Using art therapy to address the protective false self when working with queer identity.

Abstract

The exploration of one’s queer identity can prove significant for queer-identifying people. A result of exploring the multiple layers and aspects of queerness that comprise one's identity is being able to engage in society from the perspective of one’s most authentic self, or as psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott termed it, the ‘true self’. In this paper, I contend that for a queer person to explore their identity, they must first address their protective 'false self', the self that develops from having to comply with the external world. I draw on findings from my dissertation study, which used qualitative methodologies, of an eight-session group art therapy intervention for queer-identifying individuals that aimed to determine whether art therapy can be used to foster self-acceptance. Each session resulted in the creation of an artwork followed by a discussion prompted by the artworks. Many artworks featured bodies and parts of bodies as representations of self and revealed an ambivalence between the true self that wanted to be witnessed and the false self that wanted to conceal the true self. One of the core findings from my dissertation was that the false self only began emerging into the consciousness of the participants at the end of the intervention. In this article, I focus on the artworks created by two participants who attended the group most regularly and tracked the false self in their artworks. This paper argues that there is value in the false self’s protective function as a defence mechanism for the queer population and concludes by highlighting the importance of making visible the false self, through art therapy, before exploring the multiple layers of queer identity.