SEE YOURSELF 7: A CLINICAL APPLICATION OF THE PHOTO-STORY
When we talk about the picture story, we refer to a metaphor of the use of images that goes a little back to the old picture story. In practice, the applications of photo-narratives “picture story” are many. Here are some examples. In an individual work, the application of the picture story can be proposed, and I did it in different situations. For example the picture story of a depressed day. The person tells its depressed day through a picture story done with the self-timer. Of course, everyone has a depressed day.
What remains in my memory is the one that a patient brought to me. She articulated a real picture story with the self-timer: a day at home, in which the events of this depressed day occurred.
Small everyday things. What impressed me in the picture story that she brought was that she was always seen from behind, never in front. Obviously it’s something that I said in the comment of her picture story, which showed an opening in a depressed day, a phone conversation with his mother. The several photographs, of course, were supplemented by balloons and lettering. She wrote and drew the letters of her thoughts, including the script of the dialogue with her mother that never happened but was in the picture story she told herself that day.
Speaking of depressed days, every day is like another, except that in the depressed day – picture story there was something completely different, a conversation that never took place with her mother but extremely significant in that story for the person who ran the risk of telling about herself creatively, entering into “the monster”: her depression.
Translation edited by dr. Daniela Abbrescia
