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Risk discourse in art therapy: Revisiting NeilSpringham's Inscape paper on art and riskSheridan Linnell

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Risk discourse in art therapy: Revisiting Neil Springham’s Inscape paperon art and risk

SHERIDAN LINNELL

AbstractIn view of an increasing emphasis on risk management in the therapy professions, this paper reconsiders Neil Springham’s(2008) Inscape paper, ‘Through the eyes of the law: What is it about art that can harm people?’. The author asks how thesimultaneously individualising and totalising tendencies of risk discourse might shape our relationships with our clients,each other and ourselves. She notes that many of her colleagues have commended Springham’s focus on the serious risksassociated with the use of art in therapeutic contexts, and have read his work as an endorsement of their expertise. Whileacknowledging the salience of the problematisation of art and risk, the author suggests that it is important to question theimplications of risk discourse for art therapy. She argues that Springham’s paper can be seen as a performance of expertknowledge, rather than simply a description of events. The current paper problematises the politics of representation inSpringham’s paper, particularly the concept of co-authorship, and raises questions about the generalisation of his findingsto the field of arts and health. The current paper also deconstructs the slippages between legal and therapeutic discourse inSpringham’s text, thereby disrupting what might otherwise become an incontrovertible truth.

Keywords: Art psychotherapy, arts and health, risk, discourse, law, deconstruction

The risks of risk discourse

Through my work as an art therapist and asupervisor for both registered art therapists andtrainees, I have begun to wonder about thepotentially objectivising and distancing effects ofart therapists (and other psychotherapists) beingpositioned as risk managers. I have found myselfquestioning to what extent this positioning mightinhibit the open-ended and exploratory qualitythat, for me, characterises the art therapeuticencounter. While recognising that client safetyand duty of care must always take priority and thatwe need to know how to assess and minimisedangers to our clients, to others and to ourselves,I have also hypothesised that the trend towardsunderstanding our work through the lens of riskdiscourse and risk management could be a threatto a psychotherapeutic focus on relationship(Cherubin & Linnell, 2009).

In 2010 I conducted a research project (Linnell,2011) that grew out of this sense that, as arttherapists, we are increasingly being charged withthe ‘management’ of our clients, particularly if theyare young and/or considered to be ‘at risk’. Whilemy research is not the focus of this paper, I willbriefly describe the context it provides for why Iam raising concerns here about art therapy andrisk discourse. During the field research for thisproject, An initial study of how counsellors and artpsychotherapists working with young people re-spond to the discourse of risk (Linnell, 2011),I conducted several interviews and arts-based

focus groups with art therapists and counsellorswho work with young people, about the effects ofcurrent ideas of risk and practices of risk man-agement on these therapists’ professional well-being and therapeutic relations. As a qualitative,collaborative enquiry, this research sought tounderstand how risk discourse may tend to shapeour professional identities and responsibilities,and also our understandings of and relationshipswith our clients. I also sought to understand whatalternatives to the dominant discourse of risk thisgroup of art therapists and counsellors might havediscovered, but that is the subject of anotherpaper (Linnell & Marjason, 2011).

As I looked into the literature, I found that riskhas itself proved extremely resilient in the face ofalmost two decades of sociological critiques thataim to challenge the increasing emphasis on theindividual as the site of risk, resilience andresponsibility. Following from Ulrich Beck’s influ-ential theory of ‘the risk society’ (Beck, 1992,1994, 1998), various analyses have been offeredof the social construction of risk, and of risk’srelationship to modernisation and the governanceof populations (e.g., Furlong & Cartmel, 2007;Green, Mitchell, & Bunton, 2000; Hayes, 1992;Hollway & Jefferson, 1997; Lupton, 1993, 1999;Woodman, 2009). For the most part, though, thereis a gap between sociological theorisations of riskand how risk is understood within clinical andpsychotherapeutic practice. An exception to thiscan be found in the work of Nikolas Rose (1996),

International Journal of Art Therapy, 2012; 1�6, iFirst article

1745-4832 (print)/1745-4840 (online) # 2012 British Association of Art Therapists

