Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 6 Number 1, April 2005
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Schmidt,
Gisela. Mirror Image and Therapy. Oxford: Peter Lang. 2001
pp525 ISBN 3-906766-95-0, pb., £ 48, $ 89.95
Reviewed by
Lesley
University
Sigmund Freud made the recommendation that the
therapist act ‘like’ a mirror and function as witness to the patient’s
narrative text. But what type of mirror does Freud suggest? A plane surface, or
convex one? What type if mirroring does he imagine: narcissistic or anamorphic?
When considering the subject’s relationship to the mirrored image and the
interpretation rendered from that relationship, the issue of type becomes a
significant avenue of enquiry.
Gisela
Schmidt’s book Mirror image and therapy (2001), published by Peter
Lang, expounds Freud’s figurative analogy in an astounding 525 page
interdisciplinary study. Grounded in Gadamer’s hermeneutics, Schmidt
juxtaposes the physical properties of mirrors as they appear in paintings with
the mirroring procedures involved in psychotherapy’s patient-therapist
interaction. She does this in order to emphasize a ‘fusion of horizons’ - a
concept central to Gadamer’s hermeneutics - between two distinct, yet
comparable, experiences: the world of psychotherapy and the world of art. By
systemically maneuvering her way through various mirroring processes, Schmidt
illuminates the therapist and the viewer of art as being, not passive recipients
of a mirror reflection, but rather “reflecting agents with a hermeneutic
interpretative task” (436). This task ”allows partners in conversation to
come to a shared understanding of a subject matter” (19). In fact, after
conversing with this massive work, it is almost impossible to not gain a deeper
appreciation for and understanding of the complexities of mirrors, the mirroring
process and the dialogic structures they generate.
This
intriguing book is written in two parts. Part one provides an interdisciplinary
theoretical grounding to Schmidt’s focus on mirrors, image, and therapy. Part
two is devoted to her main exploration of ‘double interpretations’ between
eight clinical vignettes and painted pictures containing mirrors. To illuminate
her hermeneutic conversation between art and therapy, the book also contains 49
black and white illustrations, and extensive notes after each chapter.
Part
one is an elaborate set-up for the double interpretations Schmidt discusses in
the book’s latter section. Here, she describes Part one’s function to be
like the ouverture of an opera “where all the important ‘themes’ are
introduced which will eventually be presented in due course in the whole
performance” (49). In doing this, Schmidt writes two introductions with the
first chapter providing a comprehensive approach in contrast to the second
chapter’s pragmatic and technical information. She also uses van Gogh’s The
Bedroom at Arles as an example of a hermeneutic conversation between the
painting’s visual message and an interpretation of a biographical ‘text’
of the artist. This exemplar chapter “mirrors” the organizational strategy
of Part two by discussing iconological understanding, the aesthetics of
reception, constitutive blanks and scotomization, and concluding with the role
of the mirror. The comparisons and juxtapositions’ in part one “are suppose
to show that with different modes of comprehension one can come to a similar
insight.” (20). Schmidt’s objective is to demonstrate that a Gadamerian
‘fusion of horizons’ between “visual-imaginary comprehension and
verbal-intellectual comprehension” (43) advances our understanding of a
painting and a text.
The chapters in Part one include: ‘Steps of Interpretation’,
‘Hermeneutic Psychotherapy’, ‘The Therapist as Mirror’, ‘Mirrors and
Mirroring’, ‘Hermeneutic and Art’ and ‘Mirrors in Painting and Tableaux’.
Each chapter is written with a keen sense of detail and precision in order to
prepare the reader for Part two’s ‘Double
Interpretations’. Many intriguing points relating to mirrors and mirroring
processes are contained in these seven chapters (250 pages) and easily inspire a
diffusion of conversations in other directions. Of particular interest is how
Schmidt melds Gadamer’s “effective historical consciousness” (100) and the
“emanicipatory power of insight” (105) possible in the
therapeutic encounter. This is only one example of the many intriguing
springboards for further enquiry Schmidt’s work encourages.
Part
two puts the theoretical basis of Part one into practice by juxtaposing and
comparing clinical vignettes with paintings that disclose the same mirroring
processes. Each chapter focuses on a different mirroring process in both the
work of art and the patient-therapist encounter and uses the same subheadings as
the exemplar chapter in Part one. Since the material is a demonstration of the
creative fusings and musings of the first 50 pages, the book becomes less
vigorous and exciting at this point. Having said that,
I do want to stress that there is still a great deal of insight to be
gleemed from Schmidt’s look at the visual discourse presented by the painting
to the viewer and the verbal discourse presented by the clinical text to the
reader. Especially significant in Part two is the conclusive proof that “the
therapist and the viewer are involved in active reflective participation. . . .
In spite of all the passive aspects of receiving and rendering which pertain to
mirror-reflections” (436).
The
book covers a lot of theoretical and historical material that intersects and
interweaves into other areas of consideration. This interdisciplinary aspect
provides the book with its energy as well as its “Achilles heel”. The interweaving, or ’fusing’ of various fields of
enquiry results in a constant deferral of significance until later chapters.
Schmidt introduces and develops intriguing concepts and connections early in the
book only to delay the completion of her point. This becomes a frustrating
organizational structure because Schmidt then must repeat the theoretical
argument made pages or even chapters earlier in order to pick up the deferred
conversation. Still, the diverse terrain she covers requires difficult choices,
and the material is presented with scholarly precision and detail, academic
clarity and originality. The combination of these attributes can not help but
create a passionate and well-informed text that could be utilized in other
studies.
Mirror
Image and Therapy applies hermeneutic, interdisciplinary considerations to
psychotherapy and specific works of art in order to create a ‘fusion of
horizons’ between contexts of meaning as signified by the viewer-picture
dialectic and the patient-therapist dialectic. Gisela Schmidt shows how the
considerations of mirroring procedures in art and in therapy increases our
understanding regarding the ‘text’ presented by the patient and the picture.
Covering a magnitude of theoretical and practical ground, Schmidt’s
originality and interdisciplinary study contributes a great deal to scholarship
by providing valuable strategies for furthering the hermeneutic conversation in
other areas, such as the arts, education, and politics to name a few. Schmidt
points to the interpretative challenges of interdisciplinary studies. Yet, the
courageous leaps Gisela Schmidt makes between theoretical, historical, aesthetic
and therapeutic concepts is engaging, inspiring and certainly worth the
interdisciplinary risk.
Overall, Mirror
Image and Therapy is an exiting and valuable
book taking Gadamer’s hermeneutics into the fascinating and
under-explored (until now) realm of various mirrors and mirroring processes in
both the world of art and the world of psychotherapy.