Compelling images: a contribution to the theory of aesthetic countertransference

In this paper, I describe my experience of the aesthetic countertransference in relation to one patient’s artwork in an Art Therapy group as part of a Therapeutic Community for people with a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder within the NHS. The paper discusses how my practice became informed by Mentalization-Based Treatment which places a strong emphasis on clarifying intentional mental states. However, when looking at the artwork I encountered a situation whereby I could not easily put the experience into words. I provide a description of the patient’s overall trajectory within the treatment model, her progress in the Art Therapy group itself, and present a hypothesis for the function of the artwork which the patient produced. I draw upon a model of art therapy I have previously devised combining art psychotherapy theory, art critical theory, mentalization (MBT) and psychoanalytic theory. Drawing on Grotstein’s notion of formulations in the ‘Kleinian-Bionian mode’ I go on to elaborate my concept of the ‘art-psychotherapy object’ being the totality of the triangular relationship (creator/artwork/viewer), in itself unknowable, but the derivatives of which can be understood through the paradigm of transference-countertransference-projective (trans)identification-reverie, and used to explore the dimensions of its planes.