needed to happen and intuitively trusting that. I didn't have to know where the picture was going. I didn't have to know what was going to work. I could just trust that it would be coming to me and that way my urge to do was perhaps the thing to follow. I didn't want to process it all through my head.

It is difficult to find the words for it but it was like I wanted to let the inside out. To let the deep me be the one that paints not just the head me. I like my paintings better when I do that.... I know I'm thinking with my head when I'm saying "There's a blank piece of paper on the floor, and well what shall I draw next?" That's thinking. When I'm not thinking that doesn't happen. In my head I just kind of go with it and I really like the experience. It feels nicer to do that. I also like the productions better, so I can't see any good reason to draw the thinking way. I think the thinking gets in the way of art.

Dreaming and creating art are likely two of the most powerful means of tapping into and expressing unconscious forces. When Sarah was discussing her natalistic pictures she commented about one drawing, "A feeling in this dream is a dream-like state." She did not notice her use of the word dream instead of drawing. This is an interesting remark because writers about art in therapy speak of therapeutic art being like a visual dream. Natalism can be viewed through the same lens as dream material and dream process.

Art and dreams represent the internal experiences of the unconscious in similar ways. London (1989) allows, "Dreams, the images we create in our mind's eye, are always pertinent, expressive, compelling and convincing, mystifying and edifying. They are never shallow, never gratuitous, never decorative" (p. 49). Approaches and procedures for working therapeutically with art productions are similar to working with dreams in therapy.

Therapy is a place where the unconscious and conscious meet, where art and rational order are bridges, where the realms of dreaming and waking blend. People have commented that birth regressions may feel like a dream state (Khamsi, 1987). Feher (1980) notes the relationship between the realm of regression in birth therapies and realm of the unconscious in dream life:

As many have remarked, repressed impulses are released in sleep and problems enacted through the dream. So, too with natal therapy. It seems to energize, organize, and master unconscious material, while the individual is still awake enough to deal with it cognitively. During the natal therapy experience, the individual is, in some sense, asleep and awake simultaneously, where both the unconscious and the conscious are functional and collaborating the behaviour displayed. (p. 185)

Creating therapeutic art has been described as having dream-like qualities. In an interview about her art and process, English (1985), who wrote Adventures of a Caesarean Born, commented:

There are a couple of different kinds of art that I did. One was of like a dream where I'd draw the picture in my mind. I couldn't take the camera inside so I'd check inside and then copy it. The other type of drawing was to take a blank piece of paper and a pile of marking pens, and I'd usually be drawn to one colour, pick it up and then let my hand do something. I would not have any idea of what was coming.

The unconscious forces of art activity, therapy, birth regression; all as semi-dream states, meet and blend when art activity is employed in therapy for birth regression. One workshop participant described her natalistic drawing and writing experience as an altered state of consciousness like that of floating in a dream, "It was a very strong feeling of being in water and very much a dream like state with a feeling of being infused and suffused."

Hall (1967) found sixty percent of dreams contained content of prenatal and birth experiences. Van Husen (1988) describes some of the dream content which she eventually interpreted as unconscious prenatal material:

Years ago, during hypnoanalytical investigations of nightmares, panics, compulsions, etc., I often encountered detailed descriptions of underwater coral reefs, mobile walls moving in and out, of being stuck in dark chambers and similar descriptions usually connected with fear and often panic. I often wondered where these imprints came from.

Repeating the investigation at intervals several times would bring the same descriptions, usually with additional data added until the complete experience was related. It finally struck me that the only mobile, rhythmically contracting and enclosing walls I was familiar with as a physician were those of the womb. (p. 180)

Noble (1993) reports that:

Most dreams have a hidden date or in some way reveal the period of life into which the events of the dream fit. In the prenatal period, there may be clues from the ratio of body (especially head) size to the surrounding: the larger the space, the smaller the baby. (p. 76)

If these phenomena were applied to art productions, then one might look for details of the prenatal story in the content of the artworks. A small being in a large space could be speaking of early prenatal material. Certainly the proportion of the size of head to size of body as a landmark for prenatal age has been noted by Verny (1981) and van Husen (1988).

Noble (1993) summarizes references to unconscious conception imagery in dreams:

Silberer, in 1912, gave examples of sperm dreams and believed them to be the wish to go back into the father's body. Campbell related a ritual among African bushmen that symbolizes the sperm journey in all its detail, from the crowd experience to travelling up the mucus channels to gamete death and rebirth as a zygote. Stephen Seely, at University of Manchester Medical School, suggests that about one percent of published dreams can be recognized as representing some phase of gamete development. (p. 79)

It would seem that if sperm, egg and conception energy could find their way into the unconscious content of dreams, then a similar possibility could exist in the unconscious imagery contained in therapeutic works of art. If one is to give credence to the verbal reports of artists working with natalistic art and art therapy then this kind of expression of early gamete awareness is possible. When reviewing the actual images produced in art in therapy there are many which could quite accurately represent embryonic and pre-embryonic conditions. These images of cellular consciousness may be coincidental, or may be influenced by biology class texts or films; yet there is a possibility they could be the cry of early life experience looking for resolution through creative expression. Feher (1989) notes:

Included in this hypothesis is the belief that the non-verbal hemisphere has its own communication system and logic. The non-verbal hemisphere, on the other hand, communicates symbolically or metaphorically, for example through the patterns of posture and gestures. Its logic is that of dreams. And it follows than non-verbal communication, with its different language and different reality, may be distorted and misunderstood by the dominant verbal consciousness. (p. 114).

Feher (1980) suggests that behaviour which is being influenced by the nonverbal/preverbal mind "is perceived as irrational - though it is understandable when deciphered, just as dreams show logic when interpreted" (p. 114)

- PERMANENCE OF NATALISM

Artwork is a consistent statement and revealing story of the artist's process. It leaves a tangible record. It cannot like words in memory be forgotten and lost with time. Looking back over old work, the artist can recall feelings which occurred when the art was originally created. When poignant art is revisited, the feelings can be further worked through and deeper insight can be achieved. Deborah recalls, "While I was speaking in the sharing group about the art experience it brought back a little of the pressure and pressing feeling and I explored it a little bit." Rogers (1993) echoes, "Since the images we create are lasting, the visual arts are particularly useful on the inner journey. Over and over again, we can look at our work, reflect on it, and let it speak to us" (p. 70). McNiff (1981) emphasises, "The great strength of the visual arts in therapy can be attributed to the physical permanence of art objects" (p. 154).

The dynamic of increased permanence of unconscious feelings and images in physically concrete and lasting artworks, as opposed to memories of dream experiences is important for the therapist to recognize and consider. Psychological issues flourish and are internally worked with in the world of dreams. Significant and powerful unconscious material comes to the surface, or up to a preconscious level, during the dream. In the dream content, images and feelings which the conscious mind is not ready to fully know, and cope with, will be presented and can be mulled through.

When the dreamer wakes, certain parts of the dream are remembered and other elements are conveniently lost. The details that are remembered are likely issues which are ready to be further processed and made sense of. The content of the dream which the person remembers later and brings to therapy is likely that which is appropriate and valid material to explore therapeutically.

Therapeutic artwork is similar to dreams in that symbolic material comes to the surface, or into the preconscious mind. Yet, unlike with dreaming, when the art making process is finished the significant symbolic images and material are still just as vividly present, in the work on the paper, as when the artwork was unfolding. After an art piece is finished, all the psychological material symbolized in the colours, forms and images retain their presence on the page. Internally, the psychological forces which have surfaced from the unconscious and the inner mind while they were engaged in the creative art process may have receded back to the preconscious or unconscious mind. Although the psychological forces may no longer be present, their shadows, marks and footprints are there in the feelings and content of the artwork.

These inherent features of permanence in artwork make for the ever- present availability of significant sensitive emotional content which may be revisted as the psyche of the artist is ready to deal with it. In contrast, psychological material found in the symbols and images of the dream which the person is not ready to face, discuss in depth or have analyzed may conveniently be forgotten in the receding memory of the dream. The prominent marks of an art piece are not so easily forgotten. This phenomenon of permanence of art as opposed to dreaming, requires an added degree of responsibility on the part of the therapist. Respect and sensitivity is required from the clinician in terms of discussing and processing the psychological material in a person's work of art. There can be material in the artwork that needs to be left alone until the artist brings it up.

Unlike the dream which, in part or in total, may be difficult to remember in a week or three months, the artwork can be returned to and reviewed over time as the person comes further along in the therapeutic process. With the passage of time, the artist can look at the artwork and may see something which had not been noticed before and finally understands an image because she is ready to.

When looking over a series of pieces, insights can occur that are not possible when exploring a single painting or session. Additionally, in reviewing a series of drawing from a lengthy period of time, both the client and the therapist can concretely recognize progress and development which has taken place over the duration of therapy. Having the opportunity to view a series of art pieces created over a period of time can allow for a broader sense of connectedness and continuity to the internal process. The person reviewing paintings that have been done over a two to three month period sees the images that have been preconsciously coming out in the pictures and therefore gains greater insight.

Through the permanence of emotional material in therapeutic art psychological issues from earlier in a session, from a previous session or from between sessions are available for further therapeutic discussion and exploration. Indeed, a primary value of art in therapy is the ability to repeatedly return, through art production, to core material as its layers are worked through. In addition, that material which is initially brought forward and worked with in therapeutic art activities can be effectively further worked with in other activity or in the dynamics of the therapeutic process. Hall (1987) states:

The permanence and tangibility of the art products gives art therapy a dimension that other therapies don't have (especially the talking therapies) - not only can you refer back to your creation and look again later, and it won't have changed, but also you can express things by what you do afterwards with what you've created - that can be very expressive. You could destroy them, mutilate them, hide them prominently, display them, give them to people - lots of possibilities. (p. 181)

Birtchnell (1984) suggests art activity alone can not be fulling healing. The permanence of art allows the therapeutic elements of art to be taken into other dimensions of therapy. For example, Birtchnell (1984) states, "various forms of aesthetic pursuit, whilst being satisfying in themselves, do not bring emotions and conflicts near enough to the surface; or if they do, we do not hold on to them long enough to work through them" (p. 37). Birtchnell's solution to this dilemma is to encourage the artist: to further dialogue with the art; to take an aspect of the picture and make it larger; to become a component of the drawing and speak of one's experience; to create the space in which to have deeper emotional catharsis in relation to the issues in the art work; or to, in some form, further "psychologically dismantle" what is behind the art production for the creator.

- BODY EXPRESSION THROUGH NATALISM AND NATALISTIC ACTIVITY

Many of the experiences -- life threats, unmet needs -- which occur pre- and perinatally are physical. Traumas from the preverbal period are often experienced, interpreted and stored in the body as body consciousness (Buchheimer, 1987; Lake, 1981). Buchheimer

(1987) proposes that early pre- and perinatal, "memory storage exists throughout the body" (p. 53). Buchheimer allows that:

In making this proposal, I draw heavily on empirical observations in regressive-abreactive therapy, where focusing on any part of the body in different ways, mentally or physically, can trigger a birth primal, or where people in intense regressions can reproduce the sensory perceptions of infancy and early childhood. (p. 53)

Modalities of psychotherapy like Holotropic Breathwork (Grof, 1985), Mind/Body Therapy (Rossi & Cheek, 1988), Primal Regression (Noble, 1993) which focus on some form of body or somatic expression are generally the ones which elicit and process pre- and perinatal experience (Noble, 1993). Pre- and perinatal experience is perceived and laid down in the psyche before cognitive/language thought develop. Early feelings and memories may be stored in regions of the brain and body which are outside the direct perimeters of cognitive language process. Therefore reconnection with, and retrieval and processing of, significant early experience in the psyche occur frequently outside usual language memory.

Common modes of regression to the pre- and perinatal period have often incorporated nonverbal expression, such as spontaneous sounds and body movements. These approaches rely heavily on body awareness, and trusting and following the natural expressive urges of the body. It is suggested that these primitive forms of release are expressions of body memory (Buchheimer, 1987; Farrant, 1993). One artist in a natalistic art workshop experienced somatic sensations of birth which were familiar to her through deep feeling regressive therapy. As the feelings surfaced, Deborah struggled with her decision whether to drop into

the feelings, allowing an abreaction, or to interact with the feelings through art. Deborah states:

I eventually decided to try to stay with the pressure and feelings, without going into an abreaction, and see what would happen through moving the emerging feeling experiences into the art work I was doing.

There was a headache on the side of the head which had as a component of it an urge to push. There was also a feeling of pressure which had along with it an urge to push with my head. As I was pushing and drawing part of the sense of pressure was coming from inside, and part of the feeling of pressure was the reality of pushing up against the wall. I felt like I was pushing and like I was not getting anywhere.

The side of my head which was feeling the pressure and pushing was like the area of my body during birth which took in the stress and feelings of not getting anywhere. While drawing, my head was feeling the pressure of trying to move forward and being blocked by my mother. I sort of felt flattened there. It felt like I went through the birth canal with the side of my head. It was like my birth might have been a kind of slamming against the wall.

The head pain, which is all the red at the bottom of the womb in the drawing, felt like birth and like my head was slamming into the birth canal. As I negotiated my way through the birth canal there was pain. As well there was rage but it was not mine, it was my mother's rage. I felt like when my head slammed against the uterus, it was like I was slamming against her rage.

People can internally experience some of the body memory feelings and physical sensations of birth. Primal regression to early conditions may be called a revivification of birth or womb experiences -- they are experienced as a reliving of the original birth experience. These body memories may quite adeptly be expressed though art activity.

Body memories can bring forward a vague and obscure sense of conditions at birth, or conversely, quite vivid birth imagery may surface for the regressed person. After working on two natalistic drawings in a workshop setting, Brigette shared with the group her experience

of the first drawing:

While doing the drawing I was laying on my left side. The first thing I was aware of was a feeling in my neck of wanting to twist almost in a corkscrew motion. The need to turn is the green spiral at the top of the drawing. The feeling inside, at first, was of having lots of room and then of being pressed in on and the black arrows was just wanting more space. There was a great ambivalence about coming out of the womb. There was a sense of: in here it is quite cosy and safe but I was also feeling cramped and I wanted out, so the two were going on together. Then I was aware of my mom not wanting me to come out into the world. Like she had something huge invested in me staying in there and her staying pregnant. There was a feeling of her refusing, in a sense, to give birth to me. I was just aware of a lot of energy inside of the purple movements out. A feeling of wanting to move through water, almost like a swimming motion....

There was a sense of really early of having lots of room to begin with. Then being so enclosed, and even being aware of later on just how strong my will was to get out. The spiral on the drawing just feels like I'm going to get out of her.... I was very aware during the art process that I didn't want to stay in that in utero place...I wanted to reprogram my birth.

When the artist brings out body-felt experiences of birth, powerful emotions may be released, insights may be gained regarding life long behaviours or feelings, and the artist can re-envision a new course for her destiny. The shadows of the early experience, which are largely physical and occurred during a preverbal period, are addressed through somatic resources.

There is a connection between body experience and artistic expression. Sharpe (1950) suggests the artist "uses a knowledge that is diffused in his body, a body intelligence and bodily experience in dealing with emotional states" (p. 148). It would follow that art activity which engages the body as part of its process may have some facility for bringing to the surface "body knowledge" from preverbal pre- and perinatal experience. Preverbal/nonverbal experiences, which are felt so much in the body, are ushered forward through the expressions of artwork and other forms of non-verbal expression.

The experiences of the body can sometimes be represented in art images more readily than in words and language. People often sense in their bodies what they want to express with their creativity. In this context, art activity has the capacity to effectively express somatic sensation and feeling, or what some might call body memory. If art is able to express the body experience, then it can likely express the pre- and perinatal experiences which are stored in the body. Art coming from the body can be expressions of the non-verbal self.

While working with clay or other art materials, in addition to making a right brain/nonverbal hemisphere shift, the artist may tend to use less intellectualizing and more intuition or felt sense understanding by virtue of using the physical body to produce the art. McNiff (1981) makes the interesting observation, "The term 'visual art' is itself misleading in that the graphic and plastic arts are as tactile and kinaesthetic as they are visual.... art objects are extension of kinesis and inner movement" (p. 110). In viewing or creating a natalistic picture or manoeuvring a tactile or kinaesthetic action there can be thought and expression outside the context of words or language. As one artist drawing womb experiences said:

The natalism art was a totally new thing for me. I had never done anything like that where you don't really think. I found my left hand could draw what I didn't logically know. I would give the colours to my left hand and it would give the drawing. Sometimes the drawing would let out the feeling and I would move through another level by getting that feeling out with colour. I could move to the next feeling and just keep going through layer by layer. It was a great experience.

Through art activity, "sensory memories" can become more active components of consciousness simultaneously with the processing of psychological material by art activity (Rhyne, 1984). For example, the physicality of clay as a sculpting material makes people more aware of their kinaesthetic movement and tactile sensations. The artist becomes not only consciously and unconsciously aware of the shape and form of the clay, but also becomes more connected with awareness of the shape and form of her own body interacting with the clay. This increased presence with the physical self may draw the artist more into the body and assist the person in having greater body awareness or body consciousness. Painting and drawing also respond effectively to somatic urges and heightened body awareness.

One person came to a natalistic workshop with "a bit of a headache" and near the end of the evening she related that her head was "painfully throbbing as I was doing both of the drawings." She commented further, "The pain that is in my neck and forehead are in the drawing on the left. It is the red thing up at the top and the other red thing." By searching for greater specificity of the somatic sensation in the body and its expression in the drawing, the underlying somatic origin of the symptom can be focused in on. Rhyne (1984) states, "non-verbal activity is far more effective in bringing into awareness some memories that do not respond to words" (p. 82).

In exploring the headache the following dialogue occurred:

MI: Is the headache on the inside or on the outside?

Brigette: Oh it's more on the outside. It's right here [on the top side of the head] and it's right here at my neck [diagonally opposite to the other location].

MI: Can I touch those spots?

Brigette: Sure.

MI: So it's on the outside here? (Yeah) And then it's back here? (It's here) Right there. Ok and how much pressure? Would more or less pressure be congruent with the headache.

Brigette: More, way more.

MI: More? Is this right? Now as the pressure is applied does it feel like it has force or direction?

Brigette: Yeah.

As the external pressure became congruent with her inner experience there was a visible shift as Brigette seemed to let go of the pain. After doing art work about birth feelings the headache receded for the most part in response to applying the head pressure which seemed to simulate birth. The painful pressure of the birth canal was initially explored and processed through the natalistic art. Further witnessing, acknowledging and validation occurred through sharing in a group and through a short piece of birth-refacilitation body work. Cynthia notes:

In terms of logical, rational brain kind of language memory, it doesn't make sense to have memories of conception; but in an impressionistic way it does make sense to me and I am willing to accept the impression and work with that impression. It feels right because it registers more in the heart than it does in the head. It's more of an intuition. It has changed me to look at my conception, I connect it with other childhood feelings that I don't want to be here and I hate being here and it's taking too long and I'm impatient and frustrated. That all seems to be part of my personality, it's the way I am.

