(See fig 1.). "Tied
Up Tim" has a knot tied in hs neck. He dictated a poem that goes with
this figure:
Art always has a
duel reference. It refers, on the one hand, to the inner realm of
feelings, thoughts, and other perceptual frameworks. This is the
subjective dimension. On the other hand, it also always refers to the
external situation in which an individual finds him or herself. This is
the objective dimension
The full text with which we will be concerned consists of one poem,
a story, and a series of sculptures, all produced by an eight year old
boy in the context of play therapy. Pictures of the sculptures are
included (figures 1-7). Perhaps the most vivid way of presenting this
material is through some of the progress notes I took while the
creation of the text was in progress. This was during the time period
of September to December of 1988 while I was seeing the child, we shall
call him Jason, in the school setting under a contractual agreement
between my mental health agency and the school. I will present only
those progress notes that add new information about the creation of the
text in question, and will keep background and explanatory comments to
a minimum.
Jason was eight at the time of the referral. The presenting
difficulties centered around fairly serious behavior problems---mostly
simply a chronic non-compliance with teacher's requests, and a refusal
to make an effort on his assignments. He was capable of rather dramatic
emotional outbursts, and was, needless to say, a rather disruptive
influence in the classroom.
The creation of the text did not actually begin while he was
with me. He drew a picture of "Tied up Tim" and wrote a poem about him
while he was seeing the school counselor, Joan Cunningham, a person
with whom I worked closely. I was very impressed with Tied Up Tim, and
went over to the high school where the art teacher was good enough to
provide me with some sculpting clay. The first progress note I have
included here is for the session that followed the one in which Jason,
at my request, made "Tied Up Tim" in clay.
Jason talked with me about a character that he made out of
clay, and also did a picture of, called "Tied up Tim" (See fig 1.). "Tied
Up Tim" has a knot tied in hs neck. He dictated a poem that goes with
this figure:
Tied Up Tim
All tied up
in knots
Not knowing
what to do,
So he faints.
I tried to talk with Jason
about what "Tied Up Tim" might be tied up about, and we were in
agreement that it might have something to do with fathers, but he was
reluctant to pursue the issue very far, so we re-entered the play on a
more removed level. He wanted two more figures created which were the
"mean twins". We made these and then he talked about the need for
having still another figure called "Worried Willie." However, the mean
twins were not the rulers. Another figure that he made of of clay which
we named "Big Daddy" was the most powerful. Finally, there were two
other figures, one of which was the "master of them all" (meaning the
mean twins). The final one was "Nice Nick". The twins were very
powerful. "Twins spit goes twenty feet." However, "Big Daddy" was able
to keep them "all in a group." He made it clear that Big Daddy was able
to control everybody. Finally he named the master of the mean ones,
"Mean Gene." Big Daddy was able to control Mean Gene because he said
that he had to listen or he would be sent to prison. We acted out a bit
together about what Worried Willie felt like and how afraid he was.
Again didn't want to be too specific as to what Worried Willie was
worried about.
In understanding
the nature of the Mean Twins it might be important to know that Jason
has a brother who is a year older than himself. This brother was
attending the same school and also had some adjustment problems. The
two boys had a very ambivalent relationship. My recollection is that
the original portrayal of the Mean Twins involved two figures, and that
the two headed figure he finally arrived at (shown in fig. 2) was done
later. I think it goes without saying that the fact that the twins spit
goes twenty feet suggests that they are not to be trifled with.
Nice Nick got lost and was never re-created.
As time went on Big Daddy became pretty clearly identified with me.
The other characters were projections of various aspects of himself (or
himself and his brother as in the case of the Mean Twins).
I participated in a PET over at school. We were attempting to come up with a behavioral program for . It seemed to me as though one of the basic issues had to do with the level of commitment that some of the teachers had in working with a child with his kind of problems. As the school should produce a PET report I will not go into more detail here.
I talked with Joan Cunnigham about the outcome of the PET yesterday
and
made specific recommendations for her to bring to the group when it
meets again on Thursday. I emphasized that he should not at this point
be considered for Residential Treatment or for home tutoring. I also
raised the question about his being put in a classroom with a teacher
who has more commitment to working through the problems with him.
Finally I suggested that a behavioral program should be put together
with the relevant teacher, full time aide, Joan Cunningham, and
possibly
myself sitting in.
