You will notice the shape is altered, and the nucleus has moved within this shape. This is the aspect of the amoeba that resonates for me. It has flexibility whilst maintaining it’s edge. It holds whilst moving and it adapts whilst containing. It internalises newness.
For me this illustrates the essential nature of any clinical rationales and decisions that we make that enable us to be creative and flow with the needs of the person we work with.
Here’s a case example - I’d always worked in the studio with this particular woman, who is non-verbal with a mild learning disability - and this is where we have established the relationship, its safety and reliability. She knows it will always offer this to her and she has learned to trust this. However I begin to sense, as we work toward some deeper feeling from her past that is often painfully re-triggering in her present life (and the reason for coming to therapy), that we need to go outside. Physically out into the grounds of the hospital where our Community Service is situated. I feel we need to breath the air and walk the paths - to keep her grounded and available to herself, and because the physical area offers us some tangible and potentially ephemeral access to memories from this time. Because we need to bring life and the present into this world and memory.
The ‘watcher’ on my shoulder that is ever present in sessions, checks the clinical judgement of this: why now? what for? who for? is this coming from the right place? Am I caught in any projections or transference that could be of detriment? Is the attuned memory or emotion arising for me so unbearable that I am looking for a way out? For me? For her? Is this to the benefit of the person and their therapeutic journey? Can it cause any harm?
I conclude - I am acting with awareness, reflection (I explored with my clinical supervisor and in reflective art making) and it is of benefit to try.
And so we allow the amoeba to re-shape. The wall of the amoeba stays strong, holding all the insides where they should be, whilst it flexes and stretches to encompass this new component, the outside. An amoeba generates protuberances that move toward their food. These then gently encircle and absorb it into their main body, simply closing the wall behind it. They are changed and nourished with this absorption, whilst still simply being an amoeba.
The Art Therapy amoeba’s nucleus moves too, into this extension, keeping it always near. Near enough to feel safe and know nothing deep has changed. It ensures it ls all about the core of the person and the person’s art therapy, the relationship between them, the therapist and the creativity, whilst permitting movement, change, holism. The ability to change and flex is simply what Art Therapy is. It is what is its essence - change whilst remaining the same. Adaptation whilst remaining constant. Movement whilst holding still.
So through generating our own protuberance, we lean out, move, stretch, expand and through doing so, grow. This brings new life into the woman’s therapeutic experience - we feel it. It becomes our new norm as we spend time inside and outside each session, at her indication. She nourishes herself in this way. She breaths, remembers and lets go. And she re-shapes again with relief and validation of her truth. Now, like my made up amoeba (because I don’t know if they can do this in real life) she releases and expels previously ingested and absorbed stuff. She spits some of it out with force, whilst some simply is no longer needed. I witness her experiencing this in all its past, present and future pain and joy, and when its time I speak the words that she cannot.