In the womb I wasn't wanted, I knew I wasn't wanted. I knew it was unstable out there and I knew I had an unstable mother.

It has been suggested that both early and later memory can be stored in the body. The exact physiological linkages between cellular memory, body memory and neural central nervous system memory and thinking are not known. What is clear is that there are methods and approaches for expressing body memory and non-verbal thought. Gendlin's (1978) work in Focusing and Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams (Gendlin, 1986) offers perceptive insights into the practical applications of felt sense forms of knowing, processing information and decision making.

As a form of body therapy, art activity has unique attributes to assist with identification, expression, resolution and repatterning of fundamental prenatal body sensations and somatic body memories. McNiff (1981):

All of the arts in therapy must repossess the body if they are to actualize their healing powers fully. The denial of the body by conventional psychotherapeutic practices and mental health institutions is but symptomatic of the lack of mind/body integration within the society at large and within the lives of thoses [sic] who deliver mental healths services. (pp. 110-111)

Natalism allows access to expression of early body trauma to permit resolution and healing.

- NATALISM AS OBJECTIFICATION

Objectification is a form of therapeutic projection in which an issue or emotion is imaged in a transitional object outside of oneself. (Winnicott, 1971 a and b). Through therapeutic objectification an externalization of inner psychological material, and a degree of psychological distance and safety are created. The safety of distancing permits painful internal material to be worked on without some of its overpowering qualities. Successful natalistic objectification occurs when psychologically, elements of the pre- or perinatal emotions or issues are no longer only inside the body or mind. Through working with objectified material "out there" -- in the artwork -- abreaction, letting go, creating boundaries, distancing and/or nurturing others can occur or be greatly assisted.

Much of pre- and perinatal material which is brought to psychotherapy has a significant component of body memory or somatic sensation which is reminiscent of birth and early experience but which is often difficult to approach through language. Feher (1980) states, "Preverbal trauma, and illogic in its basic form, are particularly related to bodily sensation, because that is the medium of expression most accessible to the infant. It is also the most problematic" (p. 125). The problem of expressing difficult to label or describe sensation is partially resolved by therapeutic modalities encouraging body movements and primitive sounds, but this kind of abreaction has its limitations. The objectification of art productions allows nonverbal body sensations a visual form of expression on a piece of paper; or a tactile, kinaesthetic and visual form of expression in clay sculpturing. Sarah found sculpting allowed her to externalize somatic birth and womb feelings of being entangled with her mother. Sarah experienced:

In my natalistic sculptures major feelings came out which were about being merged with her. Not so much in a blissful way, but in a sense of being used. Feelings of constantly being taken from, being eaten or being consumed by her came up. Like before birth she was feeding off of me.

It seems I connect with those feelings through using art because the art comes from a non-verbal place. I experience the birth and womb feelings more in my body. I think part of the satisfaction of the art work is in producing something that matches and conveys the internal feeling.

Inner experience can be directed outward into the natalistic artwork and held there for immediate or later reflection -- this is what I mean by objectification. As Case and Dalley (1992) submit, "The art work acts as a receiver, a womb for the artist's projections" (p. 125). There are numerous preverbal issues and feelings which can be quite overwhelming to approach directly and are more accessible through some form of transitional object. For Cynthia, the natalistic drawing became a womb from which she could view and gain control of the "black and ominous" feelings which merged with her during the prenatal period. Through the drawing she worked at identifying and separating from the blackness which had overwhelmed her for so long. Cynthia shares:

On the drawing I wrote "This is my place, leave me alone". Outside of that place is all the negativity. Inside the womb [in the drawing] it felt somewhat safe even though it felt very black and ominous around the outside.

The artwork serves as a mirror whereby the artist may finally accept his or her inner world. Objectification in natalistic art allows people to discover or further approach material they have been consciously or unconsciously avoiding. Through the tangible artistic product an emotion or issue the person is having difficulty with is presented to the person for reflection (Wadeson, 1980). Byers (1991) notes the difficulty of working with early and overwhelming preverbal material, questioning, "can the person 'bear to live' or 'live to bear' the reexperiencing of the original pain in the separation of child from its mother which occurred at the nonverbal stage of development?" (p. 26).

The creation of psychological distance can be particularly helpful in working with life threatening trauma, or other emotionally overwhelming or confusing birth material. Projected into the transitional object of the natalistic artwork, the artist views the powerful preverbal feelings in a vantage point outside herself. As Johanna experienced:

The release I experienced in drawing is: like the pain is a feeling that I can not feel in words; but I can put the feeling in a colour or a shape; and when I do that then the pain goes into the drawing and the pain is not in me any more.

A drawing also validates my experience because sometimes I do not want to know I had a painful experience, but doing a drawing lets me know I did. I don't know exactly how to say it, but when I can see something on paper that is something that is in me it kind of validates why I feel that way I do. It really releases a part of the experience and that part of the experience can leave me so that I do not have to carry it.

The sense of no longer having to carry the pain of old traumas is a significant element in psychological healing and recovery. Art activity has particular merit in objectifying difficult to conceptualize nonverbal anxiety and emotional pain. When the early wounds are identified and externalized in art there can be an accompanying sense of being released or letting go. In working with the longer processes of healing deep wounds, the images in the art, and the art work as container, allow the artist to hold onto issues and feeling as they are being worked through. The identification and release of trauma or the nurturing and repatterning can be facilitated through objectification with natalistic art. Susan was able to contain in her art deep losses as an infant; additionally, her art work assisted her in looking after her helpless infant self. Two days before a natalistic workshop, powerful early feelings surfaced for Susan, and as she explains:

I got into bed and I couldn't get out. It's like I could move my fingers and toes and turn over in bed, but I was not able to get out of bed in a way that a little baby can't. It took me about an hour and a half the day of the workshop to overcome it. In my mind I think it is ridiculous that I can not get up. I was hungry, it was time for lunch and I finally was able to make myself get up. The feeling was baby stuff and I did a drawing to express it. I felt I had to draw a baby, so I drew a baby. Then there was a crib, and then a baby was in the crib in the drawing. It just developed, I didn't know what it was going to be when I started. Then it was a baby with the bottle propped, and then a little baby and I had to feed itself [sic].

Saturday I ate cereal for breakfast, fruit and bread for lunch, and Cream of Wheat for supper.

I would take the baby drawing and hold it against me and talk to it. It felt like something important was going on. The baby felt a need to be looked after. That was the feeling I had when I was in bed, I was hungry, I wanted to get up and get a hot lunch, yet I needed to be looked after.

Susan spontaneously commented, "I had to feed itself," as though she was commenting about taking care of the baby in the drawing and the baby inside herself. London (1989) relates how the inside becoming externalized through art allows transformation:

Once we create imagery that honestly represents how life feels from the inside, there is a deep sense of personal empowerment and a new degree of private certainty as a result of having finally touched down to the original bedrock of our original self. (p. 22)

The object of the art can become a container to temporarily hold and allow reviewing of deep and powerful emotions. Through objectification in the art work, the original infant or prenatal self can be touched and embraced with new messages which give nurture and empowerment.

Art works and the fluidity of the art in progress are particularly apt in serving as objects supporting transformation. Byers (1991) suggests, "If the artwork, the silent partner, can be considered to incorporate some of the qualities that Winnicott (1974) refers to as a 'transitional object," it holds the power to allow the client to replay original separation and identity building" (p. 26).

Through art, a third relationship object or third party is introduced to the therapy experience and setting. From an objects relationship model (Winnicott, 1971 a and b), the therapist is seen as one object and the client as another object; the artwork and process become a third object. In this manner issues and feeling which might be difficult to approach, even though transference onto the therapist, can be projected into the art and then worked through. Byers (1991) considers art's function as a transference object:

The transferential elements between client and therapist may be substantially reduced or diffused through the use of the "silent partner" embodied in the art work.... projection is portrayed in the image in contrast to the therapist being the sole receiver of projections in the transference" (p. 25).

The object can be explored in many ways to increase personal understanding and insight. The object can be manipulated in its relationship to the external environment and the inner self. When an art production serves for objectification there can be a movement closer to, or further away from, difficult psychological content. Johanna suggests that the art process brought her both closer to and further away from deep psychological material:

While I was doing the conception and implantation drawing in the natalistic art workshop I had some questions about the validity of what I was doing. After I saw the picture it was ok and valid.

While I was doing the drawing there was some experience of my rational, logical mind being a bit detached from the experience of doing art and having the art take me to conception. In one way I detached to do the drawing and then in another way I reconnected in doing the drawing.

For me the experience of drawing and doing it was very real. There is a way I knew it was real. Having the experience on paper, in a way, proves that I was there and went through the experience. It was a beautiful experience which I could not have done with out becoming detached and being able to just draw it. That feels like another gift I got from doing the natalism work.

In some ways the experience was like getting to know more parts of me that I was not conscious of. In part the realness of experience made it valid. I found it quite amazing.

For Johanna the objectification of art allowed a change in proximity to psychological material. The objectification through art also allowed an experiential and visual validation of her prenatal experience. As well as assisting identification and exploring and expressing trauma in the psyche, the phenomenon of objectification can allow positive and nurturing attributes of the inner self to have an avenue through which to assist with healing. Through a natalistic creation, an artist could more clearly observe the healing process; Cynthia considers:

Through the purple complimenters in the drawing I brought a sense of loving presence back to heal the wounded prenate in the womb. For me purple is a healing colour and so is yellow. They are calm and healing.

In the drawing there is a lot of chaos to have to heal. It seems like there was some way in which that connection through the art was healing for me. Somehow the art work had a dramatic impression on a certain quality of me feeling good about myself, and feeling safe was changing.

In encountering or reviewing the objectified artwork, the artist can literally change the natalistic painting or sculpture and in effect be manipulating and changing the legacy of the early internal conflicts or wounds. In the simplest of examples: a black squiggly mark on the paper may represent anger which is flat and restricted from drugs at birth. The artist can add some red flaming out from the of dead anaesthetized anger, giving it a momentum of expression; or even turn the drawing over thereby saying no to the numbing; or in some other way move, manoeuvre or shift the drawing and the energy which is there on the paper, outside of the artist.

As the natalistic drawing progresses, the red and black can be surrounded with blue or green to contain or release the energy or feelings, or transform the red and black in some manner. In replacing the inner experience in an art piece to examine and transform it, it is likely that a corresponding transformation of elements of the inner world takes place. The transformations taking place on the paper are internalized and incorporated by the psyche. A participant in a natalistic workshop series allows:

Drawing One was womb surround and trauma; Drawing Two was a healing drawing done which overlaid on the trauma drawing. In doing the drawing I went through the actual birth. The blackness is on the inside of the womb and then the yellow impression was put on the outside. Over the series, the black started changing through using purple, black and red until eventually I internalized that healing womb self.

One natalistic workshop artist, Brigette, did a drawing of a large black mass with "a tiny patch of green" as "something inviting up there." Brigette shared:

The black tells me I am not really wanted. The green says I am wanted. I had to work very hard to find that little bit of green. That fits for me in that I work really hard to find a little bit of goodness for myself. After sharing the drawing in the group I felt a little bit amused and a lot less sad than I did earlier. Michael suggested that later in the week I do a great big drawing of just the green, because it was so little. Then to do a second big drawing of all green with a little spot of black, just reverse the order of things. I had an instant reaction when he said it that somehow doing that would make the black look less awful.

The principles of artistic objectification with early experience can ensue from interacting with one's own art or with the natalistic content in another's artwork. Verny (1994) notes:

Other ways of visually evoking memories of womb life are: showing clients slides or movies of prenatal development or asking clients to look at illustrations in books such as Lennart Nilsson's A Child is Born. Attending a birth can also be a pretty powerful trigger of one's own birth memories. (p. 183)

These images are not only triggers but also serve as containers for projections of the self. When [the] clients have insights or feelings projected on an art object they can spend an extended time reflecting on it. Consciously and unconsciously non verbal experience and somatic knowledge are being processed in the responses to [the] external early life imagery.

- EMOTIONAL RELEASE THROUGH NATALISM

Identification of psychological wounds and the release of pent up feelings are mainstays of psychotherapeutic healing, particularly with issues containing a high valence of emotional charge. Many early wounds carry these deep emotional valences which are in need of identification and cathartic release. As Keyes (1983) describes, "psychotherapy using the arts characteristically releases a significant amount of energy. The blocked negative feelings have been recovered and have to be experienced before reorganization can occur" (p. 108). Art activity allows identification of issues and old feelings, expression of buried feelings, and also the next stages of healing -- insight and transformation. Emerson (1989) reports:

There are two aspects to the healing process: accurate conceptualization of the child's psyche and its expressions, and catharsis of feelings which are associated with traumatic events. When traumatic events are brought into awareness and are catharted, they cease affecting the behaviour of the person.

(p. 196)

Expression through art activity facilitates effective emotional release. One artist talking about the natalistic process, plainly stated, "It is like I put my feelings on the paper and that is just like getting them out." When emotions are brought forward during art activity, they are indeed being expressed, and consequently can be released.

Creative activity may have unique attributes for assisting the release of emotion from the pre- and perinatal realm. The non verbal qualities of art activity greatly assist in the emotional release of preverbal emotions. Art, perinatal consciousness and emotion are all inhabitants of the domain of the right brain. Zdenek (1985) says, "Drawing, painting, and sculpting are natural talents of the right hemisphere" (p. 14); Feher (1980) adds, "introjected stimulus prior to eighteen months is non-verbal" and "locked into the non-verbal [right] hemisphere;" Blakeslee (1983) acknowledges there is "the tendency for the right brain to specialize in emotional matters" (p. 180). With these various factors being associated with right brain activity, it would seem reasonable that right brain artistic expression would uniquely facilitate release of emotions associated with early preverbal life events, and hence be one of the supporting rationales for the effectiveness of natalism.

The creation of art and the expression of feelings are inseparable companions. As Rogers (1993) affirms, "Feelings are a source for creative expression" (p. 11). Deborah shares:

Another thing that was interesting about the approach the natalistic art workshop took was directing some deeper emotions into expression through the art work rather than express and release through strong emotional abreaction. We where doing a lot of deep work from the core with feelings which I am used to expressing cathartically. In opening the workshop series you discussed time constraints related to doing deep cathartic sessions and suggested, "Rather than abreact your emotions, direct your feelings on to the paper through drawing." When my feelings did arise during the workshop exercises I was really more conscious about redirecting, transforming and focusing that energy into the art work.

Redirecting my emotions into the art work was not entirely an abreaction. Yet in a way, the drawings would depict the abreaction and there's no question that the drawings took care of the emotional energy and facilitated processing and healing it.

Emotion can be processed through the production of art activity itself during natalistic activity as well as through accompanying crying, dialogue or body movements (Birtchnell, 1984). McNiff (1981) recognizes, "the process of creating art as a direct expression and catharsis" (p. 155). Certainly any of the attributes of abreactive catharsis can accompany artistic expression.

The attributes of creative activity and emotional expression resonate with each other to actually enhance the release and resolution of early traumata. Birtchnell (1984) assures, "With the representation of these past scenes comes the emotion associated with them and with the expression of that emotion may come the release of some current inhibition." Nadeau (1984) emphasizes:

It is important to know and to feel sure about the fact that art deals with human emotion, as quite often the act of putting line or colour on paper can produce cathartic emotional responses for the individual producing the work. Their excitement, tears and frustrations are to be dealt with sensitively -- not in any way dismissed. For they are an integral part of the art process. (pp. 36-37)

When natalistic expression focuses on nonverbal and preverbal material, early life experiences are further resolved and understood; even previously quite unknown early material can be spontaneously identified and catharted. Nadeau (1984) considers, "The wonderful beauty of the arts, in all forms, is that human emotion is involved in a raw and uncensored manner. Feelings flowing are essential for artistic experience" (p. 35). In the same manner in which talking, primitive sounds and spontaneous body movements in therapy can facilitate therapeutic discharge of early emotional anxiety, natalistic expression can also be a means of spilling and letting go of a buried or pent up story. Through the expressive qualities of the natalistic art process, feelings and life patterns which are associated with birth and womb conditions become uncovered, and thereby released. Cynthia shares about the painful prenatal legacy which was eventually released through her art:

I used black because black represents anger. I would feel the black inside of me. The black was a colour of something menacing, that is why I used black outside. Putting it around the womb represented something menacing outside, something unsafe, even dangerous. I experienced my mother as unstable, unsafe and dangerous. I felt I was not going to get cared for and to me that meant death.

Feeling that my mother was unsafe and menacing left a belief pattern that it's going to be a struggle in this life. In part because of those womb feelings, in my life today, I can't trust, and I can't move and don't know where to go, I have no direction, I have no support, no foundation. I don't know what to do with myself. I'm lost, unsupported, no foundation, no security, that's how it feels. That's very basic. That's why I can't get ahead, I can't seem to feel secure.

The personal story released through natalistic activities can free the artist from life-long suffering and allow for the creation of new feelings, beliefs and behaviour. There are times in natalistic regression

when people seem to need the physical and vocalized release of emotion to take over. Cynthia states: "I was crying the whole time I was drawing. I thought the drawing spoke for itself."

In working with early material the artist can be allowed or encouraged into mild or even deep emotional abreaction during and/or after an art exercise. The natally regressed abreaction may be expressed as screaming and thrashing, or laying and pushing with only very faint sounds being emanated. As an early regression deepens, physical and vocal expressions may take the form of revivification or reliving of the original birth or prenatal events. While Cynthia was working with a natalistic drawing she began to quietly vocalize angry sounds under her breath. She was encouraged to let the sounds flow, as she relates:

When I was a little baby they did not know what I needed and did not know that I needed to be taken care of. That made me first really sad, then angry. The anger really wanted to talk through growling. Michael suggest I talk in the growling language while I drew. The growling turned into variation of repeated sounds/words, "Me si ma kassum. Ah sah mah, me si ma kassama."

When regressed to infancy, baby talk and other forms of infant emoting are valid forms of expression and can actually intensify the quality of revivification. Noble (1993) assures that, "the voice quality changes as a person begins to loosen the chains of repression. People make all kinds of sounds -- moans, cries, chants, grunts, screams, gibberish, baby talk" (p. 109). These primitive expressions help people to identify and let go of the early issues and feelings.

Some clients seeking the assistance of natalistic art modalities will come with previous experience in birth regression through hypnosis, breathwork or cathartic primal expression. All of these approaches can be enhanced with the use of natalistic art productions. Conversely, a client with skills acquired from any of these experiences will be able to use them to better facilitate emotional expression and psychological resolution with natalistic activity.

