The house as symbolic representation of the self

Houses, or people's necessity of shelter and dwelling, are found in all cultures and geographical regions. I carried out a comparative study in art therapy built on the topic of the house, which allows to speak to patients worldwide and to trigger deep-lying emotions and personal issues. This thesis investigated the degree to which this topic can, via patients’ aesthetic and narrative material, provide insights into art therapy workshop participants’ states of selfhood. By applying the same approach in three clinical contexts in Wil, Switzerland, Paris, France and Ohmiya, Japan, comparative studies became possible. This research also explored whether past traumatic events, or phenomena of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms could be expressed and detected in patients’ aesthetic works and narratives.

Several research methods and interdisciplinary approaches were integrated and both qualitative and quantitative procedures applied, resulting in a mixed methods approach. This comprised a qualitative phenomenological study, incorporating also quantitative elements, and covering disparate geographical and cultural con-texts. Fieldwork procedures consisted of clinical art therapy focus group work-shops. The applicability and validity of the combined procedures was demonstrat-ed.

In addition to the main cultural and methodological questions, whose discussion forms major foci of this thesis, additional axes (suitability of the topic for juveniles and adults and more generally, gender issues, and various socio-cultural situa-tions) were explored. Also the potential presence of disparities between partici-pants’ verbal and pictorial expressions regarding lived experiences, particularly regarding PTSD, was investigated.

Finally, I explored whether and to what extent the various cultural contexts would shape the individual, and if so, how these would reflect upon their aesthetic and narrative expressions.