In the GW Art Therapy Program files, we found these fascinating historical documents that we wanted to share with the art therapy community. To our knowledge this is the earliest American publication of patient artwork produced in and attributed to art therapy sessions. The art was published as calenders for the years 1959-1960 by the Wyeth phamaceutical company. We believe this art work by psychiatric patients was collected by Elinor Ulman, co-founder of the GW Art Therapy Program. The images and text are "courtesy Psychiatric Art Therapist, District of Columbia General Hospital, Washington DC."

The Bridge
A natural gift for color and design coupled with a capacity for poetic transmission of a visual impression are immediately apparent in this painting. It was painted a few days after the fifteen-year-old boy artist had seen a popular, highly regarded, award-winning motion picture. With only six months experience with pastels and oils and an only recently awakened artistic talent, his instinctive skill and capacity of expression are remarkable.

The boy's life had been singularly lacking in friendly attention. As a result of many emotional deprivations, he indulged in impulsive actions which resulted in repeated expulsions from school and numerous brief period of hospitalization at the instigation of a juvenile court or his family. The net effect was self destructive, making frustrations unbearable and escape into daydreams of becoming a great actor of singer almost inevitable. "The Bridge" was quickly sold. Shortly, the patient became acquainted with fashionable painting and slipped into facile imitation, forcing the art therapist to fight a against a return of the patient's fantasies of sudden fame and easy fortune. "The Bridge" is not imitative, and the young artist remarked that although he loved his secondhand abstractions. "The pictures people want to buy are the ones that are most like me."

Now, two years later, the artist is still a patient, but he has won a scholarship at a leading art school. He has reacted to this good fortune with a sober sense of the new challenge facing him. This hard-won realism contrasts with the grandiosity which flared up easily two years ago, and gives hope that he will be able to use well the opportunities which his artistic gift has presented him.

Coming Out of a Black Mood
The patient appeared voluntarily at the hospital, complaining of suicidal and homicidal feelings. She heard voices: "One good, one bad." She was very confused and stated that her life with her parents and husband was unhappy and lonely. A love affair—brief, unhappy—had precipitated her immediate state, which was diagnosed as psychotic depression with the possibility of schizophrenic reaction.

The patient began her picture "Coming Out of a Black Mood" on her first visit to the hospital art therapy department. When she arrived, she was tearful and almost mute. By the time she left the art therapy department that day, she had gained considerable poise.

The patient explained her picture to the doctor: "The black is the way I felt when I came here; the flames are my anger. The blue circle is my eye and the brown streak from my eye looks to a brighter future. I meant to paint flowers in the valley, but by brother came to see me and made me mad, so I covered the flowers and the next day put a circle around the sun. The dark green is a 'jungle' which I'm in now, but I hope to get out of it, cross the river and go up the snow capped mountains."

The distinct division of the picture into two halves is common in "schizophrenic art." The eye symbol emphasis suggests a paranoid trend.

Jazz Man's World
The patient, a professional cook and an ardent amateur jazz musician, was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. During hospitalization, the art therapy program appealed to his need for expression and resulted in the cover picture, which he explained as the world seen through the eyes of a "jazz man."

The blue represent various aspects of the sky; the pink, soft and appealing is Woman; the sun and moon (the traditional man-in-the-moon face is suggested to the left of the sun) are visible at the same time, since a jazz man works through the night until sunrise. Orange areas indicate the harsh brightness of the artificially lighted night world.

Throughout, the specific meanings assigned to colors and shapes reflect a common theme: the contrast between the finer perceptions of the elect few and the average man's limited understanding, whether it be of music or of sex.

The magenta tube-like form is the musician's arm reaching out to people; those capable of true appreciation sense the light shining from within, but the dark outside is all that gets across to the mass audience. The green book in the center, representing "the Beginning," is likewise bright within, dark without. The sharp, irregularly striped shape at the bottom symbolizes the musician's shifting moods: black when he is playing down to the customers, bright when he slips in passages that he really feels.

