Inaugural lecture, university of sheffield the eye of the beholder: Eros and art in psychotherapy

Abstract

This article is the text of the lecture, given on 3 April 2001, to mark the inauguration of Joy Schaverien as Professor Associate in Art Psychotherapy at the University of Sheffield. A number of themes from previous publications are revisited. The article draws on material first published in Desire and the Female Therapist: Engendered Gazes in Psychotherapy and Art Therapy(Schaverien, 1995). The title may be misleading, implying that the book is not for men, but this is far from the case. As the subtitle engendered gazes indicates, the themes of the book, and to a lesser extent this article, include detailed analysis of the aesthetic countertransference in analytical art psychotherapy. Attention to the gazes of the patient and therapist, mediated through pictures, reveals a form of countertransference that is influenced by the lure of image. In different psychological states this manifests in specific ways. The case material elucidates the influences of pictures in the treatment of anorexia and in clinical depression. In this article attention is given to the aesthetic and psychoanalytic effects of the spaces in-between, and the unique interpretive function of pictures as a special form of articulation and visual interpretation.