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Nora Swan-Foster's book Art Therapy and Childbearing Issues is a comprehensive collection of essays that are skilfully organized around the ways in which art therapy is utilized for women who are “undergoing various stages of the childbearing process.” Swan-Foster is also the author of Jungian Art Therapy: Images, Dreams and Analytical Psychology . Reading her new book, I thought that it would straddle the theoretical divide between depth psychology and art therapy. I wondered if it might restate a more common Jungian narrative about the Good, Terrible, and Great Mother Archetypes (cf. Neumann, 1955/1983) in explaining images made by women who are dealing with conception, pregnancy, miscarriages, childbirth, and postpartum issues. Delving into this intelligent work, I realized however that Swan-Foster and the other contributors were not following a well-worn path. Each author stands on the frontier of their collective theme. It is from this interconnected web of perspectives that Swan-Foster weaves a rich tapestry for a reader.
The book is organized into four sections. In Part 1, “Art Therapy: Pregnancy,” Swan-Foster introduces the book's grounding theories, her personal connection with this theme, a critical review of its socio-political contexts, and the reasons she links art therapy with childbearing issues. Citing Winnicott (1960), she shifts the focus of inquiry from the infant to the mother's inner life and her maternal identity. Swan-Foster utilizes the anthropological term matrescence to describe a transitional stage of life that accompanies the process of becoming a mother. She argues that during this inward journey art therapy allows a woman to create images of her subjective experience—“her body, psyche and spirit” (p. 33).
Swan-Foster's personal background suggests that she had many life experiences which seemed to point her interest in this direction. As a young woman, she lived in an apartment above a midwife who saw patients at home. She regularly came