Why projective drawings help with trauma?

According to research by a number of current psychologists and psychotherapists (Elbrecht, 2006; Kuban and Steele, 2008, Levine, 2005, Malchiodi, 2008; Oster, 2004; Peterson & Hardin, 1997; Sander, 2006; Silva, 2004, van der Kolk, McFarlane, & Weisaeth, 1996), sensory interventions rather than cognitive approaches can better help children overcome or minimize the learning, emotional and behavioral problems resulting from the traumatic arousal. The scholars mentioned believe that sensory-based interventions are more effective in assisting clients overcome the negative effects of their implicit memories caused by trauma and to restore effective emotional functioning. As a result, clearer thinking and positive coping strategies will become possible.

As indicated in the research of Steele (2009), traumatic memories are experienced at a sensory level and must be reactivated in a safe environment in order to be moderated and tolerated with a sense of power and feeling of safety. Traumatized people need to feel safe on a sensory level to restore the functions of the right brain and subsequently regain the ability to respond appropriately to future stress and/or crisis. Three components of structured sensory intervention for traumatized children, adolescents and parents (SITCAP; Steele and Raider, 2009), namely exposure, trauma narrative, and cognitive reframing, were designed to help people heal from traumatic effects.

As children have difficulty in verbalizing traumatic events (Gil, 2006; Malchiodi, 1998; Sander, 2006), drawings are ideal for them as well as nonverbal adolescents and adults. Robinson (2011) pointed out that using drawings with children are much shorter in terms of time and much more cost-effective to administer than known measures of mood and thought disorder. It takes less than 20 minutes and requires very simple materials such as 8.5” x 11” white paper and color pencils. Therapeutically speaking, using drawings can be much safer and freer to explore the inner world of the client who is a victim of abuse, illness or injury, or a child traumatized by natural disaster, family transition or violence. According to DiLeo (1983), unconscious expression of feelings and attitudes may imbue a child’s drawings and give expression to his/her characters and they can convey directly feelings of joy and sorrow, hostility and fear.

Recent research results suggest that projective drawing continue to be popular with a large number of psychologists, psychotherapists, and social workers (Bekhit, Glyn, & Richard, 2005; Hojonski, Morrison, Brown, & Mattews, 2006, Robinson, 2011). Through using projective drawings therapeutically, insight into the person’s “inner world” would be provided and the person’s intrapersonal themes, conflicts, psychological and emotional defenses, and indications of a psychological disorder would become conscious from unconscious (Groth-Marnet & Roberts, 1998).

For the use of projective drawings, Robinson (p.4-5) states that:

Drawings were noninvasive, nonthreatening, and ideal for people who would not or could not speak of their troubles. Projective drawings have been used to capture and describe emotional and psychological processes over the past century. Developed within the psychoanalytic and psychodynamic literature, drawings were used a way to view the inner world of the individual. Drawings were used to not only assess a person’s emotional state, but also his or her inner conflicts. Drawings were used to assess unconscious processes such as wishes, desires, and fear. As a result of this interest, projective drawing drew together the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and art and art therapy.

Children’s drawings have been used in evaluation of personality, development, and cognitive abilities for over 100 years (Golumb, 1990). The study of children’s drawings has such a long tradition in the field of psychiatry, psychology, art therapy and education (Malchiodi, 1998). Children’s drawings have generated significantly important information on how children use drawings to express themselves which the helping professionals should know.

Rubin (2005) pointed out that the making of art products was a kind of acceptable exhibitionism and not only was art a path to permissible regression, but also a way to acceptable aggression. Talking about an artwork of grief, Rubin described:

            It was a cry, a scream caught and tamed. It was a new object in the world, a symbolic for he who was lost, a mute, tangible testament. The doing of it afforded tremendous relief. It did not take away the hurt and the ache, but it did help in releasing some of the rage, and in giving form to a multiplicity of feelings and wishes (p. 4).

Naumburg (1950, 1953, 1966) also stated that art was a kind of symbolic speech from unconsciousness such as dreams and free association. As a “royal road” to unconsciousness, art requires art expression and verbalization as well as self awareness. Kramer (1971, 1979, 2000, 2001) argued that art was a “royal road” to sublimation which helping the ego to control, manage, and integrate via the creative process itself. For more than half a century, both approaches are still seen as pioneers in the rapid growth field of projective drawing and art therapy. “This rapid development reflects the power of art as a therapeutic modality (p. 8, Rubin, 2005).

Using projective drawing as a therapeutic tool, the psychoanalytic perspective is the most helpful to conceptualize the psychodynamic aspects of conflict between basic fear and basic desire (Blos, 1962; Cassidy & Shaver; 1999, Erikson, 1950, 1959; Frailberg, 1955: A. Freud, 1936, 1946, 1965; Starnoff, 1976; Tyson & Tyson, 1990).

As indicated by Rubin, “Without a conceptual framework to which to relate the child’s symbolic and behavioral messages in assessment or treatment, one’s work remains fuzzy and unfocused” (p. 58). In other words, it is vital that a conceptual framework to be chose and used both in assessment and therapeutic process.

Drawings have been used by many psychologists to find out the development as well as the personality of children (Harris, 1963; Koppitz, 1968, 1984). It is always a fascinating question to ask what children’s drawings tell clinicians about their psychological state and possible psychopathology (Buck, 1948; DiLeo, 1974, 1983; Dracknik, 1995; Klepsch & Logie, 1982; Machover, 1949; Malchiodi, 1998; Oster & Crone, 2004; Rubin, 2005; Schildkrout, Shenker, & Sonnenblick, 1972).

Therapeutically speaking, using drawings can be much safer and freer to explore the inner world of the client who is a victim of abuse, illness or injury, or a child traumatized by natural disaster, family transition or violence. According to Di Leo (1983), unconscious expression of feelings and attitudes may imbue a child’s drawings and give expression to his/her characters, conveying directly feelings of joy and sorrow, hostility and fear.

This is the prelude to my dissertation: Use projective drawings therapeutically with children who have experienced trauma. I will attempt to explore the use of projective drawings therapeutically with children who have experienced trauma, and scaffold a new clinical model for clinicians in Hong Kong, to help heal the children who have experienced trauma by using projective drawings therapeutically. 

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