Comment: The relevance of these two notes for the interpretive
process should become clear in due time.
Jason and I spent the time painting his characters that he has made
out of clay. While we did so, we had some very interesting discussion
about their characters. He told me that 
Mean
Gene actually is not
always mean. Sometimes he's nice. However, other people don't see that
sometimes he's nice and think of him as being always mean. He stopped
and thought about this a moment and then said that he "is like me." We
discussed how people sometimes are both mean sometimes and nice
sometimes. Then we discussed how Big Daddy helps Mean Gene. Big Daddy
is mean to Mean Gene when Mean Gene is mean. However, Big Daddy likes
Mean Gene and actually tries to help him. He helps him in two ways.
First he helps Mean Gene not to be mean so much. Secondly, he "explains
him to other people."
and I continued the work on his clay figures and talked about them.
He constructed Curious Carry and we talked a bit more about the
characters of the other figures.
As and I
worked together on his clay pieces we talked about
their relationships and characters. He was working on "Curious Carrie.
He said that Curious Carrie is curious about everything. She always
wants to know what people are saying. He then went on to tell me that
Mean Gene is her dad. He explained that she knows Mean Gene is a good
guy---that he won't hurt her. said that Worried Willy is very much like
Curious Carrie except that he doesn't ask questions about everything.
In fact, Worried Willy and Curious Carrie are brother and sister. Tied
Up Tim, however, is not one of that family. Tied Up Tim is so confused
that "he can hardly live."
Finally got into a new character that he calls "Fancy Freddy" (see
figs. 6 & 7). Fancy Freddy has a big hole in his stomach in which a
heart can be placed. He has three eyes. The main thing about him that
is fancy is his stomach.
Jason and I worked together on finishing some of his clay
pieces. He painted Fancy Freddy and together we worked on the Mean
Twins. told me that Fancy Freddy is arranged so that his heart can come
out so that he can take it out and fix it when it gets broken. He said
that sometimes his heart could get broken if Big Daddy hurt his
feellings---for example, if he grounded him or was mad at him.
During a session on 12/16/88 Jason created a story about all of his
sculptured pieces. It is entitled "Mean Gene and His Friends."
Mean Gene was in school. He had a lot of trouble. Nobody
really cared for him, except Fancy Freddy, Big Daddy, Curious Carrie,
tied up Tim, and the Mean Twins. He was really nice, but he had a bad
temper. He has tried to solve the problems himself, but he just can't
without someone to help him. When he couldn't solve his problems he
felt like the smallest thing on Earth. He felt like his little brother,
Tied Up Tim. If he would have had no one to help him, he would not be
on the Earth right now. He would be on Mars right now, suffocating. All
the other kids in his class and the other classes thought he was so
mean, so they told the teachers to kick him out of school, so they did
kick him out of school. So then he was really lonely and sad. He told
Big Daddy, and then Big Daddy thought up a plan. The plan was to tell
the other friends that they needed to tell the other kids that they
need to get Mean Gene back to normal, and not feeling bad.
The next day all the other kids taught Mean Gene a lesson with
caring. They knew that if they did not care for him enough that he
would have a big royal fit. And there would be a lot of kids in the
hospital. But they figured out that just because he looks mean, doesn't
mean that he is mean.
They wouldn't let mim out of their sight. He asked why. They said,
"because we care for you."
He was so excited that he just about fainted. He was not mad. There
were no injuries like there would have been if they didn't care for him.
While the terms "event" and "situation" in this paper are
essentially synonymous, I have a slight preference for the term "event"
because it seems to me to more clearly suggest the notion of a series
of interactions taking place through time. The term "situation" might
connote a circumstance that is more static and less interactional. It
is because we have been trained to focus on more or less fixed
"syndromes," "disorders," "disease entities" and "conditions" rather
than on interactional patterns, that we in the helping professions most
often fail to perceive what is actually taking place. The frequent use
of the diagnosis "attention deficit disorder" is a good example. Jason
certainly had trouble attending to his class work and might well have
had this diagnosis applied to himself. However, he had no trouble at
all attending to the sculptures he was creating. What we in fact have
is a child with his own set of strengths and vulnerabilities, and his
own personal history who is having difficulty successfully interacting
with a school system that also has its own set of strengths and
vulnerabilities, and its own particular history. In order to understand
what is happeneing in an event, then, we must not only give some
consideraqtion to what each person or agency brings to the event, but
we must then look at the event in interactional terms. Often the
pivital issue turns out to be the nature of the match (or lack thereof)
between the child and the social environment.