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who has built on Foucault’s (1988, 1992, 2000)later work on ethics, power and subjectivity inorder to analyse risk discourse in relation topsychiatric theory and practice. Rose challengesthe apparent inevitability of contemporary cate-gories of risk and safety, normal and abnormal,and questions the idea of some clients as ‘riskyindividuals’ (Rose, 2006). Rose’s work has helpedme to think about how the simultaneously indivi-dualising and totalising tendencies of risk dis-course affect the field of art therapy, shaping ourrelationships with our clients, each other andourselves.

‘Discourse’, in the analysis I am offering here,refers to a body of knowledge, composed ofeveryday ideas and practices as well as formalknowledge, that shapes the meanings that wegive to our experiences and our lives, and evenwhom and what we can be (Foucault, 1980).Discourse is implicated in the production, as wellas the representation, of truth. ‘Risk discourse’thus means much more than the formal ways thatwe speak and write about risk in professional andacademic contexts; it is one of many competingdiscourses that work to shape our understandingsof art therapy and its subjects*both clients andpractitioners. Risk discourse establishes and re-inforces what becomes known as the truth aboutpeople and risk. It shapes how someone mightunderstand and feel about themselves, relate toothers, act and be recognised, within the categoryof ‘person at risk’. This way of conceptualising riskdiscourse gives insight into how the association ofcertain client groups with risk becomes taken forgranted, and how some people are produced asrisky individuals (Foucault, 1988; Rose, 1996).Similarly, only certain kinds of professionals arecharged with the authority and capability tomanage these risky individuals. At the same time,although many aspects of risk discourse areextremely concerning, it also makes some usefulpossibilities available. Like other discourses, riskworks by producing capacities and opportunities,not only by repressing them, but it simultaneouslytends to dominate the current experience of reality(Foucault, 1980). For example, risk managementpractices are necessary and crucial to savinglives, but they can also perpetuate risk averseattitudes, pathologising and even isolating thepeople who are most in need of our help (Fullagar,2005).

Springham’s problematisation of art and risk

When I was searching the art therapy literature inrelation to the topic of risk, I found that, for themost part, dominant ideas about risk were taken

for granted and embedded in this literature. Risktaking was variously figured: either as part of thehealthy exploration that takes place in art therapy(for instance, the risk one takes when making amark on a page or talking about oneself and one’sart work as part of a group) or alternatively interms of the ‘risk factors’ pertaining to variousclients or client groups. The possible tensionsbetween these different iterations of risk seem tohave gone largely unexplored, at least in theliterature. It was with considerable interest, then,that I revisited a paper that I had read when it firstappeared in the International Journal of ArtTherapy (Inscape): Neil Springham’s ‘Through theeyes of the law: What is it about art that can harmpeople?’ (Springham, 2008). My interest sprangfrom the fact that Springham was himself enga-ging with some taken-for-granted assumptions, inthis case, that art making is exclusively benignand healing, rather than also potentially danger-ous. I had found his paper intellectually stimulat-ing when it first appeared in Inscape, but also, insome indefinable way, rather concerning. Re-reading the paper, from the perspective of havingimmersed myself in a psychosocial critique of riskdiscourse, has opened up the possibility ofquestioning aspects of Springham’s work that hadpreviously appeared to be unquestionable.

A descriptive summary and commendation ofSpringham’s paper by Dr Jill Westwood, myesteemed colleague and a leading figure inAustralian art therapy, can currently be found onthe website of the Australian and New ZealandArts Therapy Association. Westwood pinpointsthe significance of Springham’s contribution*asignificance that is enduring, as the ongoing webpresence of this summary suggests. She writes:

This paper describes a case in the UK where aserious injury was sustained by a client as a resultof an art activity in a clinical setting. This led tolegal action and the establishment of negligenceon the part of the practitioner and the organisa-tion. The act of negligence centred on thevulnerability of the client to discern the imaginaryfrom the real and the responsibility of the practi-tioner and the organisation to competently assessthe client’s vulnerability and respond accordingly.The article presents an important milestone in theissue of protection of the public when engaging inarts based therapeutic activity in a clinical envir-onment. (Westwood, 2009, p. 1)

