Mirror Image and Therapy
With a Foreword by Hans-Georg Gadamer
Published on 24. October 2001
Book
Paperback/Softback
526 pages
978-3-906766-95-9 (ISBN)
Description
This study presents a wide-ranging thesis on the basis of Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy. It is unusually multidisciplinary in approach and content including the domains of philosophy, art history and analytic psychotherapy. Its central thesis that mirrors and mirroring in the Western tradition of painting might be analogical to the varieties of 'mirroring' in the conversations between therapist and patient is interpreted as Gadamerian 'fusion of horizons' with an increase in understanding of both the pictures with mirrors and an analogical mirroring in a patient's 'text' or tableau.
Chapters devoted to the analogical scheme of interpretation, hermeneutic psychotherapy as 'reflective participation', mirroring in psychotherapy, mirrors and mirroring and their ontological value, hermeneutics of art and its particular hermeneutic conversation, and finally to mirrors in paintings culminate in a presentation of eight 'double interpretations'. There the author takes the reader through clinical vignettes drawn from real published case-studies juxtaposed with paintings in which mirrors play an analogical role. The 'double interpretations' of various forms of Narcissistic Mirroring, Convex Mirroring, Anamorphic Mirroring, Medusan, Janusian and Athenean Mirroring are both empirically sound and strikingly original. The book is a creative example of object hermeneutics within the domain of Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics.
Chapters devoted to the analogical scheme of interpretation, hermeneutic psychotherapy as 'reflective participation', mirroring in psychotherapy, mirrors and mirroring and their ontological value, hermeneutics of art and its particular hermeneutic conversation, and finally to mirrors in paintings culminate in a presentation of eight 'double interpretations'. There the author takes the reader through clinical vignettes drawn from real published case-studies juxtaposed with paintings in which mirrors play an analogical role. The 'double interpretations' of various forms of Narcissistic Mirroring, Convex Mirroring, Anamorphic Mirroring, Medusan, Janusian and Athenean Mirroring are both empirically sound and strikingly original. The book is a creative example of object hermeneutics within the domain of Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics.
Reviews / Votes
«Covering a magnitude of theoretical and practical ground, Schmidt's originality and interdisciplinary study contributes a great deal to scholarship by providing valuable strategies for furthering the hermeneutic conversation in other areas, such as the arts, education, and politics to name a few. [...] Overall, 'Mirror Image and Therapy' is an exiting and valuable book taking Gadamer's hermeneutics into the fascinating and under-explored (until now) realm of various mirrors and mirroring processes in both the world of art and the world of psychotherapy.» (Christine Boyko-Head, Consciousness, Literature and the Arts)«My description of the book's content gives but samples of its richness as an unusual art-historical study. The examples open up many ways in which both art history and psychoanalysis can be expanded through an interinanimation of the two disciplines.» (Richard Kuhns, www.caareviews.org)
More details
Person
The Author: Having studied literature and art history Gisela Schmidt worked for the German Cultural Institute in London and Dublin. She graduated in Psychology and was awarded a Ph.D. by Trinity College, Dublin. After further professional training in Germany she has been a practising psychotherapist for a number of years, while at the same time pursuing her interests in art history and philosophy.
Content
Contents: 'Double interpretations' of mirroring processes in paintings containing mirrors and clinical vignettes of psychotherapeutic conversations with mirroring processes - Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics - Hermeneutic psychotherapy - Hermeneutics and art.