Properties of Natalistic Art
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Properties of Nataistic Art

NATALISM AS EXPRESSION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

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 Goertzen as a Natalistic Artist, 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.

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)

 

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