Clients ask me what an intersubjective response within the therapy room is and how it can provide richness in art therapy.
Within the safe-enough therapeutic environment, I create with my clients, sometimes an intersubjective response can further deepen a client’s inquiry and understanding of their experience. As I companion them, I feel, hear and look for resonances arising within the relational space.
Sometimes my intersubjective responding can be ongoing throughout the session in the form of gestures and reframing of what they are sharing. At other times I respond and attune through the form of art-making which combines what I am sensing, seeing, hearing, and feeling in the client’s sharing. My intersubjective response of art-making forms a giving of these elements to the client that can often assist them to receive what they are sharing from a different perspective. Through this different lens, the client affirms that they have been seen, heard, and felt. It often provides the client new insight via the soft side approach the art-making offers inviting them to stretch their window of tolerance on their terms at their pace.
“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”
Carl Jung
Author: Kerryn Knight | Art Therapist and Founder – Empowered Art Therapy and Kindred Art Space
