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

 

Christine Boyko-Head

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.