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Show Keeping Up tlnScien:e Science Service. WNU Service. Art Work Helps in the Building Up of Mental Health By MAKJORIE VAN DE WATER New York. Paintings of modern schools of art and those by the mentally deranged de-ranged are likely to be repulsive repul-sive to many judging their aesthetic merit. But such artistic presentations have their value nevertheless. To the psychiatrist, for example, the aesthetic qualities of a painting may be of least importance. The physician of sick minds has come to realize that through the medium of brush and canvas, a tortured tor-tured soul can find release lor his ejiio'uons, a lessening of tensions and anxieties and a bridge for the unreal realm of his imaginings to reality. And a naughty boy who draws in the back of his geography a caricature carica-ture of his stern teacher lets off steam which otherwise might result in an emotional explosion. Children treated by psychiatrists tat emotional disorders are encouraged encour-aged to make such drawings of teacher and parent, because they not only relieve their minds but also r?veal to the psychiatrist the young-bters' young-bters' individual worries and suppressed sup-pressed troubles. Size, Design and Color. Dr. Edward Liss, New York physician, tells in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry what the psychiatrist looks for as significant signifi-cant in the paintings of children and adults. In the first place, size is significant signifi-cant as revealing inner attitudes. It is related to the individual's evaluation evalua-tion of his own ego. Next the design or pattern is important. im-portant. Good technique in all kinds of art is the result of a certain balance between natural impulses and certain censoring agents which tend to bring them within approved limits or patterns. The more fixed the pattern, the more geometric the designs, the greater are the repressions re-pressions within the individual. Color choice is important. Brown and black, for example, are associated asso-ciated particularly with deep unconscious un-conscious components of a depressive depres-sive nature. Dr. Liss has found. Finally the finished work is interpreted inter-preted in much the same way that dreams are analyzed. Preference for some subjects and evasion of others indicates to the trained student the emotional impasses and fixation points of the artist. |