I have found that some clinicians practising in primal modalities can be quite dogmatic and simplistic in their understanding of the perimeters of the psyche and psychological healing. Therefore they may pass to their clients the belief that the only effective technique for recovery from trauma is primal regression and release. Art activity is a valid alternative means to release and transform deep emotional material. Rogers, (1993) agrees, noting:

One woman stated: "For me, the hitting and pounding didn't move the rage through to something else -- it didn't transform it. But when I used paint again and again, I found the rage being transformed into something meaningful. The pictures took on new form. I gained insight into my rage while releasing it through imagery." (pp. 169-170)

Experienced primalers may be quite surprised at the effectiveness and helpfulness of art activity as a form of emotional release and repatterning. Johanna shares her experience of discovering the power of art activity to release emotion:

I found that somehow doing the artwork was effective for me in the release of feelings, which had been previously very unfamiliar for me. Once I was working with one of the drawings I was in kind of an anxious state, I didn't really know what I was feeling, but I was really upset. I really wanted to have a primal which I know how to do. I couldn't so I just gave colour and shape to the feeling, and that helped the feeling to be released. That was the first time I had found any other way apart from yelling and screaming or crying and pounding to work through an intense feeling.

Most primal and deep feeling approaches place a high emphasis on the clients' listening to their bodies and following their natural inner processes. My experience has been that individuals with experience in deep feeling expressive therapies quickly pick up and effectively internalize the natalistic healing process. They tend to use the natalistic techniques not only in individual therapy and workshop settings, but use them at home for releasing and repatterning a variety of feelings and issues as they arise. In discussing a drawing, another natalistic workshop participant commented:

I am almost 100% sure all of the energy and expression is pre-birth. It was stuff that has bothered me for years, but I could never connect with it in the way I was with the art. The only way I had ever been able to handle it was to keep primalling and primalling and primalling. That would get it out at the time, but it was endless, it never seemed to go away and be completed. There was something important about the primal regressing and abreacting it; though, through that form of expression alone there was some transition that did not occur. There was another form of transition which was beginning to occur through doing art with the energy and feelings. It was just so helpful that I created an area in my home to do art and now I have a place that I can go to draw and effectively deal with some of the overwhelming feelings.

Emotional release can occur in the actual creating of the natalistic work, or in conjunction with crying or other abreactive expression during the art making. Additionally, the content of a natalistic production can be returned to later and focused on for further emotional release and resolution. Deborah describes her experience of working with the painful feelings of a womb drawing:

Over the process of being with the internal experience I felt a shift starting. As I worked with the memory of the picture and the feelings of pain, the pain began to transform. The pain became redirected into anger. A lot of anger started to come out, which actually felt like a better movement than the static pain. The rage was fitting with issues I was working on in my personal therapy.

I would imagine the big part of me taking care of and comforting the baby part; and then I would have anger towards a mother who would be so hateful, that a mother like that would choose to even get pregnant. All along part of me was comforting the baby inside around the rage. Caretaking the fetus in the womb led me in ways which were restructuring.

From beginning to end the process of focusing in on the image and feelings of the drawing took twenty to thirty minutes. It began with not wanting to see the trauma picture; then recognizing the flight response; and transforming that fear and resistance into anger.

After staying with and addressing the painful feelings associated with the womb drawing I felt like I was able to look at and talk about it. It felt like there was another layer of healing which took place because I was eventually able to look at the picture of the crisis.

I felt good about how the process unfolded. It felt good that the imaging ability that I have is really very powerful for me. It was important to me that I was able to work with the experience internally and have the process be effective. As well it was important to me in this experience that I did not have to externalize the issues and emotions to work towards a resolution. Though at times I think externalising really helps.

- ASSISTING THERAPEUTIC PACING WITH NATALISM

In part, the raw substance of the unconscious in natalistic work is found within the specific visual images, colours and forms. These primal forces do not have to be conscious material to find a resting place in natalistic works of art. The possibility for symbolism and hidden meanings in art allows the pre- and perinatal unconscious to be represented, and yet to become known to the creator only as she or he is ready for discovery and integration. The artist places conscious and unconscious material in an artwork and generally the artist recognizes what has been put into the artwork when they are ready to move into that area.

Respecting the natural unfolding of the psyche, "natalistic art in therapy" like most art in therapy approaches is non-assaultive and non-confrontational in working psychotherapeutic-ally. There is a wisdom to the inner consciousness and the mind of the body which brings forward material at a pace and in a progression which each person can manage and integrate.

For this kind of spontaneous and natural unfolding to occur with natalistic activity it is important for clients to be in charge of the pacing and direction of their therapeutic healing. Allowing artists to lead the way allows them to reach deep into core issues without powerful primal forces taking on destructive or debilitating qualities. Khamsi (1987) recognizes:

Birth feelings can help or harm. Consequently, psychotherapists should be particularly sensitive with alleged birth material. Clients should neither be pushed nor invalidated with respect to birth material. Clients need to feel safe in order to relinquish control and complete the experience; birth feelings seem to emerge and be integrated only under such conditions. It is imperative that such clients be allowed to move at their own pace, and to verbalize their experiences in their own ways. (p. 57)

The burden of working through and resolving difficult early trauma can often be managed with the pacing of natalistic art activity. As Johanna stated:

The workshop experiences affected my ongoing therapy by making me brave, to continue to hammer away at painful memories. I think it assisted me to go deeper in myself and my memories. It allowed me to fall deeper into myself.

It was kind of hard in the beginning, I almost could not do my therapy when I was doing the workshop. The ways of working were different. But eventually in my individual therapy I was constantly telling my therapist to give me the crayons and paper. The drawing technique from the workshop helped because before in my therapy I did not used to do that. The technique of drawing I was able to bring to therapy helped me to get into the pain, release the pain. I was able to actually access pain that I so afraid of.

The art process itself assists with opening up feelings and managing them as they are released; in effect, the art process becomes an intrinsic component of the therapeutic support system. Particularly in working with volatile preverbal material, the nonverbal qualities of art add an intimate and accepting nonverbal guide to move through the pre- and perinatal realm.

In part the psychological wounds of early preverbal experience are identified and mastered through having them surface and resurface in some of the ongoing events or conditions in a person's life. Janus (1991) states:

Early memories seem to be stored as complete scenes or episodes in the lower structures of the brain. They are thus unlike later memories which are stored in the cerebrum and which can be retrieved with the use of language. Awareness of early memories is achieved through a repeated acting-out of their content. (p. 204)

Natalistic creations provide a safe container for these early non-cognitive feelings and experience to recreated through.

The phenomenon of "art as container" can be intensified through the technique of womb surround circles which create the vessel of womb. As one artist commented, "There was something about the enclosed spaces being safely enclosed." Another natalistic workshop participant explained:

The technique of lying on the paper and having a line drawn around us to symbolize the containment of a womb was a very powerful experience. It helped to send me inside and center me in a cellular experience. Having the line around me made me feel more like I was enveloped in a womb. It gave me a sense of safety and containment. It was notable that such a simple act should have such a profound effect.

From the place of safety created by various containers of art, deeper psychological material

can be explored. As McNiff (1981) elaborates:

Through the arts the person experiences catharsis while being supported by the structure of the particular modality. The discipline and concentration necessary to produce art makes the venting emotions all the more satisfying because the focus of expression is sharpened and the entire process is controlled by the person. this offers an important alternative to feelings of being overwhelmed by the negative dimensions of our emotions. (p. 46)

Traumatic pre- and perinatal content in the psyche is often associated with overwhelming and transmarginal emotions (Lake, 1981; Findeisen, 1993). When this layer of material arises in the healing process the person is confronted with quite deep feelings. Verny (1981) states, "In intense psychotherapy an individual is forced to work through a minefield of emotionally charged memories, and in the course of that hazardous journey, he or she may unwittingly...set off one of those mines" (p. 189). For some individuals the intense feelings of birth trauma and other life threatening experiences can be too much to face and resolve. Birth feelings when not properly managed can actually make them retraumatizing, Khamsi (1987) writes:

When harmful, birth feelings were an exhausting and debilitating ordeal. "I really thought I was nuts," stated Barbara, "I thought I was never going to get better, ever. I mean, I wouldn't want anybody to go through what I went through. [Birth feelings] were harmful in a sense that there wasn't enough structure in my life, I was nothing but a mass of feelings and that's all I did. (p. 50)

For some the journey into the transmarginal dimensions of the perinatal realm can be an excruciating though bearable challenge. Khamsi (1987) continues that for some people immersed in working through the overwhelming conditions of birth, "Optimism and spirituality sometimes seemed temporarily lost, and sessions sometimes left subjects feelings hopeless, sore, tired, and/or vulnerable" (p. 51). This is not a positive portrayal of a process which is supposed to be making people feel better.

When moving into birth material a flood gate can be opened to a reservoir of preverbal pain. After decades of being buried, denied and not dealt with, the powerful feelings call for release and resolution. Sometimes these newly liberated primal feelings are not easily buried between sessions. Khamsi (1987) reports that in therapy when birth memories began to release:

Physical pain was often present, typically in the head or chest. The body would sometimes vibrate or contract against one's will, in everyday life as well as during sessions. Some felt "pulled back" into birth feelings and had to "get into them" almost constantly to relieve bodily discomfort, frustration, and tension. Sometimes conscious and concerted efforts were made to stop such feelings from emerging. (p. 51)

The person confronted with overwhelming primal forces needs an anchor to reality. This can be provided by art and the therapist. There needs to be containment and context in which to manage and make sense of the early preverbal feelings and issues. Noble (1993) warns:

When the boxed-up feelings, piled high like building blocks, start to tumble down, the beginnings of a new structure need to be in place as a safety net. Clients need supportive relationships wherein they can experience both mutual connections while maintaining healthy boundaries. (p. 91)

In birth trauma work with infants, Emerson (1987a) has observed that if the catharsis was too intense for the infant, emotional implosion occurred. According to Emerson (1987a) the pre- or perinatal trauma was turned back on the infant and "catharsis would continue unabated" (p. 69). When primal trauma is released without ongoing context and containment, "Some immediate changes were evident," but frequently, long-term resolution of the birth schema was not as positive when overwhelming and unmanageable abreaction seemed to internally reverberate, and may have even been a revictimization. Emerson (1987a) suggests, "This observation supports the notion that strong catharsis alone does little to eliminate the existence of primal pain" (p. 65).

Primal pain was initially repressed or split off because it was overwhelming to the psyche. In certain conditions, returning to that primal pain can be to no avail. It may possibly even retraumatize the individual. When the infant has a supportive catharsis where there is a "high degree of contact and presence" with the infant, then healing is "most optimally foster[ed]." The process of promoting a "healthy defensiveness and the containment of primal feeling...is called implosive containment" (p. 65). Emerson (1987a) suggests that, through implosive containment, "the more defensive the infant (while still exhibiting some defencelessness), and the more contained the catharses while still qualifying as catharses), the more likely the process will be healing for the infant" (p. 65). In other words, abreaction is desired, but there is a necessity to not overwhelm the psyche with too much of something it has previously considered traumatic. Emerson (1987a) considers that, "This conclusion challenges a basic tenet of primal therapy with adults, i.e., that the more intense and deeper (below layers of defense) the level of catharsis, the greater the healing potential (Janov, 1973). The obverse is true with infants" (p. 65).

Some degree of [a] balance between defense and defencelessness during catharsis with adults may also be a component of healthy abreaction. Emerson and I have discussed the possible application of his concepts of infant "implosive containment" to therapeutic resolution with the abreacting adult. It seems that, at some point, abreaction of overwhelming early trauma can be a form of therapeutic revictimization. It is in exactly this role of "implosive containment" that natalistic art activity offers particular advantages. It facilitates healing regression with pre- and perinatal material.

The artist's relationship with the art piece can be used to manage the processing of early memory by varying the size of the drawing, the images, or the spatial relationships in the picture; intensity of feeling can be increased or reduced; surfacing material can be clarified or faded out; meaning or context may be changed; emotion can be contained or released and [other] therapeutic outcomes may ensue. Any of these aspects of the artistic healing process can proceed consciously or unconsciously on the part of the artist.

When natalistic drawing has been the means of connecting with and bringing out deep emotions, then the cessation of art activity will help to close the gateway to those early memories. At times when a person is working with natalistic art, and the intense emotions are not subsiding near the end of the session, then the person can be encouraged to fold, roll up or in some way put away the drawing as a means of assisting closure. Cynthia explains how she managed closure and containment:

The drawing was too painful to even look at. At the time I did not want to do any more processing on the material. I felt a lot of sadness. I wanted to leave the drawing in the art room as a safe place. By leaving and keeping the drawing there I did not have to go home with the memory and the emotions of the drawing and the experience.

In addition, a client can make a nurturing or protective drawing which can be used to cover or contain a drawing which is filled with traumatic material. This barrier or healing drawing can be left in the therapy studio as a further assurance of containment and a safe place. Natalistic drawings can be taken home and used for separation and containment when overwhelming early feelings surface outside the therapy setting. Between sessions the protective drawing can be used as an image to contain, absorb or transform anxiety as it arises. Susan states:

Over the week I made a copy of the drawing from the previous session. The top drawing was "the womb as it was" and the bottom drawing was "the womb as I would like it to be." The good womb had trees in it, and birds and music. It was really kind of silly, who has trees in a womb. But the drawing did give me nurture.

Art work can serve to transform or re-image overwhelming psychological forces while they are actually being faced and worked with. In this manner the powerful emotions, in part, are paced as the artist approaches an emotion in transition -- there is the sense something powerful can change and that the effort to face the issue and its pain is worth it. Cynthia shares:

That feeling of not having a boundary or a body is something like the explosion in the drawing. The black explosion was actually done in blue. The blue in the drawing represents the same thing that the black explosion represented in two drawings back. The black explosion is an uncomfortable feeling. And by changing it to blue I'm making it more spiritual. I give way and allow myself to float in this expansiveness. There's a sense of hope and caring that goes with it. It's a different thing. It's similar to dissociation but it's not the same. There's a way in which I am trying to transform the explosion and make it more palatable.

In becoming more "palatable" the early wounds are less painful and are more therapeutically approachable. The artist can continue to process feelings and issues which may otherwise have been unbearable and [otherwise] avoided. The changing of energy or form is not a denial of inner forces, but is a transformation of the material which assists with a release and reinterpretation of the initial wound and all the life interpretations which were layered on it.

The therapeutic pacing which natalistic art and activity provides is as idiosyncratic as each individual. I continue to be surprised at the unique ways in which people employ their therapeutic art. It is important for the therapist to respect and encourage the natural pacing and therapeutic unfolding occurring through each client's art. Often part of the therapeutic process is the client becoming more in touch with his or her inner wisdom and personal truths and having these acknowledged by another individual.

- SPATIAL MATRIX IN NATALISM AND NATALISTIC ACTIVITY

Traumatic childhood and prenatal experiences often defy logic or a rational order for how life and events should be. In addition, human emotions, particularly those of a traumatic nature, simultaneously exist in the present, past and future of the mind. Painful events are initially interpreted as "what will always be," and life stresses are viewed through a lens covered with an opaque picture of old feelings. As Noble (1993) points out, "The human species is unique among animals in that humans can look back and forward: back to the pre - and perinatal phase and forward to its consequences" (p. 250). Creating artwork can take the artist beyond the linear restrictions of verbal communication (Wood 1984). In the artwork itself, thought can be laid down outside the usual confines of time, relationship in space, and rational logic of order.

Miller, (1984) says that, in creative expression, "Visual images are capable of working on many levels of expressing seemingly contradictory ideas and feelings simultaneously" (p. 132). Art work allowed Cynthia to work with the contradiction of a womb where she felt both love and hate. In looking at her drawing Cynthia observed:

It is interesting that there was black and red inside the womb, and the yellow on the outside. Later on that changed, the yellow went inside and the black and red went outside. It is expressing two different dualities. I was very confused in the womb. I didn't know which way it was -- love or hate. In my drawing again there is two opposing, the love and the hate. There is always those two opposing dualities in my experience. My mother was wanting me and not wanting me.

For me there are two kinds of wombs - a toxic womb and then a loving womb.

Often the complex or illogical patterns of family dynamics or the context and attributes of a particular emotion will fall into place or be more observable in therapeutic artwork than within the parameters of ordered language. Schaverien (1992) asserts, "This is evident when the image becomes embodied. The embodied image is multi-dimensional, multi-faceted, and simultaneously public and private. Such a picture exhibits and connects with feeling on several levels simultaneously" (p. 102).

A single art work can approach and process the paradoxes of human relationships and events. Sarah found combined in one sculpture feelings and perceptions of herself and her mother with whom she was in conflict. The sculpture related her childhood womb events to her present situation:

The experience of hollowing out the space within her arms was about trying to carve out a space that was solely for me. Again there is the duplicity that on one hand the space represents the hollow in her, and the hollow in me; and then on another hand the space represents a place that I am looking for and a place that I want to be in. In a sense it is like I want a womb for a nurturing space, that is my need; and yet the womb is the empty devouring cavern which I do not need. I think that part of the power of art is a piece of art can represent a wide range of experiences simultaneously.

Art can capture a range of experience in what seems like the paradox of my feelings in the ongoing push/pull relationship with my Mom. On one level I am still longing and wanting her to be that ideal mother. At the same time I know that she can not do that, and I want to push her away. She could never do that for me now as a thirty three year old woman, it is to late. I am beyond the stage of the womb and it is time that I separate from her. All those diverse and seemingly contradictory feeling and experiences can simultaneously be projected into and expressed in one piece of sculpture.

Processing psychological material through creative expression allows access to what Blakeslee (1983) identifies as, "the right brain's superiority at recognizing fragmented or incomplete information" (p. 27). Williams (1983) explains:

The right hemisphere appears to specialize in simultaneous processing or processing in parallel. It does not move from one feature to another but instead seeks patterns and gestalts. It integrates component parts and organizes them into a whole. It is interested in relationships. (p. 26)

Through the window of her artwork Johanna reflects on her experience of traumas; interwoven with the complexity of the human experience:

It is really hard to have the birth trauma drawing as part of me, it is an awful feeling. To look at the drawing feels like, "Here it comes, here comes the bad stuff." That is kind of how it was. I still do not like to remember it. It's a terrible feeling. The writing in the upper left hand corner is, "I am too big for my home -- I feel tricked. I decided to stay here, not ever leave. You said I could. But I cannot. It is too tight -- too small. I am outgrowing my space, I am so uncomfortable. I can't move in any direction without hitting walls, blocks. I cannot get comfortable. It is painful."

I would never want to really remember this. I have remembered it, but I hate it. I can not stay with the feelings associated with my birth for very long. The writing on the drawing continues, "I struggle finally to get out -- the only choice left -- I cannot stay. I have to be forced out. You won't let me out. In fact you make it harder. You press down on me like a vice. I cannot get out. Why are you making this so hard for me. The pressure builds - so much pain."

Lower Down on the other side is written, "Full of doubt. Full of fear. Death, unwanted, confinement." To me birth is so uncomfortable, it feels like a torture. The feeling of confinement and torture from the experience of birth left me with the messages during my life that, "confinement and torture were normal," and "that is what I expect to happen."

I have a feeling that I got it too. It still scares me to think that unfortunately life reinforced those initial feelings. Birth and life, my birth and my life. I guess it was because of that woman that was just an imprint -- it told me right there, "that is the way it's going to be for you, for me."

Because of the torture and confinement of birth there were ways that I accepted and did not turn away from, or did not protest, torturous experiences later in childhood. Their seeming normal allowed them to reoccur and to be habituated. When abuse did occur it left me with the feeling of, "this is what I should expect and one more time I just have to suffer."