Although we are dubious about efforts to explain the
interaction between Jason and the school either in simple terms of a
supposed individual "disorder", or in terms of habits and patterns
learned elsewhere, he did come to the situation with certain
vulnerabilities and predispositions. Therefore a brief look at some of
the facts of his early history may be in order. When Jason was younger
he lived in an unstable family situation in which substance abuse was a
significant problem. This left him with some vulnerabilities with
regard to his basic sense of security in life, with regard to self
esteem, and with regard to the internalization of some of the social
norms that one might expect to find in a child his age. He was also
left with a residue of anger at his mother, in large part based on his
perception of her as being responsible for the loss of his natural
father and at least one additional significant fathering person
(through separation or divorce). It appeared that he was also left with
a generalized mistrust of, and anger toward, adults and authority in
general. However, at the time of my work with Jason, his family
situation had stabilized considerably, and his mother was certainly
making every effort to provide for the needs of her family in a
responsible manner.
In assessing what the school brought to the situation, I identified
four factors in the school environment that I felt may have contributed
to the ongoing pattern of unsuccessful transactions. In pointing out
these factors I do not mean to "blame" the school for the problem.
Jason certainly brought his share of vulnerabilities to the situation,
and was not an easy child to manage in a group situation. The school
system was in many ways quite effective, and where it may have been
having problems it was struggling with issues that most public school
systems have also failed to resolve. Nevertheless, in an interactional
model it is necessary to look at assumptions, loyalties, and
predispositions that each of the parties bring to an interaction.
The first problem I noticed was the strong sense of moral
indignation directed against children with behavior problems by many of
the teachers. This problem was two fold. First it involved a moral
evaluation of a behavior that was not a moral matter. School failure is
not immoral. It perhaps gets treated that way by a teacher who becomes
angry at the child because the child does not let the teacher feel
successful. Second, to the extent that the teacher really is dealing
with issues of moral development, such as a child's failure to
recognize the rights and needs of others, moral indignation is still
not the appropriate pedagogical orientation. As Lawrence Kohlberg and a
number of people who have been inspired by his theoretical formulations
have made clear (Mosher, 1980), the acquisition of morality is the
result of a developmental process, just as cognitive or emotional
attainments are. If we are trying to teach the child algebra and
discover that basic addition and subtraction have not been learned, it
is not helpful to become morally indignant. One must simply begin where
the child is without judgement and work from there. The same is
applicable to moral development.
The second problem in the school system was the belief that
behaviorally and emotionally disturbed children belong elsewhere. The
two major arguments given for this were that "we are not trained to
deal with emotional disturbance," and it is not fair to the "normal"
children in the classroom to have the class disrupted by a
non-compliant child. This of course, gets into the whole issue of
mainstreaming which is beyond the scope of this article. In passing,
however, it might be pointed out that a school system that does not see
itself as legitimately responsible for a particular type of child, a
school system that in fact is sort of holding its breath until it can
find a way to get rid of that type of child, will probably not invest
the time, energy, money and commitment needed to develop the skills and
structures needed for real success.
The third problem that I observed was the inability of many of the
teachers to discern between a child's inner reality and his or her
defensive posturing. One of the biggest obstacles in overcoming this
problem was the tendency to see more in-depth explanations of what
might actually be happening with the child as simply "making excuses"
for the inexcusable. Before Glasser's corrective influence in
re-affirming the importance of responsibility (Glasser, 1965), many
mental health professionals may have actually been guilty of such
excuse making. Some may still be. However, there is in reality no
necessary contradiction between understanding a child's motivations,
and confronting the child with the need for responsible behavior.
The fourth problem that I observed was the difficulty the school had
in developing the kind of coordinated school wide team approach that is
essential if we are to be successful with behaviorally out of control
children. A teacher cannot deal with a seriously out of control child,
and meet the needs of the rest of his or her class at the same time. At
least three things are needed here. First, it is necessary to have in
place a regular team process involving teacher, parent, school
counselor, and relevant others, to assess the child's needs, and
strategies for meeting them, on an ongoing basis. (This was being
developed at Jason's school). Second, it is essential that there be a
well thought out, school wide, system of behavior management, to back
up all the individual teachers. Third, a statement of commitment is
needed, from the level of the school board and top administration, that
the school system does see providing educational services to
emotionally and behaviorally disturbed children to be one of its tasks.
