Psychoanalysis and Art

A symptom is an answer to an obstacle.

It nevertheless limits our choices featuring as the most prevalent and painful one.

It resembles those glasses which colour the world according to their colour.

Art makes the same look different, since it opens us to its various interpretations, its alternative views.

It opposes everything taken for evident or granted.

Psychotherapy, following art, takes nothing for granted.

It looks at the world as if for the first time.

In order to trace differences. Answers that go unobserved.

It places us against ourselves in all our mystery and variety, like works of Art with many levels, like palempsists.

Our symptom becomes one answer among possible others to our key problems, not our final word to them.

We can start learning about our inner worlds and selves through our favorite books, plays, performances, events. Εither by talking about them, as in classical modes of treatment, living them, as in drama therapy, or by witnessing them as spectators, as in forms of cinematic psychotherapy.

Psychotherapy can take advantage of artistic products besides its scientific procedures, in order to bind data together, or release sentiments, forces and thoughts, that would otherwise remain totally hidden.

It opens up our life’s scenarios to the suspense of their multifarious virtuality, setting them back in motion.

It dignifies the unforeseen, the unexpected inherent in life, enabling us to become surprised again.