My peers in the Australian and New ZealandArts Therapy Association have in general alsoreceived Springham’s work very positively, as anoteworthy cautionary tale about the serious risksthat can be associated with the power of art in

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therapeutic contexts, and also as an endorsementof an expertise that struggles for recognition in ourregional context. Several local colleagues havemoreover mentioned the paper to me as providingthe proof we need that art therapy should not bepractised by non art therapists, althoughSpringham himself is careful to recommendspecialised support, rather than a closing down, ofthe range of arts-based activities that can havetherapeutic effects. It is not my intention to disputethat Springham’s paper is important, useful anddeserving of this attention, but I would like toextend the reception of Springham’s position toinclude an element of questioning.

Presented with a shocking and distressingaccount of a court case that centres on a physicalinjury incurred by a client in direct association witha psychological reaction to an art intervention, anintervention made moreover by an unqualifiedpractitioner within an agency that did not antici-pate and manage risk appropriately, we are likelyto feel compelled to take the side of the arttherapist ‘expert witness’. To do otherwise couldappear to be heartless, naive or thoughtless, evento be a kind of parallel professional negligence.Thus it is difficult to put an alternative viewpoint,yet this very difficulty speaks to the importance ofa critique. Indeed, from the perspective of ana-lysing risk discourse, it is precisely the reason-ableness and apparent unassailability ofSpringham’s position that is of concern. Thequestion I want to raise here is not whetherSpringham’s ‘judgement’*noting the slippage inhis paper between moral, professional, academicand legal forms of judgement*is right or wrong.Rather, I am interested in what his paper mightproduce.

I wholeheartedly agree with Springham that riskmanagement is an important dimension of arttherapy practice, and indeed of any practice thattakes up art as a therapeutic modality. I also agreethat regarding art as an intrinsically benignagency is risky. The irony here is that I considermyself obliged to underline my agreement withSpringham on this point, lest I appear profes-sionally remiss, or worse still, might lead lessexperienced art therapists or trainees astray.

At the same time, in a way that oddly parallelsSpringham’s contention (which I do not dispute)that art is not without risk, I contend that embra-cing risk discourse is also not without risk.

Performances of expert knowledge

From this perspective, Springham’s paper can beunderstood not only as a description of eventsand opinions but also as a powerful performance

of expert knowledge. Throughout the paper, the‘art therapist as expert witness’ is performed asmuch as described. The paper and the court caseof which it gives an account hinge on a claim thatart has the power to make the subjective seemreal, a power that is not necessarily benign. Thisproblematisation is a useful intervention into aprofessional scene where art making is a taken-for-granted activity and separated from othertherapeutic moves. What becomes invisible,however, is how the paper itself exemplifies theperformative power of rhetoric to make the sub-jective seem real, and the power of discourse tocreate ‘the subject’ itself. When Springham writes,‘Our system of litigation has its roots in thediscipline of rhetoric, where counsels for bothdefence and claimant explicitly aim to use evi-dence and argument to build a case that ispersuasive of their perspective’ (p. 66), he couldbe describing his own rhetoric as much as that ofthe court case he describes. Legal terminologypermeates the paper. The client is described asthe claimant, and when Springham says that he‘thinks it would be illuminating to now put theevidence before the reader’ (p. 67), he draws usinto a performance of meaning where we becomemembers of a jury. Who and what is on trial here?

