Looking With His Eyes

Lucy D. Freund, PhD

In a typical psychoanalytic therapy, we get to know and see our patients through their verbal narrative, i.e., their life story complete with its accompanying affects and conflicts as well as the developing transference elaborations. The treatment to be discussed here is about an inhibited 57-year-old man somewhat in touch with his sadness but profoundly cut off from most of his other affects states. He is a single man and entered treatment after experiencing several losses, saying he "felt detached from himself and others, and that he never knew who he was" having led a life designed to please his parents. Currently in stable health, Mr. A has had numerous surgeries resulting from a childhood illness.

After we had met for a few weeks, he told me about some difficulties he was having painting a monster in an art class he had been taking for the last few years. In response to my interest, he brought all of his completed paintings into the next hour, except for the monster on which he was still working. He put the box on my couch and placed the paintings one by one against the back pillows. As we stood together looking as his pictures, our engagement took on an intimate immediacy and energy that had been missing in our more traditional, rather bland "talk" therapy. Although his paintings appeared, at first glance, to be cheerful and happy because of their lively colors - red, pink, purple, yellow - a more thorough investigation revealed scenes of terrible horrors, explosions, isolated body parts, distorted faces, all of which were intermingled with childlike stars and hearts. Looking at his paintings I could sense his rage, his fears and terrors as well as his frightening sense of unpredictability. Because of his detachment, from himself and from me, he had not been able to express any of these affects within the transference relationship; in fact such feelings were denied or minimized. However, focusing together on his paintings and associating to them, a rich tapestry of meanings developed. I will try to illustrate some of the more potent themes as they emerged in memories, fantasies and emotional outbursts.

Overwhelmed with the sheer amount of images, I began with the early paintings and commented on one of the symbols I could readily recognize - the many eyes that appeared in his first works. He said that from an early age he had watched his parents. By the age of 5 or 6, he recalled looking out of the downstairs window, near the front door waiting for them to return at night. He would count the cars believing they would come by #10, and when that didn't happen, he would start over. He felt his counting protected them from a crash and brought them home. When he saw the car approaching the driveway, he dashed upstairs pretending to be asleep. Elaborating on this theme, he has "watched" his mother all of his life, having been told early on that she was his responsibility. His mother had been psychiatrically hospitalized on several occasions and suffered from debilitating anxiety from which Mr. A was expected to calm her. With sadness and despair in his voice, he cried, "I couldn't heal her." "Eyes" however, led to other memories. "I fell in love with Sue - she had great black eyes. I could swim in them I wrote poetry and felt my goodness would make it all work."

The theme of injury reemerged as we focused on the isolated body parts in the paintings and Mr. A. enumerated his surgeries. In fact, in no painting is there an intact, integrated body. He wept as he responded to both the paintings and me, "I always thought I could face anything. Here," he pointed, " I am painting the pain in my back, these are hands squeezing me, the volcano is life, energy, but the body here [a small torso] is floating off the page, it's escaping. Even before I was ill, I felt there was something wrong with me, with my body. I was lost, and in my family you couldn't be lost."

In the next session Mr. A. said, "I told you I could face anything, but I felt later, for the first time, how much illness has cost me." As he spoke, I was aware that a surface persona of self-sufficiency and detachment was starting to fade.

Hearts in all forms became the theme of the next few paintings, done after we had begun therapy. Hearts cleft in two, hearts with tears running down them, red bloody hearts. Shortly after my summer vacation, Mr. A. painted a large heart squeezed by a vise held down by a hand with fingers of varying colors. Behind the large heart were smaller ones which Mr. A. described as "a production line awaiting the vise, it's all depersonalized." He spoke of feeling pain in his throat as he had done the painting and thought it might be anger - he drew two suns exploding on top of the vise. In response to my saying "broken hearts," he talked about a love affair long over, in which his girlfriend had chosen to marry another man after learning of the seriousness of his illness. He mentioned heartbreaks with two other women but most poignantly of the heartbreak of having no path or destiny to follow.

I commented on the colored fingers. At first he had no response but I then asked if he had noticed that I had red nail polish on the last session. He said that he had noticed. "I think I am both the sufferer and the executioner, but I guess your hand is on the vise too." He continued to describe the painting and his feelings amidst increasing tears. "There are many hearts falling out, crossed eyes, lips that aren't filled in - there is an explosion, terrible confusion. I don't know what to make of it all. When you were gone, I didn't have to pay attention."

"But look what you did." I almost shouted out, "You used your fury to create a powerful piece." I would like to say at this point, that I made a marvelous interpretation. That I related his anger at my being away to his awareness that he was in a "production line" with my other patients, moving toward the vise and eventual heartbreak. However, I did not make such an interpretation. The session was extremely intense. It was the first time I was aware that I had a part in his paintings and it also took time for me to digest how painful my vacation had been for Mr. A. That awareness was echoed in the next hour when Mr. A said that he never had had a reaction to his previous "shrinks'" vacations (he had seen two other analysts).

A month later Mr. A. brought in his most recent painting. "It is a fountain of red water, its gushing, energy, big, but confined. There are clouds and sky." "Red water?" I queried. "Energy and anger, contradictions - gray and white clouds though the sun is shining. The fountain is benign and relaxing, but it flows into a black hole - a dead heart." On the left side of the piece were many small images indicating "confusion" which included "busyness, and meaningless work" and on the right side were hearts, some broken, some merely incomplete. Mr. A. said he wanted to live in a world of feeling and not a world of confusion but worries that he can't avoid falling into the black heart. He elaborated, "There is no resolution in the picture. There is meaningless chaos [on the left] or there are painful experiences [on the right]. I was very involved in painting this picture. There are parts I can't get to - the simple place, the energetic place, the energy is way off in the distance. I can't get hold of it yet."

I commented, "I feel it's your divided self. If you work at a vocation you find meaningless, you risk falling into "chaos" and if you let your self truly love, you risk falling into the "black heart". But is there a deeper meaning? I feel you want us together to find your center of energy. Is the hope in the sun, which you disguise behind clouds because hoping is fearful too?"

This treatment has provoked a number of thoughts, feelings and questions for me. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the paintings and looked forward to the next one. His paintings were like dreams reflecting his fears, wishes, memories and pain. I also enjoyed and deeply appreciated hearing Mr. A's so articulate, beautiful, and often passionate associations. In our sessions, Mr. A was being "watched" perhaps for the first time, but it is not only his terror and despair that I have seen and witnessed but also his capacity to depict and transform those terrors into powerful images. Once he began to bring me the paintings, he came truly alive.

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