IMAGINE THIS! THE USE OF ART AND IMAGERY IN SEX THERAPY

Like archetypal images, art forms arise from a primal, divine source. Images, fantasy, and play are essential to psychological life as they are key to creating meaning, connection, and integration of the narratives we tell about our lives. Images in art may derive pleasure or pain and may be used to express and exert power control, sublimation, domination, and humiliation (Downing, 2024). Images are polyvalent, holding multiple meanings simultaneously. The experience of working with imagery is numinous, transformative, and powerful, whether it manifests from flow states or scenes of fantasy, kink, or BDSM. It may manifest as a “sexual alchemy, as the erotic space imagined can be as powerful and enchanting as hours of lovemaking”(Perel, 2015). Through an archetypal and depth psychology lens, this author will explore how art therapy can be beneficial for mediating and bridging external experiences, especially those experienced as overwhelming or traumatic. Artmaking in a therapeutic context can contain complex psychic material that words alone struggle to hold for individuals and their loved ones. Employing the arts in psychotherapy is about honoring the individual’s immediate context. Art provides a means to bridge individual and cultural deficits, such as individual trauma, cultural stigma, and oppression. It is the nature of art, imagery, and creativity to transcend boundaries: to dissolve, recreate, and redefine them. Art therapy shares the distinctive quality of defying easy definition (Dean, 2011; 2016); it is a means of restoring creativity and wellness to individuals, couples, communities, and society by connecting to the inner world of knowing through images. Creativity arises from clusters of experiences. Just as technological advances change societal attitudes and personal histories, art and the images held therein are transformative in working with clients to facilitate change, self-acceptance, and transcendence.