Jungian Art Therapy by Swan-Foster Nora;

Author:Swan-Foster, Nora;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

Jungian Art Therapy: Carol’s Story

Carol worked in a male-dominant environment and when she became more visibly pregnant for the first time, she felt increasingly abandoned by her work community. She felt conspicuous. However, Carol wanted to take notice of what was happening to her as she realized this might be her only pregnancy. In the past, she had identified with the masculine and sacrificed her feminine needs for her professional work. Carol’s father was overbearing and her mother had died. Like a fairy tale, the mother or feminine was deficient in Carol’s life. She often sought emotional support from her husband, but she was not confident that he could provide this while she was pregnant.

Carol was pregnant and wanted to explore the idea of femininity that had become visible to her through her changing body. She said, “I guess all these people (men) in my life have seen me as another guy, and I have no one to share my feelings with.” Working from a more ego perspective towards the unconscious in order to understand her femininity was problematic from the start as there was no guarantee that she would accept and integrate this new attitude. I gave her materials and she began to decorate a box. She took great care and worked on the outside of her box with feathers and a shell that resembled a unicorn (Figure 6.3).

A box is an intricate symbol. It is associated with both birth and death; it is a “container” that holds new objects within fixed limits, and yet as a transitional space, it also holds the old and death. Framed with sides as boundaries, it implies the body as a container of soul, organs, life, energy and waste, as well as feelings, thoughts, and somatic experiences. A pregnant woman’s womb might be symbolized as a box that contains the child. In slang language, the woman’s “box” is sometimes used to refer to her vagina, a place that holds the potential for many things including joy and passion, as well as pain and suffering. A box with a cover would suggest different things than a box without a cover. The opening of a box induces emotions associated with anticipation, excitement, and perhaps fear or even dread. A common archetypal reference to a box is Pandora’s box, referring to a container that holds both the terrible and joyful things in life. Another reference is the box of beauty that Psyche was instructed by Aphrodite to collect from Persephone, who lived in the underworld.

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