Woman, associated with light and the full meaning of jazz, is further illustrated by the brown reclining figure, incomplete because most men are capable of seeing her only in fragmentary glimpses. The eye--top center, below the incomplete figure—is the inner eye of the soul. The big black question mark, reversed, because "you turn it this way and that," is the "question of questions." Pondering, represented by the surrounding color bands, will provide different answers, and, perhaps, a "right" solution.

The Shadow of Goodness
The original of this picture is a mural, 8 feet long and 4 feet high, which was done in just four evenings by a 30-year old male alcoholic patient who had considerable experience as an amateur painter prior to his illness. Individual psychotherapy, psychodrama, and group art therapy were several modes of treatment employed in his case.

His young life had been spotted with brutal treatment at the hands of the men of his family. A resultant attachment to his devoted, but ineffectual, mother persisted into adulthood. The patent was attractive to women, but his relations with them had been stormy. With little formal education in his background, he had been employed in various types of jobs, some requiring quick intelligence and literary ability, others requiring manual skill and ingenuity. The patient's knowledge of himself was remarkable: he knew that if he should break down completely he would be classified as a paranoid. This detachment is evident in "The Shadow of Goodness," since the organization of material within the painting is quite excellent and would be impossible without more detachment. Actually, this is a picture of sickness, rather than merely a sick picture.

More grandiose and less genuine than the painting itself, the description, written by the patient because of his penchant for literary expression, is interesting: "Symbolism lies deep within the heart and mind of even the modern man. Unless he is especially alert, that symbolism in time becomes of more paramount value than that truth, belief or fact which it represents. In this mural, an attempt was made to portray the weakening of Christian principle before the onslaught of the aforementioned change of significance. All of the essential elements are here, but in a violently distorted form. It is not the goodness that predominates, but rather the shadow—the worship of empty idols, and our puerile obeisance to tradition, formalism and dead ritual."

In the year following the painting, the patient left the city and settled in a small, country village. His acceptance of himself and of others was apparently accomplished in this new setting.

The Man in the White Coat
The patient--slight, pleasant looking, 27 year old, male, soft spoken—was brought to the hospital in custody of the police: he had just lost his place on the FBI's list of "most wanted" criminals. He had been jailed originally for a series of armed robberies, then had been paroled and had broken parole in a fit of anger. He had married, settled down and was attempting to remake his life when he was arrested for breaking parole. During extradition procedures to face old charges, he made a spectacular escape, which had ended in the present arrest.

The early life experience of the patient had contributed to his genuine and severe anxiety. Coming form a broken home, he had been shunted from one unsatisfactory situation to another—with relatives, in foster homes and institutions. His defense against internal and external threats was first his verbal and later his graphic wit—this last clearly evident here.

In the picture, the form and color illustrate both the rigid superficial control this man was able to maintain most of the time, and the underlying chaos of turbulent feeling that occasionally broke through in impulsive and criminal acts. (In his career as an armed robber, he carefully maintained complete sobriety in anticipation of the holdup. He was proud of the fact that no physical injury had every resulted from his crimes.) Agony, terror and deep depression are depicted alternately with sophisticated humor. The caricature of a fellow patient about to be caught in the net of the traditional "man in the white coat" depicts the court-jester role frequently assumed by the painter-patient to cover his anxiety.

Although the patient's life had been shaped by profound emotional disturbance, he was considered sane in the eyes of the law and was subsequently sent to the penitentiary to serve out his term.

The Artist in Each of Us: The Work of Art Therapists and Their Clients

This exhibit was a juried exhibit held at the Colonnade Gallery of the George Washington University. Art works by alumni, faculty, field supervisors, and students of the Art Therapy Program were shown alongside selected art works by their clients. The title of the exhibit refers to the work of renowned art educator Florence Cane and her book of the same name. Professor Barbara Sobol, MA, ATR, gave the opening address on the subject of "Art Therapist and client: How we affect each other as artists." The artists' statements reflect the relationship between the therapist and client through art. The statements may also address the relationship between the two pieces of art.

Thank you to all the artists for allowing us to reproduce your images here. Our intention is to help others learn more about the therapeutic aspects of making art, for both the art therapist and the client.

This material may not be reproduced without specific written permission from the GW Art Therapy Program.