Early in his paper, Springham anticipates andrefutes an accusation of ‘self-interested profes-sional protectionism’ (p. 66) by claiming that he iswriting in the interests of and in collaboration withthe client whose unfortunate story is at the centreof Springham’s account. It is important to knowabout the client’s involvement in the paper, andthis clearly adds to its significance and ethicalpositioning. However, I did wonder about thedescription of this relationship as ‘co-authorship’.If quoting the ‘claimant’, and having his permis-sion and indeed encouragement to write about theevents described, constitutes co-authorship, thenmany published clinical accounts could also bedescribed as co-authored. Moreover, the asser-tion that the paper is anonymously co-authored(although formally credited to a single author) notonly adds authority and ‘conviction’ to theaccount, it also tends to elide the complexities ofrepresentation. Arguably, the writer ‘represents’the claimant in a manner that collapses thepolitics of representation with the rhetoric of thelaw. The word ‘advocate’ could be more appro-priate, but advocacy similarly sits between thedifferent discourses of social justice and legaljustice. I certainly don’t see Springham’s work inthis paper as ‘self-interested’*he is clearly veryconcerned to raise important issues on behalf ofhis client and in the public interest*but I want toquestion the binary the paper sets up between

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‘professional self-interest’ and ‘client advocacy’.Both the court case and the paper arguablyadvance and consolidate the professional statusof art psychotherapy and Springham’s own pro-fessional authority, at the same time leading to alegal judgement in favour of the client. A morepertinent question than that of self-interest ordisinterest, here and elsewhere, is how we canpractise professional advancement and benefitour clients in a manner that minimises thefurthering of dividing and pathologising categoriesin which therapist expertise is raised aboveeveryday experiences and knowledges.

It is not my purpose to question, here, whetherthe drug and alcohol counsellor described inSpringham’s paper was monstrously remiss,although I have wondered whether he, as well ashis even more unfortunate client, was to someextent an unlucky individual upon whom a wide-spread preoccupation in the world of psychother-apy with lack, negativity and the confessionalmode, combined with stretched resources andinadequate/inconsistent protocols within anagency, rebounded with devastating conse-quences. However, assuming that we accept thecounsellor’s and agency’s liability in this particularinstance, as (since it was legally proven) it seemswe must, does it follow that we must also acceptthe rhetorical move that maps these failures ontothe arts and health movement in order to invoke amoral prohibition as well as a legal precedent?The practitioner in this case is described as acounsellor, albeit one who appears to have beeninadequately qualified. He was not, by all ac-counts, an arts practitioner who had ‘strayed’ intothe area of art therapy. Yet Springham refrainsfrom suggesting that all therapists and counsel-lors other than arts therapists should be discour-aged from using art in therapy or be supervised byart therapists. Such a suggestion would negatethe multiple histories and practices of the ther-apeutic uses of art and would be impossible toregulate, even if that were desirable.

The paper rhetorically aligns its writer with theclient and with wisdom and justice, but at thesame time it discursively reinforces and performsa set of hierarchical binaries (Cixous & Clement,1986; see also Skaife, 2008):

. The expert responsibilised art therapist / the

vulnerable and needy client

. The real and properly trained professional art

therapist / the untrained Christian drug and

alcohol counsellor

. The art therapist invested with knowledge of the

psychological power of art / the arts practitioner

who is ‘only’ competent to lead a community

arts project, unless under the supervision of an

art therapist.

Reading Springham’s paper, we may feel con-firmed in the rightness of the perspective that onlythose qualified to do so and recognised as suchby a professional association should practise arttherapy. We may find our attitudes to the possi-bilities and limits of the expertise of arts andhealth practitioners challenged or reinforced. Wemay feel compelled to side with what is presentedas incontrovertible evidence. With varying de-grees of enthusiasm, willingness or ambivalence,we may embrace or admit the opportunities andresponsibilities we are invested with as those whoare trained and licenced to handle the great powerof art. We may feel justified and supported,particularly when many of us work in contextswhere our professional knowledges may bemarginalised or even trivialised.

