Newsletter, April, 2002

The Secret World of Drawings:

A Jungian Approach to Healing through Art

2nd edition

Gregg M. Furth

Inner City Books, 2002, Toronto, 153 pp.

Gregg Furth wrote his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross on the drawings of terminally-ill children, and went on to use drawings extensively in his practice as a Jungian analyst. His work on drawings as a doorway to the psyche is considered one of the linchpins of the art therapy profession.

In this small volume he illustrates how Jung’s ideas on the symbols of the unconscious may be used to help patients in need of psychological healing. By getting the patients to draw pictures, the therapist can gain an uncensored insight into the patient’s mind and help him bring problems to light. For the trained observer, drawings can also sometimes indicate physical problems and in the case of people near death, often give indications of the time the patient has left to live.

According to Furth,

… dreams and pictures … both touch the same level of the unconscious. Consequently, one can say that working with complexes can bring about growth and development of an individual psyche and that this work can be accomplished with art therapy.

Furth believes that pictures from the unconscious, as opposed to formal art produced by a trained artist, “represent primitive, raw material taken directly from the unconscious, undeveloped, yet filled with the unconscious content closely connected to the individual’s complexes.” Such pictures

bear a tremendous amount of psychic information. The idea is not to decipher with accuracy what is within the picture—in order to predict the person’s future—as much as it is to ask concise questions as to what the picture may be communicating.…If we want to follow the unconscious, we need to consider its suggestions and enlightenments, and so bring the individual into a greater state of consciousness.

According to Furth, there are three propositions we must accept in order to understand the language of drawings. The first is that there is an unconscious, and that drawings come from the same level of the unconscious as dreams. The second is that the picture must be accepted as a valid means of communicating with the unconscious and conveying its meaning reliably. In other words, the criterion of reliability means it should apply to virtually all people virtually all of the time. The third proposition is that body and mind are inextricably linked, and communicate with one another all the time.

Based on the acceptance of these somewhat dubious propositions, art therapists have developed a number of drawing techniques designed to elicit information on the state of the patient’s psyche. One of the most popular is the Kinetic Family Drawing, which is supposed to provide information about primary disturbances within the patient’s family. The Regressed Family Drawing is designed to provide information on the patient’s original family and thus give clues to hidden complexes. The House Tree Person drawing method is supposed to help in obtaining information about the patient’s sensitivity, maturity, degree of personality integration and interaction with the environment.

Furth is big on threes. He also has three rules for interpreting drawings—the first is to notice one’s initial impression of a picture, to note what feeling it evokes in you as the observer. Second, the analyst must act as a researcher, observing the materials used in the drawing, the relative size of the picture compared with the paper, and the focal point of the drawing. Thirdly, (and this, according to Furth, is the most difficult part) an analyst must synthesize the information from the picture into a whole.

The most interesting part of the book is the series of coloured drawings which follow the enunciation of these rules, and which Furth interprets according to various criteria. Many of the drawings are quite beautiful, but despite this fact Furth manages to find signs of pathology in most of them.

Art therapy is a challenging field for the non-professional, and this book helps to illuminate some of its important elements. Unfortunately, the writing style is turgid and repetitive, and the propositions Furth says must be accepted in order to benefit from art therapy require a substantial leap of faith.

However, it is hard to argue with the fact that Furth genuinely cares about his patients and finds art a way to access hidden areas of their psyches. He is also mindful of the need to go carefully, not to jump to conclusions that the patient may not be able to accept.

In allowing a patient to travel his “path,” the most common sign the therapist may encounter is the stop sign. The therapist must be aware that when he interrupts the patient, he is essentially stopping the patient from “travelling.”

This does need to be done occasionally, but students interrupt patients because the students are not getting answers to their questions. Perhaps an answer is the avoidance of answering. The avoidance serves a purpose and should not be ignored.

Furth notes that an error beginning therapists often make is trying to rid patients of all defence mechanisms. He advocates instead that defence mechanisms should be observed and befriended, not destroyed. It is easy to understand why patients would need defence mechanisms in dealing with therapists who interpret innocent and often lovely drawings as signs of pathology.

I read this short book twice, and had substantially different impressions with each reading. On the surface the book is interesting with attractive illustrations. However, a more careful reading raises a substantial number of questions about the validity of some of the concepts of art therapy. On the whole, I would say it is a book better suited to professional psychologists than to the general reader.

—Margaret Piton