It may seem that we have wandered far afield from interpreting the
sculptures and story of Mean Gene and His Friends, but I think not. The
event to which our text refers is the ongoing interactional process
between Jason and the school. As I examined the situation, it became
clear that the central feature of the event was that many of the
teachers had become fed up with Jason's behavior and wanted him placed
elsewhere. Others were commited to working with him and to
mainstreaming in general. Jason's behavior problems must be understood
in the context of a school system that was profoundly divided on the
issue of whether it would continue to try to work with him, or try in
some way to exclude him. Notice how clear Jason is, in his story, about
the fact that this struggle for inclusion or exclusion was in fact the
central aspect of the event. Obviously, once we become aware that Jason
has accurately disclosed the heart of the matter, then it becomes clear
that in attempting to interpret the situation we must consider not only
Jason's personal characteristics, and something about his family
history, but salient features of the school system as well. Certainly
in this context, the schools practices, policies and attitudes
regarding the provision of services to disturbed children are critical.
It may be significant that I never had any serious problem
dealing with Jason's behavior in a play therapy context. A teacher
would immediatly point out that, of course, I had no problem with him,
because I didn't deal with him in a group, and because I let him do
what he wanted. Certainly problems in peer interactions made Jason more
difficult to manage and to this extent the teacher would be right. As
for letting him do what he wanted, while I obviously set some limits
with regard to what could happen in the space we used as a play room,
the teacher would certainly be right in the sense that I let Jason
choose what he would attend to in that context. Yet this is in itself
instructive. When he was permitted to attend to matters that were of
intrinsic interest to him, any hint of an attention deficit problem,
hyperactivity, oppositional behavior, or any serious individual
"disorder" dissolved. In most school systems we take it for granted
that for a major portion of each day (all the school time except
recess, lunch, and perhaps gym) a child will not be permitted to attend
to matters that he or she selects as something that is found to be
intrinsically interesting. The few children who, for whatever reason,
resist this process of alienation from their natural interests are then
labled as having an individual disorder of some sort. The transactions
between child and school personnel then descend into a power struggle.
The issue at stake is who shall control the child's attention. I
believe that Jason was a child with a strong need to attend to his own
inner reality. This might be in part because he had some pressing
personal concerns that he was unable to simply put on a shelf for most
of the school day. It may also be, however, that some children simply
have an unusually vivid inner life, and that such children have a
strong need to attend to this inner reality. If a school system is to
be successful with such children it will have to find ways to tap into
these natural inner concerns and interests.
If there was any question as to the situational reference to
the text, from just looking at the sculptures and listening to Jason
talk about them, Jason left no room for doubt in his story. "Mean Gene
was in school. He had a lot of trouble." It was also my interpretation
that, with the exception of Big Daddy and one of the Mean Twins, all
the sculpted characters refered to different aspects of Jason's own
self. What then, was his text telling us about the meaning of his
struggle with the school system?
The central message of the text taken as a whole is that there is a
vast discrepency between how I present myself to the world and how I
experience my own inner reality. The world sees Mean Gene. He is
aggressive, mean, angry, and possibly even dangerous. He doesn't care
what anybody thinks. The inner reality, that Mean Gene attempts to
protect, is a desperate and confused little boy, a little boy who
frankly confesses his need for help, and who craves for a warm and
gentle response from others; he Tied Up Tim, "all tied up in knots, not
knowing what to do."
We have, perhaps,
an even more poignant picture of Jason's inner
reality in the Fancy Freddie sculpture. The mouth is hungry for
nurturing. But the sculpture's most striking feature is the vulnerable
heart of the self hidden away in the stomach, but accessible to Jason
should it get broken and need fixing. And it can get broken so easily.
Big Daddy, for example would just have to be a little mad at Fancy
Freddy for his heart to break. This could hardly be further from the "I
don't give a damn" attitude that Mean Gene so frequently and
effectively presented to the world.