If birth had been different I think if I had encountered confinement and torture as a child I would have not reacted by accepting it. I would have told somebody. I would have done something about it. I imagine I would not have blindly walked into more and more situations of terrible behaviour being done to me.

Each time I left, but I still knew, "Oh, ok, I've got to go through this. It will end. I will get through it." Somehow experiences in birth and in utero taught me the process of leaving my body, and dissociating. In some ways I am thankful I learned that ability to dissociate.

In Johanna's drawing of feelings surrounding the birth experience, the prenate has a form reminiscent of an early fetus (five to eight weeks). The early developmental stage is presented in the shape of the head and legs. Hands and feet appear to be stumps or non-discreet. The head is also tortioned forward, with the chin against the chest, as is common to the early fetus.

These may only be coincidences, but they may be indications of a relationship between birth trauma and some other early prenatal experiences. Certainly Johanna has spoken about a relationship between the two time periods; that the forms and style of her drawing represent two time periods lends further credence to her suppositions. It is interesting to note that, though the eye and tilt of the head in the drawing are characteristic of early fetuses, the size proportion of the head to body is typical for an infant or even young child. This would make sense if Johanna connected through her drawing with a relationship between her birth and childhood confinement and torture.

The length of the arms and legs as well as the sharp angle of the buttocks are not fetal proportions. The manner in which the arms are reaching for the head are more like a child-like than an infantile. The sense of floating seems fetal and the sense of confinement anticipates birth. A black mass wrapping the fetal head and part of the buttocks suggests the ominous pressure of birth.

In Johanna's drawing the prenate, the womb and the area outside the womb are all black. It is interesting that a bright and lively blue was chosen for both the womb surround and the outline of the prenate as well as a filling colour inside the prenate. The choice of these colours and the various depth of their shade are concerns which could be explored with the artist.

This artist has used a spiral in other drawings in this series and it is found in this drawing as well. The continuity of images, colours and form represented in a number of drawings created over a period of time can be used for exploring patterns, finding integration and relatedness of events, or to serve as a landmark to generate conversation and encourage the artist in self exploration.

Deborah found that the spatial matrix of art allowed her the repatterning experience of looking up out of the crib into the eyes of parents who were welcoming. As Deborah explains:

The drawing is from the visual perspective of what I would have wanted to have seen while I was laying in a cradle. In the group sharing after the drawing exercise I was able to lay on the carpet and have a couple of people hold the drawing over me. It felt great. Some of the other people laid down looking up at the drawing while others held my drawing over them. It was validating to have others see the drawing from the perspective of the baby.

The images in the art work allowed Deborah to internally manifest her positive feelings of bonding. By involving others in assisting her in manipulating the work of art, the bonding and nurturing experience took on social dimensions.

Part of the spatial matrix of art activity is its ability to go beyond the limitations of a singular time and location. Sarah noticed in one of her drawings:

The image of the one fetal head actually has three different sizes. There is the inside line and fetal body, the middle shadow in the fetal body, and the outside line in the fetal body. When I look at it I see it as representing different stages in it's development.

Van Husen (1988) makes note of the variation in body proportion which can be experienced during regression or while closely connected to early material. These spatial distortions can appear in works of art or be experienced somatically. Van Husen (1988) describes:

One day, while getting a detailed description of how the fearful person felt all curled up in a soft, dark corner trying to feel safe, I asked if she was aware of her body proportions. With that question being answered in the affirmative, I asked what was the size of the head in relation to the shoulders. When the answer was that the head was much bigger than the shoulders it dawned on me that I must be listening to a prenatal recall.

I then questioned how many months the person had been in that residence. I was told three months. Later checking my embryology text, which, I must admit, I was no longer too familiar with, I discovered the head-shoulder was accurate for the length of pregnancy; this was a fact I was not familiar with any longer when I elicited the response from the patient.

Since then, I have used these body proportions as given by the patient as a guideline to the period of life the recall seemed to cover. (p. 180)

Consciously and unconsciously art images can facilitate the spatial matrix of time in which most trauma exists. When acting out of the legacy of old pains, the past is present, and the present is past. These illogical positions are manifest in the fluidity of art imagery.

It is likely that newborns and prenates experience and interpret stimuli [far] more multimodally than children or adults. Multimodal activities performed by adults may assist in stimulating a fetal state of consciousness in the adult. When I initially developed natalistic techniques to be multisensory, ie. incorporating sound, drawing, movement, writing (Rico, 1983), relaxation and visualization (Gawain, 1978), among others, I did not intend the multisensory approach of natalistic art in therapy exercises to be recreating a state of consciousness specifically infant or prenatal in origin. What I was hoping to do, was in the context of producing creative art, to simulate many of the stimuli which were present at birth or in the womb. Certainly all the stimuli which are reminiscent of birth and the womb do trigger, to various degrees, material from those times. In addition to environmental triggers there may be process triggers as well.

Some of the art activity process triggers would elicit forms of experience common to or associated with the newborn or prenate. Creative activity through literally creating oneself, is the primary enterprise of the embryo and early fetus. Another process activity would be the state of being which comes about as a result of being in darkness, particularly while curled in a ball, in some form of enclosing surround. The darkness and the tight enclosure could be external environmental triggers; but the closing off of visual stimuli and processing and going inside of oneself with a mindful awareness creates a shift in ongoing process and consciousness. Each time an external womb recreating stimulus is added, there are further environmental and process triggers which recreate for the psyche a sense of the womb and womb consciousness. In addition, each time a stimulus is taken in and processed in conjunction with other ongoing experience there can be a significant change in process. The accumulation of a variety of products of simultaneous processes facilitates multimodal processing. In the mediated actions of a variety of simultaneous processes different states of mind are elicited. Multimodal processing can involve the simultaneous activity of various areas of the brain; for instance left hemisphere and right hemisphere, or frontal cortex and hind or mid-brain. In addition multimodal processing may involve the unifying of cellular or body memory/thinking with cortical memory/thinking. In this manner various, somewhat separate and diverse forms of awareness, blend into a greater form of consciousness.

- NATALISTIC ACTIVITY AS ALTERED STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The original birth and prenatal experiences are stored and reverberate in various levels or modes of non-cognitive consciousness. In part this early traumatic material is stored in nonverbal parts of the brain as images, sensations and feelings. There is some suggestion that the pre- and perinatal material which is mediated through cortical function is largely stored in the right brain (Lake, 1981); and in the lower brain-stem, and is mediated by the hypothalamus (Holden, 1975). Williams (1983) suggests, "While both hemispheres process sensory stimuli, it seems likely that stimuli that are nonverbal are processed primarily in the right hemisphere" (p. 35). Preverbal/nonverbal material would likely be activated through right hemisphere activity. Art and creative activity initiates a shift of consciousness into the right brain. Natalistic activity therefore brings the artist closer to the realm of pre- and perinatal consciousness partially through right brain processes.

Early preverbal memory is also a likely inhabitant of the mid-brain and lower brain. According to Chamberlain (1987), part of the prenatal experience has been "mediated by lower levels of the brain" (p. 86). This is echoed by Holden and Janov (1975) who suggest, "there are intermediate or buffer zones (such as the limbic cortex) between the levels of consciousness [within the brain] which control and filter the amount of access between them" (p. 99). Rossi and Cheek (1988) state that there are "emotional-memory-behavioral patterns associated with the limbic system" (p. 412); and Livingston (1978) considers that this brain structure may be partially responsible for storing "any biologically meaningful experiences" (p. 19).

Art may have particular advantages for both inducing or accessing states of consciousness and other dissociative states. McNiff (1981) has noted the capacity for art activity to create "hypnotic trance states," and induced trance is a direct route into dissociative consciousness. Combining focusing, relaxation, guided imagery, regressive induction techniques and selected types and pieces of music in conjunction with the art techniques in natalistic art in therapy promotes shifts in consciousness. These altered states of consciousness are important for accessing early material and promoting healing to preverbal traumata. Sarah related:

When I was doing the drawing and writing in the workshop I was quite often definitely in an altered state of consciousness from the natalism exercises of the visualizations and relaxations, the countdowns and the music. The most pervasive feeling in that altered state of consciousness was one of floating.

McNiff (1981) suggests, "Hypnotic trance states are achieved in the expressive therapies through the mesmerization of art experiences and activities that restrict the perceptual field through sensory focusing and meditation" (p. 13). Wadeson (1980) suggests that the visual realm can return one to the pre-language development blocks of the psyche; artistic expression also allows or even encourages shifts in levels of consciousness. Brigette found that natalistic activity created an internal state which was familiar to her during other creative activities.

There was an experience of the drawing as an internal place internally and it was effort to come out of that to make language. I was in some state where using language and communicating with someone else was another state. It was effort to change from the one state to the other. The strongest thing that helped facilitate that movement from one state to another was having been there once and having had a positive experience of doing it.... Some of my best writing comes from a similar kind of half-awake half-asleep state when I first wake up. Trust from having been there previously was probably the deepest thing for allowing me to go into a deep place, the counting and music helped as well. I was willing to go there and I was not resistant to anything. There was a trust level that was important.

For most people art activity is not attached to the well defended cognitive structures of language and left brain rational thought. According to Blakeslee (1983), there is "the tendency for the right brain to specialize in non-verbal thinking and the left to specialize in verbal thinking" (p. 180). Within the brain itself, creating artwork and doing creative activities shifts an artist from left brain thinking to right brain thinking (Edwards, 1986). This shift to right brain thinking helps to move the artist out of the rational mode into the realm of feelings. Blakeslee (1983) asserts "the right brain is the specialist in emotional matters" (Blakeslee, 1983, p. 179). In addition to being associated with the world of feeling, time spent in the right brain modality can be quite non-verbal.

The creative right brain is noted for its ability to process thought outside the dimensions of rational language. Blakeslee (1983) says, "Because of the right brain's inability to express itself, it has been unfairly called `the unconscious mind'. A better choice of words might be 'the nonverbal mind'" (p. 27). If birth and womb consciousness are, in part, associated with the right brain, then the shift to the right brain while creating art may have significance for eliciting preverbal experience.

There may be other shifts in consciousness related to more primitive thought processes or earlier forms of consciousness which also occur in response to the art process. The shifts in consciousness -- from left to right brain; and from higher frontal brain to lower mid- brain; and even from cerebral consciousness to some form of body mind) or what Janov (1975) suggests is "consciousness at the individual cellular level" p. 120) may be part of what is experienced as altered states of consciousness which occur while producing art in general and natalism in particular.

For all the speculation regarding exactly the nature of exactly what is occurring during the creative process, it must be kept in mind, as Nadeau (1984) notes, "creativity is still a mysterious element of the human brain. Over centuries there have been attempts to understand, and to clarify the creative process, and still scholars admit that we know little about what creativity is" (p. 37). While acknowledging our limitation for understanding creativity, Nadeau (1984) also stipulates it is clearly known that "creative activity provides opportunities for self-discovery and personal development" (p. 37). Though it is not precisely known what happens in the psyche with art activity or with regression to birth feeling, it is clear that both are associated with non-ordinary states of consciousness.

At some point, the artist and the person in birth regression must let go and move into the deeper, preverbal levels of consciousness and processing. While in those non-ordinary states of consciousness the regressed individual retains a connection with the external self, but there are also additional conditions of consciousness which are experienced. During therapeutic episodes of giving over the focus of control to other conditions of consciousness, the observing self is present to remember the unfolding experience. Khamsi (1987) notes:

Birth feelings seemed to constitute a unique type of awareness. Common were reports of a qualitative shift away from ordinary consciousness; sometimes this felt like entering a different dimension or a deeper realm of experience. Common was the sense of the body "taking over," or of "letting go" or "surrendering" to the feeling or to the deeper self. Paradoxically, subjects claimed to be totally involved with their internal experience while simultaneously registering the presence of others, the perceived safety of the situation, or even a self-awareness by way of an "observing self." (p. 52)

Like archaic rites of transformation, natalistic art processes combine art activity and rebirth experience. Art activity and various forms of therapeutic rebirth likely share common elements of consciousness. Indeed, rebirth has historically been associated with the creative endeavours which combined art, myth and ritual (Eliade, 1958). The contemporary natalistic artist experiences the shifts of consciousness common to therapeutic birth regression, art activity and archaic rebirth rituals.

- NATALISM ASSISTS THE PREVERBAL TO BECOME VERBAL

The pre- and perinatal experience is preverbal, and therefore shares many qualities

with the nonverbal experience of art - one reason why they are such friendly partners. Hall (1987) states:

Much of its [art's] essential healing power lies beyond words - experiencing is perhaps the best way of understanding. Art therapy can offer a way of exploring and expressing areas of ourselves that lie beyond the reach of words, and can create a bridge between inner and outer, towards greater integration of the two. (p. 157)

The art activity in itself facilitates awareness of and insight about early preverbal material. Also art activity may largely have this effect by initiating right hemisphere processing. Through the art production component of natalistic activity the early non-verbal trauma may find significant resolution in the non-linear spacial domains of the right brain. Left brain and right brain storage and processing are fundamentally different. As Blakeslee (1983) notes:

Each half of the brain has its own separate train of conscious thought and its own memories. Even more important...the two sides of the brain think in fundamentally different ways: While the left brain tends to think in words, the right brain thinks directly in sensory images. (p. 6)

Both creative and linear writing exercises are incorporated in a natalistic art in therapy approach to facilitate the integration of left brain and right brain consciousness. It is also valuable to use creative writing techniques which are focused on nonverbal body sensation, as well as somatic expression which maybe be found in the production of natalistic art. As the artists move along in creating their natalistic drawing or sculptures, they are encouraged to write directly on the art work, along the edge of the drawing or on a separate piece of paper. To initially facilitate dialogue which connects with the right brain, the writing can be in the form of spontaneous single free association words, clustering (Rico, 1983) or poetry. As the

early material is processed, it slowly becomes more linear left brain writing and/or dialogue. One artist shares:

It was helpful to put words, "Rage, why, hit and no," on the drawing. It shifted me from a young non-verbal age to a more verbal age in processing what I was coming to terms with.

In doing the drawings there was a kind of experience of being connected to a very non-verbal age and being able to be in touch with other parts of myself. In this particular drawing I was quite aware of that feeling. There was a sense of really allowing myself to regress to that earlier age. I was able to access what was going on with the drawing while staying young enough to just draw the feeling without any sort of categorization or conceptualization.

I was feeling young and from the young place there was also an experience of sort of letting conceptualization, and preconceived ideas, and the stuff of language sort of not be there and just do the drawing. Then to help writing the words on the drawing and to bridge myself back to an older age there was the sense of an older part of myself, perhaps four-years old, putting some of the words to the paper. At the same time I was aware of very much having an adult consciousness knowing what I was doing and what it was for and giving myself the support and encouragement and everything else to do it.

There was the experience of having an adult consciousness and really allowing a childhood part of my consciousness to come forward. When I was regressed with the drawing I experienced getting in touch with I felt like I was really getting in touch with my prenatal self. It feels really young, perhaps around the first trimester when my mother would have discovered she was pregnant. So part of it is how she feels about being pregnant and her debate about whether to be pregnant whether to get rid of it, as well as her rage of finding herself pregnant.

I found in my own sculpting of natalism that poetry and journal writing directly related to the art pieces was a vital part of the healing process for me. Creating artwork brings the preverbal to one level, writing and discussion brings the material to another level: all are vital ingredients to the growth and integration of the whole person. Another artist relates:

Sometimes I can not talk, but I can draw. Some feelings can not be talked through because the internal experience it is not like thinking. Sometimes a pain and a feeling is not a logical word. For a period I could not talk for most of the time. When I was in pain I could not talk -- all I could do was draw and after I did the drawing I could write, but I could not write before I did the drawing. It's not a verbal thought, it doesn't work that way, it hasn't got word form. I has been great to be able to put the experience into some kind of form. It has been a real release to be able to do that.

Before I had drawing there were times that I had experiences and feelings that words were not able to express. It would be difficult to work through the feeling. Many times when I was doing primal work the only way I could go with the feeling, stay with it and work through it was just to detach my head. The word mental process got in the way of my releasing and resolving the feeling.

To work through the experience I would have to not use my mind any more and let my body go through the experience. I would have to remove myself from the language part of my brain and logically analysing what was happening. Working with feelings often meant I would have to trust my feelings or my body; and then cry or pound or in some way do some emotive emotional expression work, but without using my words.

After discovering how to use art I now have not only the emotional release through crying or pounding; but I can also use drawing which will release and resolve feelings, as well as use writing to help me further work through and gain insight about what was released with the drawing.

At times, the anxiety and feelings from early trauma are very present and can even be quite debilitating. When these pre- and perinatal forces are erupting in the psyche they can find immediate and effective expression in art, both in the therapy setting or at home. Susan explains:

I found the drawings were helping with expressing nonverbal stuff. I had a really terrible experience at birth. It had been so hard to work through that stuff. So I was really delighted with what the natalism was able to do because sometimes I would get really upset and agitated, and I had no idea why or what to do about it. I could not put any words to it. Over the time of the workshop when that happened a few times I would wake up with the feelings and draw. I had a paper and crayons on the night table and I would just draw whatever it felt like. It was an amazing way to express the non-verbal feelings. Sometimes I would babble too and I would write out the babbling. Somehow I would feel OK afterwards. I might be left feeling really sad, but the agitation, which is a feeling I can not stand, would shift. It was a real miracle to finally move those feelings and it seemed drawing was the only way I could do it. When I woke up feeling agitated I could not say with words what it was, I had no idea what the words were. The drawing is how I felt and it felt like early stuff when I was working on the drawing. I did not stop to think before I did it. I was sort of overwhelmed, so I really could not think. I just wanted to do something to deal with it. After doing the drawing I put some words on it.

When I first started looking at client art productions for birth and prenatal symbolism it was for the purpose of trying to analyze and categorize the symbols and patterns. Initially I thought I would discover obvious patterns such as a vase representing a womb or a snake depicting an umbilical cord or a devouring birth canal. I was sometimes baffled by the lack of direct symbols and metaphors coming out of natalistic art exercises. As I gained more experience in working with natalistic content I became more concerned with and more aware of the colour, form and emotional content of the art productions. I began to understand that colour, energy, movement, and timing were key ingredients of natalistic work.

In artworks created from the forces of the inner-infant or prenatal self, the pronounced preverbal features may be found in the forms of scribblings, choices of colours, where the coloured scribbles are placed, how they are layered or the order in which they were created. The internal sensations, feelings, and thoughts while creating can be more significant than the many developed symbols which may be made.

