You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Mrs. Zabriskie: Dr. Robbins is co-chairman of the art therapy department at Pratt Institute. He is president of the Institute for Expressive Analysis. He is on the editorial board of the Journal for Art Psychotherapy and the Arts in Psychotherapy. Dr. Robbins was trained at NPAP. He has had many publications, mostly on the relationship between creativity and psychoanalysis.
In preparing this talk on the use of interpretation, a memory intruded into my consciousness which I'd like to share with you. I remember vividly making my first speech, at my confirmation. I recall all my 13-year-old discomfort as I stood at the pulpit with my legs quaking and my voice rather tense. Then I spotted my mother in the audience. There she was looking down with her hand on her head, and I knew she was thinking, “Oh, is he going to make a fool of me today?”
I responded to this challenge with some arrogance and a degree of provocation. I was torn by fear of having to prove myself and not wanting to have to assert my worth.
The relationship of my internal representations of the arrogant, frightened boy and his mother often has made itself felt in the psychological space between myself and others. This dyad projected outward acquired its own energy, intensity, sensibility, coloration. It also had a volume and rhythm. I still see, at times, in my professional interactions with patients, students, and audiences, the presence of that child as I again become somewhat arrogant, provocative, frightened. Perhaps you can detect a bit of