Jason's text shows us many things about the desires and
anxieties of his inner and vulnerable self, but perhaps the need to
feel wanted, and for a secure sense of belonging, is central. As we
read in his story, "...so they told the teachers to kick him out of
school, so they did kick him out of school. So then he was really
lonely and sad." Undoubtedly "being kicked out of school" was in part
an expression of the alienation from his peers and from school
personnel he was already experiencing. Also, however, it was a reality
based concern over the possible outcome of a PET meeting. The event to
which the text refered was not something taking place within Jason. It
was struggle between Jason and a school system that was profoundly
divided on the issue of mainstreaming and was consequently having
difficulty deciding whether this troublesome but engaging child would
be excluded. Could a responsible theraputic intervention ignore this
fact?
This is who you see, but this is who I am to myself. This is the
most fundamental statement made by Jason's text. It is a statement he
wishes to make to his school mates, and to school personnel; yet he is
unable to. He needs help. On 10/14/88 he let me know that one of the
ways that Big Daddy helps Mean Gene is that he "explains him to other
people." It is of course, the discrepency between appearence and inner
reality that is the crux of what needs to be explained. "Other people
don't see that sometimes he's nice and think of him as being always
mean." Jason's explanation of how Big Daddy helps Mean Gene is a clear
suggestion to me as to what Jason needs from me. It is not enough that
I understand. I must intervene directly into his situation. I must help
others to understand. Specifically what needed to be communicated is
that he is a vulnerable and confused human being with a need to belong
and be cared for, a need he does not know how to effectively
communicate to others. I had to decide whether I would respond to
Jason's request by finding some way to move our therapy out of the one
on one play therapy of the office, and into the environment with which
he was trying to cope. It was my deliberations on this point that led
to the idea of the work shop.
I had been discussing for some time the possibility of
providing a workshop to the teachers of the elementary school. The
general aim of this workshop would be to interpret the aims of the work
being done under the school contract with my Mental Health Agency, and
to explain some of the methods used in working with children. The idea
of doing a presentation based on the text produced by Jason began to
crystalize in my mind. I discussed this idea with the director of
special education. She liked the idea. Permission was secured from
Jason and from the mother, and arrangements for the workshop were made.
Several items were touched upon during the workshop, but the heart
of the event was the Mean Gene story. I had professional photos taken
of the sculptures. These were presented as a slide show. The slides
were coordinated with the Mean Gene story which I read out loud. The
effect was, I felt, quite powerful. Not only did the teachers gain an
increased understanding and appreciation of who Jason was, but I felt
it helped them understand the nature of the work I do with children.
Also it was, I think, helpful in understanding the direct impact that
school policies and procedures have upon a child. The question and
discussion period was quite lively, indicating a high level of
interest. Feed back from various people after the workshop tended to
confirm my impression that the material presented was an effective way
of putting across the ideas and understanding I wished to share.
It's very hard to evaluate the outcome of the kind of
intervention I did with Jason. Jason's adjustment did improve. He moved
gradually into being mainstreamed with the other children for greater
portions of his school day. His peer skills do seem to have improved.
Minimally one can say that no one has ended up in a hospital. How much
these improvements are due to my individual work with him, how much to
the workshop, and how much to neither of the above, is impossible to
determine with any certainty. Yet it is my conviction that my
intervention into the interactional sphere, when I became a part of the
communication process between Jason and school personnel in the
workshop, yielded greater benefits than individual therapy by itself
would have.
Inner reality and the external situation bear a dialectical
relationship to one another. They are not independent, self contained
realities. They mutually inform and effect one another. When we divorce
art from its reference points in the external situation, both art and
the situation are empoverished. A hermeneutical model of interpretation
that clearly relates symbols to external reality, empowers us as
healers to effectively understand, and intervene into, situations in
which meaninglessness, alienation and suffering dominate. It is hoped
that our examination of the text, Mean Gene and His Friends has
illustrated how this might be true.
Cairns, Alexander B., and Hunter, James E., (1984). Hermeneutics in a
Medical Center. Journal of Religion and Health, 23(4), 330-338.
Frankl, Viktor E.,(1978). The Unheard Cry For Meaning: Psychotherapy
and Humanism. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Glasser, William., 1965. Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry.
New York: Harper and Row.
Hunter, James E. (1981). Natural Science and the Healing of Persons.
Journal of Religion and Health., 20(2), 124-132.
Hunter, James E. (1991). Persons and Organisms. Journal Of Religion
and Health. 28, 4, pp. 59-79.
Mosher, Ralph L., Ed. (1980). Moral Education: A First Generation of
Research and Development. New York: Praeger Publishers.