‘For the making of any drawing, if it was at all satisfying, seemed to be accomplished by a spreading of the imaginative body in wide awareness and this somehow included one's physical body as well as what was being drawn’ (Milner, 1950).

Aleda Erskine and Dorothy Judd take as their imaginative title a phrase from Marion Milner's book On Not Being Able to Paint. Judd, an artist and art therapist (as well as an adult and child psychotherapist), has utilized that aspect of her background to understand the way severely ill or handicapped patients experience the visual distortion of their body selves. Aleda Erskine, a consultant clinical psychologist, has a special research interest in chronic pain and applying psychodynamic understanding to health care. Their joint introduction helps us consider the problems of