La situation projective du modelage comme instrument clinique dans une recherche sur un dispositif de médiation sensorielle

Objectives

This article examines the use of clay modeling as an instrument for clinical analysis of the relation to one's own body and to the object. While modeling is a widely-used medium in therapeutic work, we present here the use of the modeled self-portrait as a projective method in a research situation involving sensorial mediation using touch. The aim is to understand how the subject invests and engages a relation with this object, based on the way s/he invests and represents her/his body and sensations.

Method

The modeling situation was proposed individually to 19 participants at the first of six meetings. The choice of the modeled self-portrait in this research project is inspired by a psychoanalytical epistemology that enables us to understand the unconscious psychic dimensions of body image and the relation to the object, as well as the concepts of mediation, the projective situation, and transference. In the absence of a pre-existing reference to a systematized methodology for analyzing the self-portrait with modeling clay, we referred to psychoanalytic work on projective tests to construct a qualitative analysis grid based on the material collected.

Results

The modeled self-portrait enabled us to take into consideration, from an economic, dynamic, and topical point of view, on the one hand, the content that emerged in the modeling and in the verbalizations that accompanied it, and, on the other hand, the characteristics of the modeling process itself. The modeling situation gave rise to regressive and projective movements, leading the participants to express key elements of their personal history, their sensory situation, and the areas of the body invested or disinvested, as well as their psychic behaviors in relation to the object in the present of this research encounter. We identified four ways in which participants related to modeling, depending on their subjectivity and their position in the research process. The form given to the modeling, its structure, and the parts represented or not provided us with indications of certain features of the participants’ body image and the way in which they were able to express it in the space-time of this encounter. We hypothesize that through its connections with the subject's body image, the three-dimensional self-portrait expresses the way in which participants invest their bodies, and sometimes body zones linked to the senses, such as touch, through the modeling activity itself, but also other senses through the elements represented or not, verbalized or not, about the created-modeled object.

Discussion

We present some considerations on the complex connections between the relationship to modeling, to the object of sensory mediation through touch, and to autobiographical speech in the interview situation, considering the participants’ verbal and non-verbal productions during the process of this research. Finally, we present the limits of the collection and analysis of results in the context of this research and the present article.

Conclusion

The use of the modeled self-portrait has brought out elements that enable us to better understand the psychological underpinnings of the different relations to the mediating object that the participants expressed in this research. Insofar as self-portrait calls upon unconscious elements of both body image and relation to the object, it encounters resistance and defensive modalities in the subject's own psychic functioning.