Therapeutic art productions are commonly analyzed and assessments made on the basis of the developmental period which is represented by the artworks. In regressing people through relaxation and imagery, to birth or prenatal periods the art productions created during

the regression would often be developmentally accurate -- ie. scribbling. According to Alschuler and Hattwick (1969):

Scribbling is the first reaction of the infant when he is able to apply a drawing pencil, crayon, or brush to paper.... It remains the most frequent mode of expression in the drawing or painting medium up to the age of two. (p. 106)

It made sense that artists doing birth or prenatal work would quite often just have movements of colours, simple spirals or just plain scribbles. It is possible that the body-felt sense of the infant or the prenate gets expressed in the choice of colours and the movements on the page. Sarah shares:

For me a simple drawing of blue arrows, green teeth and red scribbling reflects some of the strongest feelings from doing the natalism work, they were feelings of intrusion of being encroached upon, of being taken from. The green teeth are my devouring mother and the red is my anger about being eaten. On the blue there are arrows coming in which is her intruding into my space. The arrows going out is her sucking things out of me and things leaving me.

It is quite a simple drawing in terms of the amount of lines and the amount of drawing on the actual piece of paper. Still it really depicts a lot of my experience and says a lot about how I feel.

The drawing conveys that even though I was in the womb and taking up physical space, there is still a sense of there not being really a space for me. My mother is what is represented quite a bit more in the drawing. The blue being her intruding and taking out and the green being her devouring. There is just a tiny bit of red of anger that is me.

In working, the choice of colour, pattern and form as early expression is occurring. Then, perhaps, the later symbol-making self, the later cognitive, organizing and rational self will attach symbols or words to those pictures. Feher (1980) considers effective therapy with early material as attempts, "to communicate and deal with the emotional needs of the patient along with a cognitive interaction of insight. The value of verbal as well as of nonverbal patterns is identified, dissected and resolved" (p. 164). Wood (1984) comments on "the archetypal images of early infancy" as embodied in more archaic images and their abstract expression (p. 73).

Children's early mark making or locomotor scribbling is generally considered to begin around eighteen months (Dubowski, 1984). I suggest that some forms of child and adult therapeutic scribblings may developmentally predate the eighteen month pre-representational drawing period. Creating natalistic scribbles may be associated with a deeper state of nonverbal activity, through their focus on somatic awareness or some other early developmental attribute.

Natalistic artwork may reveal a continuum through the early prenatal self, the young child self, the adolescent or adult self. This presents a necessity to look for the non-verbal, non-cognitive: the body expression in the artwork and event and to discuss with the person what sensations were occurring in the body or what feelings they experienced as the work progressed.

With all therapeutic art, but in particular with non-verbal natalistic productions, it is important to discuss with the artist what sensations were present and thereby to acknowledge the felt body sense in the discussion as well as the symbols and images which may be derived from a later developmental stage.

Natalistic art creates an affect bridge linking feelings or issues which are of concern to the person today, with earlier adolescent, child, birth and prenatal experiences. By acknowledging and giving credence to a wide range of symbols or developmental states in a single work of art or developing within a series of art pieces made over a period of time, there can be connection with and integration of themes and compounded life patterns which are long standing. Susan describes her experience of doing a repeated version of a drawing, and working with its natalistic material in a later therapy session:

At home I did a smaller version of the big drawing from the workshop. In the womb I feel surrounded by a sort of blackness. The blackness was still my normal inner image. Like when I closed my eyes that is what I saw -- me sort of surrounded by blackness. It is like being in outer space and being in total blackness.

I was working on those feelings with my therapist in an individual session. I was able to regress really far back. I had never gone that far back. It was to the first trimester and was very intense. I really felt like I was reexperiencing that time, and all the terror associated with it. I was experiencing aloneness and isolation.

At the previous natalistic art workshop Michael had suggested I work with John, my therapist, on what was happening with that sense of being surrounded by blackness and what it represented in my drawing from that evening. I had realized that the blackness was there to isolate me from people and that at the time I created it I really needed to be isolated from my mother's hate and rage. If I had not been protected from her hate it probably would have killed me or hurt me in some other way more than the isolation did.

The original protection still isolated me from people. I could never get beyond a certain degree of closeness. The blackness is almost like an invisible wall. I can never get as close as I would like to be with people and somehow I know people cannot get close to me either. The blackness was indiscriminate about who was safe and who was not safe, it was always there.

- CREATIVE AND PHYSICAL ENERGY IN NATALISM

Wadeson (1980) describes a phenomenon of increased energy which occurs during the creative process. The energy of creative activity charges the individual and group into greater alertness and participation. Brigette noted the energizing qualities of natalistic art activity:

I was amazed at how the time went in spite of the statements about how tired I was I was able to do the art . I don't ever remember being really tired at the end of the night. Upon arriving at the workshop because of my schedule I often arrived later, but I didn't feel tired when I left. I always went away with a sense of it's too bad we didn't have another half hour or so to interpret the art work. I was enjoying what I wanted to explore.

The heightened awareness and involvement in the art processes at hand enhanced the quality of therapeutic interaction. Furth (1988) contends that, in art activity, "when physical energy is expended, psychic energy makes itself more easily apparent" (p. 2). Additionally, there is a particular healing quality to the energy of creative natalistic activity, as McNiff (1989) discusses:

The transformative energy of art corresponds to, and possibly is, the energy of healing. In both art and healing we transform pain and conflict into affirmations of life and states of well-being. Healing occurs in the telling of the story and hearing the response of another person. (p. 42)

The heightened level of healing energy during natalistic processes can occur partially in response to qualities associated with creative activity.

In addition, creative expression in groups or in the presence of others or a witness often increases the energy of the arts -- hence the universal appeal of artistic adornments in rituals, performance and ceremonial gatherings. Historically and cross culturally, transformation in group settings has been associated with art, artistic imagery or art activity. The group process and experience enhances natalistic expression; and the presence of natalistic content and imagery deepens the group experience. Creating natalism in the workshop setting Johanna found:

Seeing other people in the group having similar experiences was really helpful as a validation. It felt like we were not only making significant connections to our early the past, but we were experiencing an affinity with each other. I thought everyone was connected to something before being born. That I was connecting with those early experiences would have been pretty hard for me to accept, had not other people had similar experiences. I was astounded by the similarities in our art and experiences. In looking at Michael's sculptures I suspect he has connected with the experience of being before having a body. I found having his art around increased the natalistic experience.

I initially developed natalistic art workshops as art experiences to enhance the creative process with visual arts. To begin with, the natalistic art process was not developed as a therapy or adjunct to therapy, it was just meant to be an approach to creating art which would be influenced by the perinatal realm of the psyche. Activities were borrowed and adapted from archaic rebirth rites as adjuncts for enhancing the creative art process. Creativity was greatly opened up through the natalism processes.

Rather than simply experiencing enhanced creativity, many of the participants in the natalistic art workshops experienced profound changes in a variety of areas of their lives. Professional artists and lay person participants described experiences of transformation and healing from connecting with the forces of birth.

In response to the degree of personal growth and healing which participant were experiencing I began to explore and develop natalism as a psychotherapy process approach and method.

I initially began using natalistic art and natalistic processes in the therapy setting to access and work primarily with birth issues and material. The exercises were developed to work with birth content; and yet, people created images reflecting the earliest prenatal periods of conception and embryonic development. This often occurred outside my direction or expectation. The frequency with which natalistic art workshop participants created early embryonic art challenged my perception of the relationships between art and early prenatal psychological material. Johanna shared:

I felt quite unique when I accessed and reexperienced my birth when I did primal therapy. Now I feel unique again in going back further even than birth to the original me. That is what makes me feel special and unique, but it also scares me because what am I going to do with it now. I feel like if I've done this, there must be a reason that I've done it. I feel I've got to go somewhere with it but I am not sure where to go. But I feel special.

Johanna's comments about going back to creation are reminiscent of archetypical experiences of creation-transformation which can be found universally in creation mythology, rites of passage, and rituals about rites of transformation. Rhyne (1984) sees:

Art is not only a medium for self-expression, it is also a way of extending the scope of experience that is available to all of us. The professional artist with his sincere dedication and developed skill can execute his art work masterfully. Some of this works speaks of universalities; some portrays the cultural milieu of the artist; some expresses the inner perceptions of the artist; some will endure in time; and some will be ignored and forgotten. (p. 99)

Susan relates her powerful inner experience of one natalistic work:

The drawing I did in the session was very good. It was full of light and energetic and connected with life.... I felt I had sort of an energy flow that I had not felt much before. I had experienced it briefly a few times in therapy -- enough to make me realize all my life I had not had an energy flow. So to do anything I just have to make myself do it. If you do not have an energy flow it is tough. I started to feel that energy flow after the previous natalistic art workshop.... Having that energy flow over the week made it a lot easier to do things.

Creative activity strengthens and opens up the non-verbal hemisphere enabling the artist to access and work with non-verbally contained early material more effectively. The effects of natalistic activity on long term creativity is an area which needs further investigation. In controlled studies Feher (1980) in conjunction with Elizabeth Fehr experimentally tested changes in depth perception and found, "The group who had undergone natal therapy had increased depth perception" (p. 18). Since depth perception is a right-brain activity Feher (1980) and Fehr hypothesised, "that natal therapy increased the dominance of the non-verbal hemisphere" (p. 18). Birth and womb experiences are held and processed in the non-verbal hemisphere; releasing, freeing up or simply accessing early material may enhance the quality of right hemisphere activity.

I have observed that artists and non-artists alike make significant leaps in the quality of artistic expression when working with natalism. Emerson (personal correspondence, October, 1992) has also noticed that participants in natalistic art workshops, that he has also worked with in his birth refacilitation workshops, have seen significant changes in their creative endeavour and potential emerge over the subsequent six months to two years. It seems they make important personal life and/or career changes which reflect an increase in creativity in their lives. Increased creativity may occur in areas not directly related to drawing and the visual arts, but can be reflected in the development of "creative" personal or career endeavours such as writing or other forms of problem solving.

The increased creativity can be in response to some natalistic action associated with awakening creative forces of the psyche; and/or may be the result of working through early core traumas. The healing process may release and free up energy which was restricted through holding onto past trauma. Khamsi (1987) notes:

After experiencing birth feelings, subjects reported heightened sensation in their bodies. Frequent were reports of feeling physically freer and looser. Feelings of a pain vanishing or a load lifting were also common. Subjects also claimed to be better able to interpret their "body messages" and to understand their personal rhythms and character. (p. 50)

Birth and womb experiences are extraordinarily creative endeavours; and therefore, are likely associated with the dimension of creativity in the psyche. Deborah relates some interesting perceptions:

During the workshop series it was nice to think in terms of a relationship between -- birth work as creativity; and artistic expression as creativity. I find that doing natalistic art work gives a person something particular around the creative and expressive which I feel are related to something about the creative and expressive experience of birth and the womb.

The natalism work helped with the process of doing the early work and connecting with the part of me from that time. It helped with the process of bringing that part of me more to the present and to enlarge that part. The natalism work was not the only catalyst, but I think that it was part of my healing in this whole process.

In terms of my overall personal growth work doing the early original trauma work was healing myself and was helping to allow the essential self that I came into this world with to come out more and more. I was allowing it to be more and more present and to fly. At the time the workshop series was over I was not entirely conscious that I was going through another whole layer of development of my spiritual inner self and my womanhood and my intuitive psychic self. In that place of change I had a feeling I wanted to own my own birth art. Doing the original healing work was very much connected with loving that part of me.

One possible response to my queries for an explanation for the increased creativity through natalism has to do with the significance of connecting with the prenatal realm. This realm occupies a highly creative time in human development. Art, music and other forms of creative experience may tap into early aspects of the self. Sarah expresses:

There was a great sense of ease and flow in the sculpting of being directly connected with my origins, with my beginnings. Again I struggle with how to talk about the wordless state. The beginning of the piece was about going to the core of things.

During the first two trimesters, the prenate creates all the many components and the organization which go together to create a human being. It is possible that the most creative time in human existence is during embryonic and early fetal development when the person is creating themselves.

My view of this arises from my own experience of regressions to prenatal and embryonic times and from creating my own artwork expressing those times in my life. I have had experiences of profoundly connecting with creation energy through working on my own natalistic sculptures. I have experienced along with other people that there is an intent or urge towards creativity which may be prenatal in origin. My personal experience is that there was much awe and wonder in the prenatal act of creating; that the embryo is enthralled and awed, is excited about the process of creating itself; that the prenatal creative burst is a fascinating, enjoyable, interesting experience; that there is literally a desire, or motivation to be creative during the gestational period.

My experiences of going back to the womb during sculpting led me to look at myth, rites of passage and ritual transformation in context of a natalistic perspective. Many creation myths or rituals involve in some form, the initiate's returning to their origins or going through a death/rebirth experience reminiscent of birth and the womb experience.

More than is cognitively understood at this point, art and creative activity may be significantly related to this, the earliest and most creative time in human development. It may be that, by reconnecting with the prenatal period through creative expression and art, one is reconnecting with an early developmental stage of high creativity. Feher (1980) hypothesizes that early regression through natal therapy, "in that it is non-verbal, may be able to reach the material that has been locked into the non-verbal hemisphere prior to eighteen months; and then to transfer it to the verbal side with the later sessions, to create unity and consistency among the hemispheres" (p. 18). Feher (1980) and Lake (1981) suggest that early memory, being preverbal, is non-verbal, and therefore resides in the non-verbal right hemisphere. If this is correct, it might account for the common occurrence of "rebirthing rituals" cross-culturally and historically and their being association with highly right brain creative activities. (Mott, 1953; Eliade, 1958; Irving, 1989; Janus, 1993). Its connection with rebirthing in many cultures throughout history lends credibility to the importance of using art to address birth and womb issues.

Often when people view creative acts or artworks they resonate with the original prenatal awe and wonder. Viewing Natalistic art or photographic images of life being created may return people, on some level, to the experience of creating oneself. For example, the fetal images of the film 2001 or Nilsson's photography in Life Magazine in 1968 or his later film The Creation of Life and his subsequent book presented culturally powerful images. People were powerfully attracted to these images (Farrant, 1985). It may be that they were connecting with their own creative embryo selves. It is possible that art also connects to the embryonic urge to create; and therefore art activity may have a particular relevance to pre- and perinatal psychology.

As they returned to their earliest gestational periods, artists had contact with a sense of rightness in existing and being. Cynthia expressed it as, "Going back to that prenatal period has allowed me to establish a beginning place. There's some kind of security in that. That's where I began my life and I go back to that place now because it's like Heaven." People creating early prenatal natalistic works reported a transformative experience of connecting with an energy or life force which was more powerful than any in utero or childhood trauma they may have experienced. Brigette shares:

I think through the whole workshop and doing all those drawings, one of the things that has come up again and again for me is a sense of "I am " and "I have a right to be." The people and the environment around me may not like that, but that's too bad. I'm not guilty and I'm not to blame for their issues around my being. That creates sort of a safety within the creation of life. My belief system and my faith are related to this in that I believe babies are a gift. Somehow as I did those drawings, even the one with the things poking in as if it was an abortion, there was a rightness and a holism about the baby that was somehow not affected by whether or not those other folks wanted her or not.

I was able to own that more. I internalized that I have a right to be here and that there's a rightness about me and I am a gift that has something special about her. I liked doing the pictures.

The energy which arises from natalistic activity seems to be a powerful transformative agent. Perhaps the common use of natalistic material in myths, rituals, rites of passage and as religious ornamentation is partly related to the transformative qualities of a natalistic energy or a creative natalistic dimension within the whole self. Cynthia comments:

Because it's so irrational I cannot put it into words. I just know I have a feeling it has affected me, I am aware since the workshop there has been a positive pleasurable experience I now have in the midst of the pain.

It stays with me all the time now. I think that what I'm saying is true. I have gotten in touch with a beginning place before my parents ever even came into the picture. A place where you float in space and there's a unity going on between you and something. I can't speak in any other terms.

- REPATTERNING THROUGH NATALISM

Unresolved psychological traumas leave the legacy of feelings and life scripts which can be disempowering and debilitating. The roots of core feelings and primary life patterns are often associated with the earliest of traumas. Therapeutic healing involves assessing problematic feelings and life scripts; identifying the roots of those issues; discharging latent affect; gaining insights; and establishing new outlooks and life patterns.

The confirmation of therapeutic healing is in the changes which take place within the person and within her ongoing life. At times therapeutic change can appear to be the result of some simple and direct interventions. It is much more likely that beyond the obvious there are many dynamics taking place which initiate, encourage and assist deep change. Repatterning involves being able to see the broader picture of issues, and putting into place new perspectives. It is likely that much work has preceded reaching this point in personal growth and transformation of core issues.

A notable aspect of repatterning is the ability to solidly have new feelings and outlooks which were previously blocked or unattainable. When a significant valence of the traumatic emotions are released, and issues surrounding those painful emotions are understood, the client and therapist can begin to consider reframing the original event and establishing new feelings and beliefs which can be tried out. Noble (1993) considers that, "Reframing and rescripting help the client to reinterpret and re-structure events with adult perception. He can imagine ideal situations or something deeply desired, to transform his sense of deprivation" (p. 101).

Language is fairly rigidly structured in its meaning; the written words or acoustical sounds of "Hate" or "Rage" always mean hate and rage. Art has greater facility than language in allowing changes in the meaning of the visual forms and images. The drawn images of hate and rage can eventually become transformed in a manner determined by the artist. The colour and shape of anger on the art paper can be transformed to another quality such as self-empowerment or self-protection than.

The fluidity, flexibility, transposability of art images, art materials, art products and art processes make art particularly valuable as a vehicle for reframing. The artistic representation of the original trauma and all of its surrounding issues can be artistically transposed and thereby transformed. As the new feelings and scripts are being identified, created and tried out in the objectifying work of art, internal processes in the inner psyche are trying on and becoming familiar with these new ways of being. One artist in a natalistic workshop reported:

The drawing on the left is how the womb felt as a sterile not very life giving environment. The four protrusions from the womb were like cups that were sucking life out of me. There was the sense of nothing but blackness beyond the closed space. In the black drawing the womb is at the bottom of the drawing. It has a heavier feel, a sense of sinking despair when I look at it.

The drawing on the right is the healing drawing of how I would have like the womb to have been. The healing drawing is sort of balanced. I like it better than the first drawing. I spent a fair bit more time on the second drawing. I liked the idea of being able to create something visually for how it would have been nice to have been. It felt good in the sense of putting in a little something now. I felt very nurtured by the second drawing. Someone else in the group mentions she felt nurtured by looking at the drawing.

Some of the exercises I use with art are specifically designed to see, feel, and experience with an emotional view which the person has lost or has never had. When a person images how it could have been or should have been, and talks about or draws those new or awakened feelings, there are awareness and energy which actually does reach into some level of the inner mind for repatterning. Deborah describes her process of repatterning through natalistic art:

I found that while I drew the soft repatterning images of floating I was not feeling emotionally impacted by the negative traumas. In the workshop I was shifting through the work to wanting to take in the soft flowing experience rather than be identified with the sharp harsh anger. I was much closer to wanting to take in the positive nurturing kind of experience, rather than be identified with the negative ones. The bottom one feels more where I was at during the workshop and for what was happening for me at that time.

The top drawing was more like a remembering of strong feelings surrounding the womb experience, rather than an abreactive feeling or reliving of them as I was doing the art. At times connecting with the trauma through that drawing was like a recollection of the strong feelings. I was aware of them intensely but in my feelings it was like I was leaning towards being more identified with the healing drawing rather than the trauma drawing. When I finished the drawings I folded and closed the trauma drawing and placed the healing drawing on top of it.