Challenging the law

Underlying Springham’s position is a theorisationof art’s power to represent the inner world.Springham’s argument is deliberately inclusive,and he does not tie his position to any particularapproach to art therapy. Unlike many art thera-pists, Springham does not directly invoke psy-choanalysis in this formulation, a positioningflagged in his paper by its notable absence of anyreference to the unconscious. Yet notions of anintelligible inner world are linked to the psycho-analytic antecedents of art therapy and otherpsychotherapies, and to discourses that investtherapists of various persuasions with expertise inrelation to people’s emotional, psychological andmoral selves. In this sense, it seems to me thatthe authority of normative psychological practiceand of psychoanalysis*as part of that powerfulcontemporary assemblage that Rose (1998) calls‘the psy disciplines’*makes a subtle appearancein Springham’s paper, alongside the authority ofthe legal system.

As Judith Butler says of critical responses toher own attempts to challenge the law of norma-tive psychoanalysis:

‘‘It is the law!’’ becomes the utterance thatperformatively attributes the very force to the lawthat the law itself is said to exercise. ‘‘It is the law’’is thus a sign of allegiance to the law, a sign of thedesire for the law to be the indisputable law. . .(Butler, 2000, p. 21)

Here Butler engages critically with what Foucault,following Lacan, called ‘the Father’s ‘‘No’’: theprohibition against disorder that is the basis

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of the dominant, negative representation ofpower that Foucault calls ‘‘juridico-discursive’’’(Foucault, 1980, p. 82; see also Linnell, 2010).1

From this perspective, deconstructing the truthsembodied and performed in Springham’s papercould be compared to challenging ‘the Father’s‘‘No’’’. Perhaps, then, it is not only the slippage butthe discursive parallel between the law of psy-choanalysis, the law of the land and the powersinvested in us as (art) therapists that makesSpringham’s paper so compelling that to resist it isto risk being cast out, at least symbolically, frommembership of the responsibilised professionalclasses.

Law, in Springham’s view, ‘might be said torepresent an accumulated response to humaninteraction over at least a 2000 year period’(p. 66). Thus law is disengaged from power andaligned with truth, through a truth statement that isitself a performance of power, and therapy isdisengaged from the local and specific politicsand practices of knowledge and power, andaligned with the law.

An ethic of questioning

It is an irony that a perspective that arose fromSpringham’s commitment to challenging taken-for-granted ideas about the power of art may havecome to offer the kind of certainty and status thatcan be deeply attractive to members of a profes-sion so often marginalised by the claims ofpositivist science and evidence-based practice.Yet before we align ourselves too uncritically*perhaps even defensively*with such a move,perhaps we could ask ourselves whether we wantto go where it might lead us. Art therapy has along and remarkable history of being subversive,although not necessarily in an oppositional way,and the art of finding our way between normativeand transformational praxis continues to be one ofthe great challenges of the profession. Art thera-pists are frequently engaged in questioning whatotherwise might seem inevitable, in the moment tomoment unfolding of each therapy, where weoften hold hope for someone whose sense of selfhas come to be dominated by discourses soentrenched, embodied and psychically enfoldedthat they seem to close off the possibilities for arich relational and inner life. It seems to me thatwe can, at our best, translate the complex ethosand practices of art psychotherapy into equallyreflexive practices of reading, listening and writ-ing, practices that move us radically beyond thetaken for granted. In a professional world thatincreasingly draws us into the production ofclinical truths, the sequestering of professional

knowledge and power and the governance of‘risky individuals’, this is one ‘risk’ that I believe we

must continue to take.

Note1 Butler is not suggesting a rejection of psychoanalysis per se,

but of its most powerfully normative and pathologising

dimensions.

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Biographical detail

Dr Sheridan Linnell is Senior Lecturer in the Schoolof Social Sciences and Psychology at the Universityof Western Sydney, Australia, where she leads theMaster of Art Therapy. Her 2007 PhD thesis andsubsequent book on practitioner research (Artpsychotherapy and narrative therapy: An account ofpractitioner research, Bentham Science Publishers,2010) conceptualised how the subjectivity of arttherapists is formed and performed within contem-porary regimes that situate moral responsibilityprimarily with the individual. Sheridan has extensiveclinical and community experience working withpeople ‘at risk’. She is also a published poet andcollaborative artist. Email: s.linnell@uws.edu.au

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