Images of sexualities: Language and embodiment in art therapy

Abstract

This article has its origins in a paper ‘Queer Languages/Cultural Bodies’ (which I presented at the conference Queer Analysis, organised by Pink Therapy in October 2004), an extended version of which was published in Psychodynamic Practice, Vol. 11, No. 4 (November 2005). In those earlier papers I drew considerably on the imagery produced by women in a workshop which I facilitated entitled, ‘Am I a Lesbian?’ which I discuss here. I have very much welcomed the opportunity to develop the theme of language and sexualities specifically in relation to art therapy. I aim to open out possibilities of interpretations of sexualities which are not universalising and which arise from an attention to the uniqueness and specificity of the patient's language. I highlight how a phenomenological perspective in particular, Merleau-Ponty's, in which subjectivity is theorised as embodied, contextual and located in language (whether visual, verbal, or gestural), can contribute to a sensitivity to the diversity of sexualities. I am also inspired by Fanon's (1952) and Foucault (1978)'s theorising of the historical and cultural specificity of identities and the richness of Audre Lorde's (1982) poetic explorations of these themes in her novel, Zami. I argue that the imagery of art therapy and the multifarious possibilities of the art media are particularly valuable for the exploration of lived experiences of sexualities, conscious and unconscious.

Notes

1. As Twomey (2003) has documented, during the 1990s in Britain significant challenges to classical psychoanalytic theories of sexuality began to emerge from within the psychoanalytic community (O'Connor and Ryan (1993), Ellis 1994). In 1996 an invitation by the Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists (an organisation for psychotherapists working in the British NHS) to Socarides, the American psychoanalyst, well-known for his pathologising of homosexuality, led to a petition signed by 200 psychotherapists calling for more open debate on this issue. Gradually, most psychoanalytic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy organisations have produced Equal Opportunities policies stating that they do not discriminate against candidates on the grounds of sexual orientation (Twomey 2003, p. 8).