Healing drawings are often created after the emotional valence of the trauma has been discharged through drawing and/or expressive abreaction. After emotional trauma is vented in a trauma drawing the artist can place a paper on top of the drawing which expresses the pain, and then create a healing drawing on the new paper. The healing drawings are directed at transforming the energy, feelings, images, and colours below; or the healing drawing may express what it would be like without the trauma, if birth or womb conditions had been the way the artist wanted. While doing the healing drawing the artists are encouraged to feel how they feel different inside and are encouraged to own these new positive, empowered feelings as their own. An artist describes the experience of creating a healing drawing on top

of a trauma drawing during natalistic workshops shares:

Having a structure of directed exercises in which the trauma was expressed and then nurturing or repatterning feelings were drawn was a healing experience for me. It was a good way to do it, liked that I could change it, I could have something different, I could have what I wanted. So I found it healing. Not only healing, but almost like a gift because it was slightly surprising to have that healing and nurturing in me and to discover that kind of beauty in me.

In doing a healing drawing on top of a trauma drawing the feelings about the trauma did not disappear but they certainly would go to the background. The feelings were not there in the same way. The painful feelings were replaced by the soothing and nurturing feelings. The effect on my outside life of those feelings being replaced often occurred on a really deep level which was not a very conscious level.

I found that I could not really stay with it. It was kind of weird in the weeks in between the workshops, I felt like I was in another zone -- I just felt different. Something was shifting, but I did not understand what was shifting.

It was important for that it was reinforced over a number of times from week to week. Somehow that solidified or strengthened whatever the internal experience was that was happening for me, and which I could barely see.

Healing drawings can assist in repatterning habituated life long negative feelings and dysfunctional scripts. Another artist describes the repatterning qualities of healing drawings during natalistic art activity:

Doing the birth drawing felt so devastating and was significant in terms of putting the trauma down on paper. In the same session the trauma drawing was directly followed by a remarkably healing drawing. The healing drawing was the beginning of really consciously realizing what was actually coming through in the very first drawing of the workshop series and which really came to light in the conception drawing.

It felt remarkable that I could do the drawing or write the words which accompanied it. This drawing is the point where I realized that I wasn't limited by my life. I found I had the urge to read the writing on this on the drawing a number of times. The writing says:

Lots of space, room to move. A loving womb, I can play, float, do somersaults. I will leave soon. I am wanted. I am curious about what it will be like out there. I have my connection to my before world and my now world and I can keep them both. I do not have to give up one for the other. I can be who I am and grow into who I will become and follow my knowing. What that will be -- the possibilities are all open. I do not know what limitation means. I can be as free in my new form as I was before. There is no separation between body and spirit. Full of life. Full of trust. Live by inner knowing. Full of grace.

I find it remarkable to have written that.

In the session I did the trauma drawing and then did a drawing in which I imagined what I would have liked the womb to been like; how I would have liked birth to have been; and how I would have liked to have been greeted as I came out of the birth. Somehow by imaging what I did not receive, but what I would have liked to have received and what I deserved, some sort of significant transformation started taking place for me.

The transformation was a reconnection to who I really am. It was a reconnection to the universe. Understanding that I do not have to keep those bad experiences. I do not have to be the abuse that was done to me. That abuse is not who I am. Those things were done to me, that doesn't make me, me. I can let them go. I can be who I was supposed to be. Even if I'm not sure what that is.

More than just being thoughts which occurred during the art process and doing the workshop, those messages were actually taking place in my life, in my day to day life. Through changing my expectations I was changing how I felt in a day to day way. It feels to me that I have more to life than the sorrow and tragedy which seemed to keep following me through childhood.

I moved into a new place in myself which is unfamiliar but not bad. I am looking for answers, I'm just I'm going in a direction I'm not sure of but it's not bad any more.

Qualities of the artwork assist the artists in knowing and acknowledging their inner experiences. Additionally, these qualities of art as realization and "making real" fosters a continuance of the transformation process.

Repatterning of early foundational trauma to which an individual has become habituated by years of continued life stresses can take time. This transformation requires [a degree of] continued commitment by the person in the healing process. The repatterning energy and imagery in a work of art can provide a focus and a reminder that artists can use to anchor themselves to the reality and validity of their ongoing healing and changes. Susan's comment illustrates how her artwork assisted her in being aware and connected with her inner reality, and in so doing allowed her psychological wounds and distress to transform. According to Susan:

I did the smaller drawing at home as a reproduction of the drawing I had done in the workshop. I would go look at the drawing and sort of put my body up against it. I would just do something, but I did not know why it would. To me it was just a revelation. When I put my body up to the drawing the feelings would clarify. The drawing has written, "I feel blue, blue, blue. On one Sunday I woke up feeling really blue like, "A well of sadness," which is written on the drawing. That is what I felt when I put the drawing up against my body -- the blue feeling was all through my body. A whole lot of sadness. Having the blue up against my body intensified the sadness and it somehow made it bearable. It took away the agitated feeling that I can not stand.

Through psychological process, the drawing can absorb the energy of old internal wounds. Conversely, through the mechanisms of healing, the art work can portray, enhance and give off the internal properties of self nurture and self healing which are valuable for recovery from trauma. Cynthia describes:

In the drawing there is the sun which is hope and it's coming up, its's not going down. There is warmth and growth which is sort of blood red because without blood you wouldn't live. It has all the nutrients in it. The sun keeps everything alive and embraces everything.

The placenta is like a tree because it has roots and it is rooted in the uterus. It's a friend. It keeps me company and it holds me there. It supports me. Against all the adversity, something helped me. There is a way in which the placenta feels like a cradle supporting me. It feels like my placenta that held me there.

- Physical Repatterning

Birth and prenatal issues often involve some form of physical threat and are stored in the body. Their continual tension and impacting habituates specific body schemas and shows up in the actual development and structure of the body. If the physical system is not addressed and changed along with the cognitive emotional system, the old body patterns will continue and force rehabituation of old psychological patterns. Natalistic activity identifies some of these patterns and assists in their discharge and repatterning. While undergoing body work, Sarah was also using natalistic sculptures to work through issues which had significant preverbal roots. Physical repatterning was occurring through her body work and in her art process. Sarah describes a sculpture which manifest physical repatterning:

The smaller pink standing woman was an important piece for me in that it was the first sculpture that I did that stood upright on its own. It had a flat base and did not rock. For me the sculpture talks about individuation. It is me as a separate person. It is a statement of standing. I was so pleased that it stood. Sort of like I was standing on my own.

It was also the first piece of sculpture that had legs even though they were in a kind of draped sculptural form. The legs can not be clearly seen in the photograph but there is a subtle intimation of them there.

I had more of a sense of my legs after making the piece. There was more awareness of my legs in terms of being able to stand up for myself and stand on my own. Most important for me was a sense of my feet in contact with the ground. Really feeling solid ground under my feet that I could trust while I was standing on it.

As part of their healing process I encourage some clients to find a body therapist. Body work is particularly valuable when a client needs to repattern deeply reinforced birth trauma which has significant somatic components.

When the early trauma has been released through art and abreaction the body and the psyche are highly susceptible to repatterning and reframing. Mowbray and Brown (1987) note:

Once a past trauma has been released, a spontaneous urge for growth will appear. It's as if the growth wants to carry on where it left off before it was so rudely interrupted! ...a woman who was a caesarian delivery had a spontaneous urge to have a normal birth experience, thus releasing those reflexes in her body. (p. 96)

It is common for individuals to desire a positive rebirth experience after working through the traumatic elements of birth. A repatterning rebirth can take the form of physically recreating a simulated positive birth experience. Noble (1993) explains:

Groups can be used to simulate pressure of the uterus and birth canal and to provide rocking experiences. For example, three people can form a unit with the middle one being the fetus, and perform flexion and extension movements to represent contraction and relaxation of the uterus. (p. 97)

Qualities of positive rebirth can also come from art work which portrays the nurturance, protection, welcoming and challenge which the infant deserved to receive at birth. In rebirth there can often be a sense of empowerment derived from confronting a challenge that does not overwhelm the self, and in which one is supported and assisted. Noble (1993) notes:

During birth, contractions force the baby into smaller space until he actively begins to push against it. He senses his own power in the stretch reflex, extending against the pressure of the uterus as actively as a chicken pecks its way out of the egg. People with healthy births can honour their own power: 'They are confident that they can tolerate pressure and stress, can be active and self-directed and still be welcomed and loved.' That synthesis has to be recreated in therapy by finding new physical, mental and emotional resources. (p. 97)

The original birth experience is an extraordinarily physical and emotional experience. To repattern on the deep physical and emotional levels, effective natalistic rebirth often involves confronting the physical and emotional stresses of birth. The physicality of birth finds its way in the natalistic drawing and finds expression, learning and transformation in both the body and the artwork. Brigette shares her experience of natalistically confronting the physical manifestations of her birth:

While doing the drawing I was really aware of the head and feet. The messages were kind of different. I really wanted more space and I wanted to push. Cynthia assisted me by pushing on my head before I started doing the drawing. When she took her hand away and let go of the pressure my first reaction was to instruct her to keep them at least loosely there. Then I felt maybe there is more to be learned from the frustration feeling of when they go away so I stayed with that. When I laid down after drawing for awhile I had images of head and feet, but not of too much of anything in between. When I concentrated on that there were not a lot of feelings. The head stuff is all the fears and the feelings about what if I take a risk and just get hurt again. The feet stuff is the way I keep trotting along sort of doing my life.

Repatterning the Numbing Qualities of Anaesthesia During Labour

I have worked with people who, because of heavy drugs after a The difficult labour, have been uncertain as to whether birth was completed. Some of these individuals have struggled with the terror and grief that either they and/or their mothers may have died as a result of an agonizing birth. I have worked with several individuals whose mothers were drugged during birth; and because the infant and the mother were unconscious from drugs administered during birth, there was an experience by the infant that something terrible happening that their mother would so totally leave. These people reported that as infants they had thought their mothers had died. This was compounded even further by the fact that after the mother became "lifeless" from anaesthesia, her infant was removed to the nursery. For the first time, there was no conscious contact and in the child's existence, the mother was not present. She was absent during and following a time of pain and assault for the infant.

One client that I worked with went through tremendous agony and grief. She believed her mother had died during an extremely long and difficult labour. She had been in the nursery for four days as a newborn, all the while being completely convinced her mother was dead. The woman felt she had spent much of her life looking for the dead mother, grieving the dead mother. She could never reattach to having a mother who was not dead. According to Susan:

My experiences of reliving birth has been sort of an unconscious fog. It is like I do not experience my birth. I do not know I was born. I sometimes wonder if it is possible that I am still going through that struggle because I do not know I was born. I was not conscious because I was given so much drugs that I was really out of it. I did not even know I was born. I went unconscious from the either and I did not experience the last stage of birth. I am not sure if I am out or not so I am still trying to get born. I went through the attempted abortions where my life was being attacked. There was a threat of being killed and I hung on to stay alive. Later on I went through a very perilous and dangerous experience at birth where going unconscious was just like a death. When I came to I did not know if I made it or not.

The deadening qualities of anaesthesia at birth present particular problems for the resolution of birth trauma. Noble (1993) allows, "Accessing labour and birth experiences takes longer for people whose mothers were given drugs and anaesthesia -- a common experience. During regression, these people may go limp, black out, smell ether, become numb, or feel in a fog" (p. 3). Susan relates:

Throughout the time of doing the drawing I was mainly experiencing the effects of the anaesthetic. I really did not have much sensation through my body. It was a very limp sort of feeling. At first when Deborah was assisting my by putting pressure on my head my body could not respond. I needed to move and to struggle through. I would push and I could not do it. Then all of a sudden I could and that really felt like repatterning. I could push against it and that just felt so different. Then the feeling of being able to push went away. Again I wanted to push, and needed to push but I could not. There is the feeling that I can not get out. The green was taking over, the previous week the yellow came out and over the following week positive feelings and experiences were increasing in my life. After drawing I was a little spaced out with the sort of feelings I get with memories of the anaesthetic at birth.

The learned pattern of psychological numbing against pain and stress at birth develops into a life long defense against pain and stress. This becomes an unconscious means of coping with stress. In particular the numbing response can activate and become intensified when therapeutically dealt with and work through birth material -- the painful events when becoming numb was first learned. Another artist found the anaesthetic at birth set up a life long struggle with compliancy:

At birth as I was given drugs I started to lose my anger. After the drugs took hold I did not want to move any more, I just became apathetic. Then when the forceps pulled me out along with some of the contractions I just came out without any more resistance and without any anger. The anger still existed it was just split off.

The releasing, holding and repatterning qualities of artwork and creative activity can have a particular benefit for working with birth material associated with aesthesia. The anaesthesia can be drawn as a picture; and quite effectively, its affects can be held there allowing the person to deal with other birth trauma issues at hand.

Initially, at birth, the aesthesia flowing through the infant's body was experienced as an internal quality as though it were a part of the self. Very often, with aesthesia, there is no clear boundary between self and what is being done to self. For many people in therapy this is the first time that the experience of the anaesthesia has been understood to be separate from the self. Perhaps for the first time since birth a boundary is created between consciousness and ever present numbness.

- NATALISM AS PSYCHOLOGICAL INDUCTION AND SUGGESTION

The focusing qualities of art activity induce a trance state (McNiff, 1981). During hypnotic trance, suggestions for change are much more effective. Images occurring in mental processing while producing art and the images created in the art work can serve as therapeutic suggestions for change. The art work and process act as a form of self-hypnosis which is directed by the inner wisdom of the unconscious.

Part of therapeutic change comes about from internal or external expectations of change. A therapist who reinforces insight and gives sometimes direct and other times ever so subtle "inductions" for change, will, in the long term, support and validate the client's wisdom and insights. A suggestion for change can be in the form of specific hypnotic or focused inductions; or it may simply consist of commenting in a supportive way on change that will likely be happening, but about which the client is still vague or shaky. In summarizing a therapeutic process and insights, the clinician may say, "You know your body has limits which you can now feel now, and you have told me ways you can communicate how close or distant you want someone. Enjoy your new found awareness." This is not only a summary, but a suggestion and induction for change.

The art work itself can effectively serve as an induction and suggestion in itself. When art as induction is used in conjunction with therapist intervention of induction and suggestion, the power of suggestion for assisting transformation and change is far more effective than with either by itself.

Part of transformation as a result of art activity comes from the visually implied expectation of change. The energy surfacing in the creative process or the images themselves can imply release, understanding and new ways of relating. For the artist, consciously and unconsciously, these can serve as concrete suggestions and induction for change. Art images tend to reach deep into the psyche and are actively carried there for long periods of time.

Assagioli (1977) affirms:

Pictures and objects of various kinds (paintings, drawings, and all objects of art) often have a great suggestive power...it would appear that in works of art there is much more than mere aesthetic value; they constitute living forces, almost living entities, embodying a power which has suggestive and creative effects. Therefore we should not allow this force to remain unused, or subject ourselves to it unconsciously and without definite purpose, instead, we should learn to use it deliberately for the further development of our personality. (pp. 129-130)

Cynthia speaks of how her art work and visualization served as suggestions and induction for change:

For the next year, I continued to feel better. I felt like I had the power to change my life. I had the power to imagine or invent a new reality to overlay the negative beginning, to make it different. It actually changes my consciousness to experience conception in a different way. Made me feel better, feel whole and feel hopeful. Before there was a real sense of hopelessness. Taking it back to the very root of my creation and existence in life is really where I had to go in order to do that work because that is where I started. That is where the feeling started.

The drawing says "Oh look how you have changed. Look you have exploded into a wonderful ball. Come let's go further* towards the womb where we can rest and grow some more". This drawing is like an explosion again. There was a previous drawing in which there was a real negative explosion. This drawing is a positive explosion because the lines go inward again. It's an explosion but it's contained so there is a growth which has happened. The previous explosion was just like this drawing from a few sessions back - it was like a chaotic explosion. This one is growing and building like a bunch of bricks or blocks being put together. It is contained and growing because all these new things are coming out and it feels quite positive.

The drawing on the right says, "We are safe here to be whatever we want to be." Sweet drawing with a cute little face. This is an ideal for me because the whole experience allows me to be whoever I want. The nature of the repatterning drawing is I 'm supported in that journey and that is what it should have been like. In the drawing it is pink and it's all red with lots and lots of blood there with lots of nutrients. And it's warm.

In a sharing group after a drawing exercise during an evening natalistic workshop, Johanna was still in the feelings which came up during her art work. In speaking of these feelings she still carried from her art activity, Johanna stated:

I felt there was a poison inside of my body. I felt isolated and alone in going into the sharing group which we did after the drawing exercises. I was still there, but I did not want to be back there, I wanted to forget there, but the more I tried to forget there the more the feelings and experience came up. I could not just let it be.

Johanna also seemed to still be in a light trance from the art work and visualizations. Initially I helped her deepen the trance state, and then gave her the following induction to encourage her to transform the experience of holding on to the feelings and memory:

It sounds like the stuff inside needs to talk a little bit more. When you share the drawings and experience, one of the things that will occur for you as you talk about it more is it will fade. In much the same way that right now as you are trying to put it away and it is coming on stronger. When you talk about the drawing you will find that all that stuff will dissolve and fade. OK?

As part of closure, when Johanna was finished talking in the sharing group, I gave her another suggestion/induction to encourage her sense of transition and transformation in her art to continue during the week:

This week let it come to your mind every now and then, how you might use colour or form to repattern all those feelings that are in the drawing and are inside of you right now. You can do drawings or write in your journal about the kind of changes in feelings and images which happen; or you might have the urge to explore if your picture were different -- How would that be?

In a sharing group one artist said:

When I thought about closures and drawing I felt like I wanted to work with the newly born baby. To help her to have the kind of reception that I might want her to have had. I wanted to get to a place where I could say, "OK, maybe all this stuff happened to me prenatally but I do not have to live out of that experience now. I can live out of an experience of her being received and loved even if I have to do all that for myself. In the colours is the newly born baby. The blue and pink stuff around her is a cradling, probably against a body. She is all colours because she felt kind of playful. Inside of me that playfulness felt like laughter.

Individuals in the healing process arrive at new insights about their lives and come to new understandings and decisions. To actually make these inner transformations there needs to be an internalization of the new ways of being. Art work and the art process suggest to the self on the deepest levels that change has occurred, is occurring and will continue to occur. In this manner, art serves as therapeutic induction and suggestion for change. To facilitate and reinforce the expectation of change, near the end of a natalistic art workshop session I will ask participants to think about, or to allow to come from their inner knowing, what it is they still need from the experience they have just had. The group is encouraged to quietly sit with their art process and art images. There is not only a reflection of what has occurred and changes which have taken place, but the artists also consider what will now be different. Through visualization the artists move forward in time to experience how they will be different in the future in response to the art activities which have just occurred. I suggest that the artists will carry with them, on both conscious and unconscious levels, images, thoughts or feelings which will deepen and reinforce the healing continuum as it progresses further.

