Kate is an art psychotherapist who has worked with Peter for three years in private practice. The working relationship is heavily focused on his art work, which he uses to re construct his identity, but the main challenge is how to help him hold onto something from the work. The therapist’s heightened skills to re connect to his art making and his process, and to understand his limits and effects of brain injury, is vital for Peter’s recovery. With his severe memory problems, very difficult past and forensic history, telling his life story and having his images seen is important in order for him to have a sense of being seen, visible, alive, and that actually coping with the effects of the brain injury and his losses are the main issue in his therapy. Peter states the art is all about ‘expressing who you are in the world’.
Peter is a private patient who acquired global brain injury from Carbon Monoxide poisoning. Too high functioning to join a brain injury group, though a keen artist in his own right, Peter’s brain injury manifests itself in positive and negative ways including short term memory loss and lack of social inhibition.
Thank you all for a very rich experience.
Sharing in Kate and Peter’s moving therapeutic relationship was a gift and an honour.
A very inspiring morning.
Dermot.