Reimagining art therapy for the digitally-mediated world: a Hexagonal Relationship

Abstract

Art Therapists have long been aware of the intersubjective complexities that are evoked in art therapy in relation to images, art-making and their attendant processes. These have often been understood with reference to the psychodynamic concepts of transference and countertransference. In this paper we ask, what happens to these processes when art therapy moves online and becomes digitally-mediated? How do the dynamics of ‘the Virtual’ affect the image and art-making, and the therapeutic relationship? Drawing on Schaverien and Jung’s ideas about transference and countertransference, we propose a new model or ‘map’ of Art Therapy which helps to think about these questions, which we call a ‘Hexagonal Relationship’. To date, published literature has tended to foreground the logistics and practicalities of moving art therapy online, with consideration of complex interpersonal dynamics occupying less of a central space in emerging narratives about digitally-mediated art therapy. We suggest that applying our model to practice could potentially support art therapists to access deeper, less conscious and perhaps more symbolic levels of material in online work, in service of the client’s process. We invite art therapists and clients to consider our model with reference to their own experiences of digitally-mediated art therapy, and to test out our questions and hypotheses in their own contexts.