- NATALISM AS COMMUNICATION

In part, psychological wounds result from being unnoticed, unheard and unacknowledged. Particularly during trauma and extreme distress adults, children and even infants need validation and support. Hindman (1989) has demonstrated that the degree of long term psychological injury as a result of trauma is related more to the degree of validation and support following the trauma than the severity of violence during the traumatic event. Wood (1984) asserts "early damage makes for the more profound effect on the personality and occurs at a time when communication is wordless" (p. 63).

A degree of therapeutic healing occurs as a result of communication and witnessing. Janov (1983) relates a client's desperate need to have the trauma of birth validated even decades later, "I need to be understood with the same urgency that I needed my mother to understand my plight at birth" (p. 20). One natalistic artist spoke of the resolution of her early wounds being contingent on being "received, witnessed and acknowledged." She found, in creating natalism:

The art piece does what the ideal mother should have done -- reflect back to me my own experience. The art work serves as an ideal mother in terms of an acknowledgement of my experience. The sense of validation is even more so when people look at my art work and respond to it on an emotional level. Through their response I can know I have communicated directly what I feel. I feel for the expression to be complete it must be received, witnessed and accepted. In my journal writing it came to me that in a sense communication is not complete unless there is a receiver, unless there is that acknowledgement.

Having a compassionate witness to one's experience can be profoundly healing. It allows the suffering person to know she is worthwhile and valued.

To be heard one must first speak in a meaningful way. The act of meaningful communication is a courageous one (May 1975). London (1989) agrees:

Bearing witness, like any creative act, is a wilful expression of what it feels like to be yourself. It is a simple act and at the same time a courageous one. You speak for yourself and you speak of yourself. You tell your own story. (p. 84)

Beyond the initial courage to communicate, meaningful psychological material must be accessed and must have a means of communication. Art allows an avenue into the deeper realms of the self and simultaneously offers a vehicle to carry personal experience to others. In speaking of her natalistic production, Sarah asserts:

Art can go from my gut to somebody else's gut and in a sense bypass the head and rational thought. Art can bypass rational defenses and all those other things that we put in to filter out direct experience. I think often the power of art is it can conveys directly from my gut to your gut. I think that is what powerful art does. It cuts through all our defenses, all our intellectualization and rationalizing to get us right where we live. I think this explanation moves toward conveying the strong draw I have to create with art.

Sarah's art activity put her more in touch with her inner experience and also provided a bridge between her life experiences. In this manner art is personal communication within the self and to the self. Additionally Sarah found her art provided her with communication and a connection to others. Rogers (1993) echoes:

As we first journey inward through the expressive arts, we tap into the unconscious and become aware of new aspects of self, thus gaining insight and empowerment. Then, by connection to at least one other person in and empathic and supportive environment, we learn ways to relate to the community. As we learn how to be authentic and empowered in a small community, we are then inspired to move to the larger circle. We become creative and collaborative, being able to access our higher purpose and powers. This connects us to the world -- other cultures and nature -- with compassion. (p. 9)

Art communicates to the self and to others. Both forms of communication are therapeutic activity which facilitate personal acknowledgement and validation. When art communicates the artist sees herself validated and authenticated in the art and in the response of others. London (1989) assures:

The end of art is not art, but communication, or better still communion, breaking out of the solitariness and silence of one dimension of ourselves and making contact with the "other." That other may be intrapsychic: the conscious mind acknowledging the subconscious; or it may be interpsychic: one person meeting another; or it may even be transpersonal: one self touching the universe. (p. 74)

Between natalistic workshops Johanna had written a poem about the experience of one of her drawings. Johanna stated she wanted the poem read but would have trouble doing so herself. In response another workshop participant offered to read Johanna's poem. Her poem and drawing were about personal validation and empowerment. The healing process which was occurring through creative expression and communication, was furthered by the group process, an account of which follows:

MI: How did that feel to have such a strong voice, that powerful woman read it to you.

Johanna: It felt really good. It felt like it really said it for me the way I couldn't say it; like the way I really feel.

MI: Do you know that you're that powerful. That women see you as a very powerful woman, as a role model of a powerful woman even?

Johanna: I don't feel very powerful right now. It eludes me. I have a sense of it but I

MI: Yeah sure. It felt nice to have Brigette read it, it felt like I could hear her writing, you know that place that she built inside and how it was like a giving. The poem says a lot. Can you tell us about the drawing?

Johanna: It's just like what I wrote.

MI: How does the baby feel?

Johanna: I can't get there yet, I wish I could. I can only draw it, you know, I can't feel it.

MI: How do you feel after having Brigette read.

Johanna: More, like if I can own my own words or if I can accept that I wrote. I know that I will bridge it, and get to be that baby to that Mom; but right now I'm just it's like a realization of a loss, you know? It's just too much.

In my therapy I've come to know a lot, I've worked through a lot of feelings in all the years, but there's something different about this you know. I thought I felt it before but I think I feel it a lot more now than I did before. And I keep getting flooded with memories about my parents.

MI: Ok. Would anybody like to say something to Johanna?

Sarah: It's a really powerful piece. I'm moved by it.

Brigette: I find the colours very powerful in a very powerful way. Maybe, they are some of my favourite colours.

Johanna: Oh, I know I love the colours too.

Brigette: And I noticed the softness in the mother's face.

Johanna: Uh hum. It's angelic, eh? It's frightening.

MI: How so?

Johanna: I don't know. I just didn't think I could draw that kind of softness. It's almost like a nun, or like a holy person.

Cynthia: Madonna

Deborah: Actually I thought of that while also looking at yours, kind of Madonna and child.

MI: I think to be able to draw that, particularly to draw it with the depth of feeling inside, you have to be in touch with it, both able to see it, and to receive it.

Johanna: I know it will come.

MI: It has come. In order to draw that you have to be in touch with that.

Johanna: Ok.

MI: So it's there, it may mature more and it may spread; but it is there in order to be able to do that depth of art work.

Johanna: I didn't want a man in the picture. I think that's kind of sad in a way, but that's the way it is.

Brigette: Is this baby actually nursing?

Johanna: Probably. I couldn't make it distinct though.

Brigette: I keep looking from that to you sucking on your glasses.

(Laughter)

Johanna: Good observation.

The content of art may be so familiar to the artist that its voice goes unnoticed. At times it takes the comment of others for the artists' picture to begin working back as communication to the self. Deborah shares how the comment of another person affected her relationship with a natalistic drawing:

When Sarah saw my drawing she said, "Whoa. You've got my attention." It was interesting to hear her response because the drawing felt so congruent and familiar for me. Like it felt that it was just normal in terms of my image of what it was like in the womb. When I was looking at the drawing it did not feel like it was impacting for me. To me the picture did not feel like it stood out, it just felt congruent with how I imagined it was. With Sarah's emphatic response I knew it was a strong picture and it was saying a lot even though I was not in an objective position to see it and how it impacts.

In the natalistic workshop groups, individuals commented on the importance for them of having other group members viewing their work and the value of seeing other people's art. Another artist who did a natalistic drawing at home wanted to share the drawing with others in order to help the drawing speak to her. According to Brigette, "When I finished the drawing I sort of wanted to bring it for sharing with the group. I guessed it was probably the animal in the drawing and I thought that somehow by sharing it, I could learn something more about it."

The person who discovers art's ability for inner communication, self-awareness, and personal transformation can use art in the therapy setting or day to day life as a readily available personal guide and therapist. As Johanna commented:

One of the other people in the workshop had said, "when she did not know what she was feeling and she would just start to draw; then she would feel better and then she would hold the drawing against herself." I tried it and it worked for me as well. After the workshop it stayed with me as something that I could do if I did not know what I was feeling. I have a big pad of paper at home and some pastels. When I'm not certain what is going on with me I'll start to do a drawing.

I go with whatever colours or shapes happen. It is a kind of a communication. I might put the drawing close to my body, though sometimes I can't; I might just cry. The art work process can bring forth feelings and I can see what I am sad about. Doing the drawing and looking at it mirrors my inner self in a way that brings on my tears and allows an emotional release. The drawing is a way of looking and seeing what I can't if I just try to figure out what going on. It is something I cannot figure out with my head. When I tried to figure out with my head what was going on I often ended up giving up. Then I found I could either draw or just go inside to the universe and kind of have conversations with it. Getting in touch with that place helps me know what's going on for me. There are times I do not know what it is that is bothering me. I am agitated and anxious and I don't know what's going on. Now I can draw it out or I can just go into a state of relaxation and have it kind of shown to me. The drawings have been really helpful and I may write as well. I will draw and I write. Generally I draw and I write with the left hand. I let my left hand tell me everything even in the writing.

Several of the professional artists who were part of the Natalistic Art in Therapy Research population mentioned the significance to them of the validation they received by showing their work and having it received by people on an emotional level. Sarah stated, "For me, a lot of the experience with making art and having people see my art has been about being heard, being acknowledged and communicating my experience to people."

Emerson and I spoke about when personally revealing art is exhibited then one's deepest inner self is exhibited. There is the possibility of therapeutic validation from having one's art witnessed. But public exhibitions also carry the risk of deep personal wounding through the work being misunderstood or criticized. When art speaks from the deeper self, in part it is the vulnerable child within who is being exposed and made available through the art show. Unlike the therapy setting, the witnesses of public art may not be trained clinicians. The public audience does not have a professional obligation to be sensitive to psychologically vulnerable material. The artist who works on personal material and does a public show with that work must take care to have adequate boundaries and support of the inner child and inner self. This can be particularly true of exhibitions of natalistic art work due to its coming from forces at the very foundation of the psyche.

A LIFE FORCE IN THE WOMB

During natalistic regression, artists commonly experience contact with an order greater than themselves. Some artists refer to this as a life force, the cosmos, spirituality or "where it all started.1" Art activity (McNiff, 1989; Rogers, 1993) and pre- and perinatal regression (Grof, 1975; Adzema 1985) separately have been noted for their ability to assist people in making contact with the deepest realms of the inner self and the external universe. Art is often described in one form or another as "the search for meaning" (London, 1989). Cameron (1992) verifies that the journey of the artist is often "in essence, a spiritual path, initiated and practised through creativity" (p. xi). Accounts of a connection with the universe, a life force or spirituality as an aspect of early regression experiences from birth right back to just prior to conception (Grof, 1975; Laing, 1976; Lake, 1981; Farrant, 1993). Adzema (1985) notes:

These experiences often are related to gaining access to a time before the first "shutdown," which is the first time that trauma forces a retreat from one's full capabilities and consciousness. Our experience has been that the time before initial shutdown varies among people, but usually ranges from before the fertilization of the egg to some time in utero. (pp. 95-96)

Tragedies, pain and negative experiences may be identified during regression to conception and early embryonic life; conversely, individuals also draw pictures of, or speak about, a sense of hope; a connection to the universe; a sense of family history; something spiritual, a life force or energy; timelessness or boundlessness. In speaking of her natalistic drawing Sarah related:

The yellow represents some hope, and the blue as well; and the mauve -- nurturance and love. It was very important to me that those same colours that were inside me were also inside the womb and then beyond the womb so there is a sense of permeability with all life. It is like this sense of being this cosmic child. Just a part of all life.

There is some feeling of expansion. Moving out, feeling that moment of conception of the sperm piercing the egg and this burst of creation going on. I feel very hopeful when I look at this drawing now, at the orange and the yellow. Again the green being life, and purple for me is very spiritual on all levels. [The colours of her womb surround are green and purple]...a connection through all life, and through all time. This and the paradox of there being a sense of timeless, spaceless, unconfined moment. Occupying no space and at the same time all space.

For some, the natalistic conception-regression provides a vague, general or globalized sense of experience. Others perceive elements of details or may have clear insights about the influence of their conception experiences. The feeling of a conception drawing is often quite energetic, with lots of powerful colours, a combination of simple and sparse symbols and imagery, and a greater content of colours in the form of abstract natalistic scribbles or patches of colour. Occasionally, conception drawings have only a few simple lines. When clay sculpting is used as the natalistic art in therapy medium I have seen more of the conception art works that have quite simple lines and forms.

Reattaching to an experience of sacredness can occur in many places along the continuum of natalistic regression to the pre- and perinatal realm. Indeed, historically and cross-culturally rituals of transformation and searches for deeper meaning have involved rebirth and creation rites which quite accurately recreate biological birth or conception and early gestational events (Eliade, 1958; Irving, 1988). Noble (1993) allows:

In mystical scriptures of the East, intuitives have pondered the metaphysical aspects of conception for centuries. The ancient religious notions of the sperms as numen (spiritual force) and conception as numinous (filled with presence of divinity)....

In the old Christian tradition, the pneuma or spirit is called pneuma spermaticon. (p. 141)

Rebirth and creation rites employ a high degree of creative expressive activity. It is acknowledged that artistic expression and gestational regression connect the initiate with the

larger cosmos and deeper dimensions of the self (Janus, 1991). Eliade (1958) states:

Although it is risky to compare religious documents belonging to such different ages and cultures, I have taken the risk because all these religious facts fit into a pattern.... From all this, one common characteristic emerges -- access to the sacred and to the spirit is always figured as an embryonic gestation and a new birth. (p. 58)

The quest for the primal gestational origins of spirituality or greater meaning is not limited to the ritual of organized religions. The sculptor Goertzen (1994) tells the story of a child's desire to hold onto her deep and meaningful prenatal connection:

I heard of a couple who brought home their second child and their three year old girl insisted she must be with the baby alone. They kept putting her off but she would not relent. The suspicious parents finally gave in to her but, suspecting sibling rivalry and sinister motives, listened in on the baby monitor. They heard the little girl say to the baby: "Tell me what God is like. I'm beginning to forget." (p. 10)

Some individuals have reported that their experiences of positive elements of their earliest lives assisted them with making it through a particularly tragic childhood. Others have related that the life force contacted through producing natalism was quite beneficial in therapeutically repatterning deep wounds from a difficult birth or painful childhood. Khamsi (1987) reports similar findings of people who used primal therapy to regress to birth [through primalling]:

Some subjects reported that birth feelings led to a variety of behavioral, emotional, mental, and spiritual changes in their lives. For some, having birth feelings was a journey to the deepest or ultimate place in themselves, to the centre of existential identity. According to Jill, "when I experience birth feelings it's like I go to the core of myself, and that everything else starts from there. And that when I'm in touch with that core of myself, I have a heightened sense of awareness and that the core is connected to a whole lot of other feelings and of really just who I am, that's where it all started."

For many, birth feelings seemed to hold a special significance. Some reported a new perspective of their body, their children, their emotions, human existence, or even the nature of reality. Sometimes it seemed to be a "turning point" or "something sacred." (p. 51)

I have noted that survivors of severe and repeated childhood trauma find significant value in natalistic work. Returning to the energy of the earliest gestational periods touches on powerful repatterning potential. Additionally, survivors of abusive childhoods find a place in early life where existence was not ruled by violence, neglect and betrayal. Susan, who went through a difficult prenatal period and childhood -- survived a number of attempted abortions, was unwanted prenatally and in childhood, and had to cope with childhood sexual assault relates that, in her drawing:

The yellow is my spirit ready to come into me, and I had a sense of my spirit is what brought me through. I would never have survived without my spirit, at times it gave me a lot of strength. It's full of light and it was a very happy spirit until it got in this mess. The yellow is the spirit which I have before conception. To the left of the spirit is just the grey. The grey is the egg and the orange things are the, you know -- what is trying to get in. They're orange because orange is danger to me.

In spite of Susan's experience of tragically neglectful and abusive childhood, there remained on the deepest levels a powerful sense of life which she attributed to the earliest embryonic times. When she finally connected with this life force through natalistic art, she was able, through the use of art in her daily life, to integrate a repatterning quality of pleasure and nurture. Broder (1978) affirms that:

Experiencing early feelings of love and unadulterated joy help to gain closer touch with the positive parts of our real self - an obvious goal of therapy. They also provide the lifelines necessary to help one go through some of the deepest, most terrifying feelings of primal pain. (p. 5)

Johanna had been brutally beaten and raped as a child. She was left for dead, and when found, came in and out of consciousness for the next two weeks. Both at the time of the original childhood trauma and later, while painfully working through the terrifying trauma, she made contact with what she felt were her original connections to the universe. A long and difficult drugged birth left Johanna feeling she was not sure if she had died at birth. Deadening qualities of her early birth trauma blended with her later assault in a ravine. One of her natalistic drawings integrated her prenatal experience and her childhood trauma and adult issues with her survival strength from her connection with the universe. According to Johanna:

There are a number of different things happening in the drawing which are related to each other. At the time of the drawing I was going through a crisis in myself. I did not feel I could any longer function in the day to day world. The only way I could find to get out of it seemed to be to go the spiritual way.

In the drawing the crisis found in the places were the red lines are. It seems there is so much red happening -- around, in the ravine. The bottom right hand corner with the child in the coffin, is the ravine and rape, beating and near death. The red line around the large body filled in with black is my birth. The smaller red body with all the red marks all over it is all the torture they did to me throughout my childhood.

In the image of a coffin in the ravine I am buried under the ground there. It is like dying. I am absolutely dead, in the ground, hidden. In the larger body the black is the death surrounding birth. It is interesting that the image of the baby in the womb has still got the universe.

It is extraordinary that there is an incredible calm in the middle of the image of those three images. I do not know how I stayed like that, but maybe that calm has always stayed. Looking at the drawing I can see that part of me has always stayed protected. That connection to the universe, that knowing.

In a way I stayed protected by being hidden from the horrible outside experiences. In my therapy and in the natalism work I let the universe come out and change what the those side experiences mean in my life.

It felt exciting and wonderful to realize that my inner innocence had been protected that long. That a deep hidden part of me was emerging and was feeling safe enough to emerge too. For me there were all really good signs of healing. It made me feel excited for my life and how it was going to become.

Change did not come easily, but it I felt like I knew that important changes would come in my life. To experience real change beyond a picture I felt like I would have to work at it. I began doing imagery of what I would like my life to be. It was difficult to image my life with out the kind of suffering I was use to. But I did begin to feel I had all the choices in the world. I went about cutting out pictures and identify what kind of an environment I like. I began asking what are the things that I love.

Johanna continued to find her original spiritual force a powerful strength and effective nurturing attribute. She has continued to use the process she learned through the natalistic workshop with a variety of issues, and she has related to me how she finds it highly effective. As a result of the repeated, severe traumas Johanna suffered, her healing has been a trying journey. Finding a connection to the universe through her natalistic work was a point of pivotal change for Johanna.

When pain is at its most tragic levels there is a need to split off from the unbearable and go to somewhere safe (Stewart, 1987). This dissociative coping response often allows an individual to retain strengths, perseverance and hope in spite of overwhelming tragedy. Cynthia perceives that her first splitting occurred through the experience of conception as a rape. With the most tragic of childhoods to follow, she spent a lifetime coping through splitting. Speaking about her conception drawing Cynthia relates:

And then he become part of the egg and I feel like a rape, an angry rape, and there's confusion, and then I'm starting to feel ambivalent, I don't give a shit at this point....

Well I didn't even get to implantation. I just did not want to do it, so then I started to say: who cares, I don't. It doesn't matter where I go from here. I'm lost. I've been invaded, ambivalence, I don't care, scattered mind, no direction.... There's containment and then there's no containment.... Then I said: Where's God and the peaceful meadow, and the sun and the place I feel whole? I wanted to go back up the fallopian tube, back towards heaven; in fact beyond that to the universe is where I want to go. And then I perceive the tree of life, a heavenly tree, and this is me in the tree [in the drawing], a beautiful tree, a lot of beauty.... I did not care what happened to me, so I just let the forces take over and the egg moved on and I decided to go backwards. The tree of life is not my mom's womb though, I'm in God's womb.

One of the strengths of Cynthia's splitting was that it made it possible for her to retain a positive life energy, separate from her trauma experiences. In her healing, it was highly beneficial for Cynthia to connect, both with the ramifications of that early trauma and its wounding, as well as for her to come into contact with her early connection with a peaceful place. She was able to do this in part through the natalistic process. Speaking with Cynthia nearly three years later, she related that the integration and personal empowerment which occurred out of this element of the natalistic work stayed with her and was an important ingredient in her ongoing life and her personal therapy.

- REPRESENTATION, SYMBOLISM, METAPHOR

AND INTERPRETATION IN NATALISM

The artwork itself makes interpretation and connections, and functions as a story teller articulating the conscious and unconscious saga of the artist. Schaverien (1992) suggests:

that the stages of the life of the picture all involve interpretation, in its widest sense. However, this is not merely a translation from the visual to the verbal mode; even if this were possible, it would not be desirable. Instead the image is recognised as a form of articulation in itself. (p. 104)

Throughout the art process the art work is speaking to the artist; in itself, creating insight, connections and elucidating meaning. Rogers, (1993) writes, "looking at the symbols that emerge in our art can add to our intellectual understanding of our identity and the dynamics of behaviour" (p. 75). The art work is an inner voice which presents an external expression of the artist's deepest self. The purpose of this contact is to be more oneself. Noble (1993) allows, "Making connections is like finding lost treasures. Contact and connection improve not only within oneself but between others as we unwrap our unopened packages. We come closer to developing a balance among instinct, intellect, and intuition" (p. 121). Sarah commented:

In a way the early feelings and experiences that were uncovered and connected with through the workshop validated my present day kind of stance towards life. It suddenly made sense to me why I see the world the way I see it. My present day suspicion and difficulty with trust was coloured by those early feelings of having my energy sucked out of me and being used.

Verbal and dream therapy place considerable emphasis on symbol and metaphor. Indeed, language and dreams are largely flavoured by symbol and metaphor. Art activity is process, and as such, therapeutic discussion about the process of creating the art and images can be as valuable as dissecting the symbolism in the imagery of the art. This dynamic is even more pronounced when working with early preverbal material. These earliest roots of feeling and issues are impressionistic, somatic and as Emerson (1987) notes are intimately associated with movement. The birth and prenatal foundations of psychological issues are laid down in the psyche before the formation of cognitive symbolization.

Like words, artwork can depict or represent birth and prenatal experience; and artwork can express metaphors and symbols of early conditions and feelings. Birtchnell (1984) states, "Much of what is expressed in art therapy would come under the heading of metaphor" (p. 39). Interestingly Birtchnell (1984) then goes on to present a list of metaphors in art, any one of which could be a birth or prenatal metaphor in the interpretive manner which I have bracketed []:

A subject may represent his situation by imagery such as heavy weights hanging from his neck [umbilical cord tied around neck at birth], being covered by a glass dome [womb, implantation or embryonic sac], tossing like a cork in the sea [cataclysm at birth or floating in turbulent embryonic waters], being an insignificant speck in an empty landscape [early gestational smallness], surrounded by locked doors [second birth matrix (BPM II)], or fluttering above everything like a butterfly [first trimester floating in the womb or fallopian tube]. (p. 39)

Pre- and perinatal symbolism and metaphors are commonly expressed in terms of movement, physical conditions or global impressions. They are found as much in the process of creating the work as in the expressed images themselves. The artist may experience "birth like" emotional or physical feelings of pressure, being blocked, needing to get through, feeling unsafe or a sense of impending change which will be unbearable. Deborah remarks:

I have been aware I am starting to have a body response around fears of being in the world. Fears of coming out or going out into the world -- that it is not safe, it is not safe to be me, fears of revealing, of being naked and exposed -- those kind of things. I really relate them to birth metaphors.

Birth and in utero conditions which have left a psychological legacy often involved a degree of physical stress and risk, and were processed, and have been mediated, in consciousness associated with body memory. Pre- and perinatal imagery and art expressions are often rich in physical symbolism and metaphor. These physical metaphors in natalistic art can be experienced in the process of creating the art, and/or in the sense of movement and relationship of the objects, images, forms and colours in the artwork itself.

It may be that childhood experiences have a greater affinity with the abstraction of symbol, and that preverbal experience has an attraction to the form of metaphor, or that the developmentally older language mind tends towards abstracting, and nonverbal consciousness registers impression. Dalley (1984) makes an interesting comment about the propensity of metaphor to be associated with physical phenomena. Dally (1984) notes, "A distinguishing feature of metaphor and its symptomatic counterpart is that they tend towards embodiment, even metaphors composed of words usually refer through them to physical phenomena" (p. 25). In art activity, birth metaphors may be found in the images of the art work, and quite importantly, are likely to be found in the experience of the process of creating the artwork.

The longer I have helped people work with therapeutic natalism, the less I have sought theoretically to categorize universal meaning behind the images found in natalistic creations. The actual meaning of any symbol or metaphor can come only from the individual artist who created the images. McNiff (1989) notes "What distinguishes art as a mode of inquiry is the unequivocal subjectivity and individuality of its perspective. Artistic descriptions do not give the pretence of being without bias" (p. 6)

In short, there is only one rule for picture interpretation: to know that one does not know. With this in mind, the therapist need only follow three main principles in analysing unconscious pictures.

The first is to always note one's initial impression of a picture. One should not interpret the picture, but rather concentrate on one's initial feelings.

The second principle is for the analyst to act as a researcher.

The third and often most difficult principle in picture interpretation is to synthesize what has been learned from individual components and assemble this information into a whole.

A significant value of symbols and metaphor is in the multiple layers on which they can exist (Eliade, 1958). McNiff (1993) contends, "Symbols are images which refer to something other than themselves. Symbolism is a function attached to imagery; it suggests both personal and universal meanings. The symbol generates multiple interpretations as distinguished from the sign which has one meaning" (p. 52). The multiplicity of symbols and metaphors allows them to make statements, yet defies the linear restrains of left brain rational order. Expression, insight and understanding are generated within the context of experiences which have diverse, and sometimes contradictory, meaning and relationship to time. For example the spoken word or visual image of containment can simultaneously express adult, childhood and prenatal experience. In addition, containment can be support or unwanted restraint. Containment can be process or artifact. The visual illustration of containment can assist left brain rational understanding or manifest right brain expression of emotion. Williams (1983) refers to metaphor as "a 'language' of both hemispheres" (p. 55). McNiff (1993) states, "Metaphors are images which are used symbolically for the purpose of comparison, articulation, elucidation" (p. 53).

Brigette's drawing illustrates the diversity of symbolic content which an art work can contain. Additionally she reveals the multiple levels and meanings in which a single image or symbol may successfully function:

The drawing started from the assumption that no matter what happened the first time around I was not going to continue to live out of that reality. In a way I figured that there was a me now surrounded by the kind of environment that she wanted as a baby and still wants as an adult. In the drawing the baby is safely cuddled within me, well protected and cared for. There is a hand behind me that is kind of like the hand of god, sort of there, encompassing and supporting.

The big E is the E word, Encouragement. She wanted to be born into an encouraging world. I am the brown middle figure. The one on the right with the smile is a symbolic parent so there would be at least one adult who cared and smiled about the fact that I existed. The little faces on the other side represent friends so that, at the baby's time, there would be other babies to play with. There would be other people for the baby today.

The music symbols felt obvious. I wanted there to be music in the baby's world.... In the drawing the music also symbolized something more than linear thought, it was not just kind of boxes. When I was drawing the music notes it reminded me of music so that is supposed to be a music rest over on the side. The music rest represents opportunities to rest and be at peace.

The books are there because I wanted the wisdom and knowledge of books to be part of the environment. They are purposely not too big because I think books have real limitations. There are things like the encouragement and support. The green over to the right is grass, trees and other nature stuff. The water in the picture is really important to me. The mountains are there so that it is not all a kind of uneventful life. The brown establishes the fact that there is a path that goes through the green place and the mountains and goes to the water. It is navigable. The dog had to get in there somehow because an ideal world has to have dogs in it.

The yellow sun is shining light on everything, and even more symbolically the yellow is lightness and nurture. The yellow is in the overall picture. In the womb the same colour is in about the same place. It means nurture and growth. The sun makes things grow, but the yellow is almost more like a touch from the creator.

There is a natural desire to just know and to have ready answers. It would be nice and convenient to have a repertoire of pat, simple and exact solutions and axioms about the human psyche to always follow but people's responses to situations are idiosyncratic and generalization denies individual experience. Rules and theories of interpretation can be helpful as guideposts and points of reflection, but they are to be set aside in dealing with a person's actual experience.

There is clearly a value in therapists' knowing the meanings and historical background of symbols and the various interpretations others may have made in relation to a symbol or image. But in actual practice it is difficult to make precise, definite and indisputable statements about the universal meanings of art images and individual colours and forms. To apply blanket theoretical generalizations to a client's art is inappropriate, if not offensive and intrusive. Rhyne (1984) states:

The actual images in any art creation are its most obvious content, but its total message cannot be discerned without referring to the total context of the images -- the style in which they're portrayed, the relationships between figures, the choice of emphasis in depiction, and quite often, what has been left out of the picture. I cannot provide any reliable structure for interpreting art: there are too many variables in the individual, cultural, and psychological experience of the creator. In order to make sense out of such messages, we must always consider the widest possible gamut of expression aspects. (p. 90)

Some symbols are culturally influenced and others may be entirely personally driven. One person's internal and external life is too unique for another person to externally apply pre formulated and generic interpretation of personal symbol and metaphor. Additionally, it is likely that some art symbols and experiences do not translate into language and belong to the domain of the nonverbal. Schaverien (1992) postulates that:

In the aesthetic object opposing forces are contained and held, in a resolution which negates neither. This tension distinguishes the work of art from a mere series of marks on paper. Such an image cannot be replaced by words, no more can the word be replaced by an image. Language and art reside side by side and complement each other. (p. 104)

Additionally, some art is not interpretable by others, but is an expression of a private symbolism. On a healing level it can be inconsequential whether an artist's therapeutic picture has meaning to anyone else. The important quality of the art is that it has meaning to

its creator (Rhyne 1984). Dalley (1984) states:

However experienced or well-qualified an art therapist, the only person able or "qualified" to interpret correctly is the "artist", as the meaning of the painting has relevance only to his or her personal situation. The therapist may speculate, suggest, and connect aspects of the picture, but this occurs within the therapeutic relationship in an environment of trust, openness, and safety, and should not occur outside this context. (p. xxiv)

Some early experience which is therapeutically processed may never be fully known or assured cognitively to therapist or client. Pre- and perinatal experience occurred decades previously in the client's life and were mediated before abstracting cognition and logic. Over time, the artist tries on impressionistic emotions, or thoughts in an endeavour to make sense of her world. The artist is not certain of the validity or accurateness of these early feelings or conditions, but they arise as curiosities or strong senses.

Psychological process and resolution may occur often beyond the dimensions of verbal perception. The artist may effectively process what is needed from the experience of artistic exploration. The symbols and images created in exploratory art work may be representative of what they actually illustrate, but they still may be associated with material which will never be solidly assured. For instance, blighted twins (a twin that dies during gestation, generally in the first trimester) are a possibility in thirty percent of pregnancies, but few people consciously or medically know of such a condition in relation to themselves. (Farrant, 1993). Some people who prenatally regress are certain they have lost a twin in utero; others wonder, but are not certain. One artist explored this sense:

Some of my natalism work has made me wonder if maybe there was a twin. I wondered with all the emphasis on how small I was whether my birth was premature or if indeed I was a twin. I wondered if there was a twin could this other twin even have survived. The drawing which everyone else did at the previous workshop I did the day following the workshop because I had to miss the workshop. I was all curled up on the paper and it felt like there was this nice warm something against my back. On one side of the drawing there was empty space. In relationship to the empty space found in the drawing Michael and I speculated as to whether that area was a place for a twin or something.

I let the idea of a twin kind of sit there over the following week between workshops to see if anything more came. The next week the presence of a twin in the womb with me still felt like a possibility though I did not have any more insight about it over the week. I thought about my liking to shoot photographs where one image is really clear and then there is a duplicate of the image. The photographing of duplicate images -- like a reflection in a mirror or off of glass or water.

When the artist is not certain of the exact origin of pre- or perinatal symbols or content I will non-judgementally, and non-committally present my impression. When I do so I will also voice the position that I do not know exactly what happened prenatally, but I do know what the person is feeling or experiencing in the present, from what she has shared with me. It is important to acknowledge that one hears, and also to be validating in being honest that one does not know for sure, although something may make a lot of sense. What is most important is asking if it makes a difference and if there is a way in which the artist can advance in her endeavour to improve the conditions of her present life. Hall (1987) states:

Some of the patients I spoke with felt that the "artwork" -- "the images and doing them" -- had been the basic agent for change, and that interpretation and talking about them had been unnecessary.... These patients felt it very important for their paintings to be given space and validity in their own right, to be allowed to "speak" and work and develop in their own way, and in their own time. (p. 182)

In working with individuals and particularly in working with a group, I often do little direct interpretation of peoples' art work. Rather, I facilitate processes and experiences which allow each individual to make their own personal interpretations. In order to appreciate and help a person to understand the experience, it is far better to listen to their interpretations and insights about how life has uniquely affected her. How the artist sees her symbols or interprets her colours probably imparts more of what the natalistic images are actually about than what any particular theory might say. Winnicott (1971), in his maturing as a veteran therapist, stated:

If only we can wait, the patient arrives at understanding creatively and with immense joy, and I now enjoy this more than I used to enjoy the sense of having been clever. I think I interpret mainly to let the patient know the limits of my understanding. The principle is that it is the patient and only the patient who has the answers. (p. 102)

Therapeutic transformation involves not only grasping the immediate insights related to the current therapeutic material, but also gaining problem solving skills which will continue to serve clients long after therapy has finished. Wadeson (1980) imparts:

I wish to model the experimentation I hope the client will develop, I offer my hunches, as such, to be discarded if they are not helpful at the time.

Usually, though, I don't intervene until the client appears finished with her exploration, so as not to interrupt her train of thought. It is then I am most likely to follow my hunches and try to take her further to "somewhere where she's never been before" through probing questions or encouragement to fantasy. (p. 40)

The permanence of art imagery allows the artist to return to the symbols and metaphor in the natalistic work. Unlike the symbols and metaphors verbalized in talk therapy, the memories of which fade with the passing of time, the symbols and metaphors in an art work remain in the picture. What is not gleaned at one sitting may be touched on at a later time. Wadeson (1980) assures:

It is not necessary to plumb any one art expression to its depths. Material in the picture that is significant will emerge again and again. The main thing is to encourage the client in her own self exploration so that this process may continue long after the therapy has ended. (p. 40)

Rather than connect to "THE" meaning of symbols in natalism I have tended to gather, question and hone approaches to asking questions. The therapist looks at an art work and says to himself, "Oh that's an interesting question; what if I asked that question or this question." Symbols and metaphors in therapeutic art are for use as a facilitator for the client's self-discovery. Therapeutic responses to natalistic art are those questions or statements that draw people deeper into, and create more focus on, their own specific experience of their art and of their life. There are many different questions and lines of questioning which the clinician can pursue in relation to therapeutic productions of art. The kinds of questions to ask and the specificity of the questions should always be in the context of where the person is in that moment and where the person is going. It is the client's therapy and the clinician's job to follow the lead of the client.

This kind of probing can be achieved by: pointing out in the form of a question; by making comments like "I am curious about" or "I find it interesting"; by reflecting on what you as the therapist are experiencing. Rogers (1993) states that, "you show respect for the product and the artist":

By owning your feelings and thoughts as personal reactions, rather than analysing or interpreting the art. For example, you might say: "When I look at this picture, I feel lonely (or agitated, or sad). Is that the mood you experience?" or, "To me, it looks like..." This helps differentiate between your truth and the artist's truth of the image. (p. 77).

Rogers (1993) concurs that one must "ask the artist if she wants your impressions or input" (p. 77). Schaverien (1992) "just as with words in psychotherapy, it is possible to be invasive by making premature interpretation about pictures".

I am not suggesting that interpretations of therapeutic art should never occur. Rather I am emphasizing that interpretation should be primarily client directed. As Verny (1994) states, "Interpretations must be linked to the client's mental processes and not the therapist's" (p. 184). The interpretations and reframing which are meaningful and make an impact on the client's life are those which occur inside the psyche of the client.

Therapeutic questions of experience and process explore what the person is experiencing before, during or after a drawing or a part of a drawing. Focusing and specificity are arrived at by exploring what is happening for the artist while she/he is working on a particular area of the drawing. Asking about repeating patterns of colour, placement, image and size relations, etc. follows up on significant working on themes of the artist.

The artist might be asked, in relation to a drawing: What is your experience of...? For you, what would the colour...be saying? What was happening for you when those soft colours were being shaded in? What does black energy look like to you, or remind you of? Are the hands reaching to that blackness outside the womb surround, or are they protecting you from it? What does that baby want to say? I notice the feet and hands are drawn without any detail, is there anything happening there? What do you feel inside when you look at this drawing? What does that baby want to say to her mommy? What does that baby need right now? If you could give that baby something what would that be? What were you feeling when you made this drawing, ...after you made it, ...before you made it? What changed when you made the drawing? Is there a place inside you where this baby resides? What are some things which you could do for that baby this week?

The purpose of therapeutic process is to effect positive change in peoples' lives. Returning to the pre and perinatal realm through natalism can assist a person to understand and transform long term core life patterns. Cynthia lived with a shadow of resignation and despair in her world. Her natalistic art symbolized and depicted her inner experience. The natalistic process helped her connect with and resolve the early origins of her core feelings. Her natalistic art and process not only served to express her wounds, but served as symbol and metaphor for repatterning her outlook and embracing a vitality in life. As Cynthia explains:

 

Michael C. Irving, Ph.D. and Cheryl Irving, B.A.
have a private practice partnership serving
as psychotherapists with individuals and groups.

For more than 20 years their practice has encompased individual clients and psychotherapy workshops and trainings on - healing emotional trauma through regressive therapies, mind/body integration, dissociative disorders, ego state therapy, primal therapy, art therapy, prenatal parenting and, working with pre and prenatal issues through art.

To book clinical work or

mediation call (416)469-4764