Relationships between ideas of space, mental states and
self-perception situations during autogenic training and in
paintings by artists
Dr. Emőke Bagdy
In extreme emotional-affective experiential situations, excessive interpersonal tensions,
interpersonal crises, and life-and-death border situations our idea of space and our selfperception become modified in a specific way. When the conditions of perception change as a
result of too many or too intensive stimuli, or the contrary state of affairs, owing to a lack of
stimuli, or when the state of consciousness alters as during relaxation, in hypnotic trans-states, in
ecstasies, in the state of so-called supra-consciousness or extended consciousness, the body is
experienced as changed both in real space and in the subjective field of experience.
In these conditions the body image becomes modified along the dimensions of expansion,
spatiality, weight, position, deportment, and sense of border and unity of motor-movements.
These phenomena are well known in connection with relaxation, too. During the learning of
relaxation, bodily sensations – for example, the dissolution of body borders; changes in body
dimensions; changes in sense of unity, expansion and position; the emergence of kinesthetic
illusions such as spinning, turning, floating, and sinking – are common. Moreover, a sense of
disappearance of certain parts of the body, or of the body becoming empty, sometimes a sense of
weightlessness, and more rarely a sense of being outside the body are also not unknown. In an
earlier study I followed the process of such experiences in 40 healthy trainees, 40 neurotic and
20 psychosomatic patients during a 30-lesson relaxation training. Table 1 presents the
characteristics of the experiences reported, on the basis of 5493 relaxation experiences grouped
into 89 experiential categories for content analysis.
Table 1.
A decrease in a sense of body borders, mild kinesthetic illusions, and changes in the proportions
of the body were experiences characteristic of the healthy group at the beginning of the training.
By the end of the training, however, a sense of body borders had increased in a compensatory
way and the relaxation training as a whole was seen by the trainees as being accompanied by
positive subjective feelings. Phobic patients were characterized pronouncedly by a sense of
alienation from the body. In their experience the body felt empty, remote and machine-like, and
in some cases even a sense of being outside the body was recorded. The reports of
psychosomatic patients were dominated by a decrease in the sense of body borders, a series of
kinesthetic illusions, illusions of facial movements, and a sense of a loss of control resembling a
sense of being controlled from outside. Their experiences also abounded in a sense of changes of
body proportions and body positions. However, it was in the anxiety neurosis patients that most
of such alterations in the body image occurred. For them, changes in body proportions, a sense
of body disintegration, experiences of alienation from the body and of changes in body position,
and illusions of facial movements accompanied the relaxation training throughout. However,
feelings of alienation as well as kinesthetic illusions decreased favourably as the training
progressed; this can be related to the psychological state of a person who is relaxed and to the
non-toxic resomatization brought about by relaxation.
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The observations made in the above study also led to the particular finding on which I shall
report in greater detail in the present lecture. Namely, I observed repeatedly that specific,
complex relaxational experiences of certain patients with regard to body-image modifications
showed a marked similarity to the depictive symbolism occurring in paintings, primarily in selfportraits.
When, as a particular state of “immersion” and as an altered experience of consciousness,
relaxation activates regressive mental processes, then illusions concerning body image changes
are constructive-reparative regressive products. When such experiences appear in paintings, then
we may assume that creative processes in the arts occur during altered states of consciousness
(inspiration may be precisely this) since they lead to a constructive-regressive product.
Furthermore, it may be assumed that such self-expression may represent healing for the artist.
By discovering identical inner conflicts underlying body-image changes in the relaxing person
and in the creative artist, the validity of these assumptions could be tested.
The above assumptions are also supported by developmental psychology. Primitive, nonEuclidian topological spaces originating from our childhood existence – such as flat surfaces,
spherical space and pseudospherical space (saddle- and trumpet-like spaces) – are still present
within us. Lower levels of development, less controlled ego states (such as sinking into
relaxation) but also the state of absorption of the artist can be brought into correspondence with
a regressive non-Euclidian idea of space, in which regression might be manifest in an experience
of body-image changes. These in turn however, might reflect inner psychological states. An
image might reflect a similar inner state in the language of primary processes.
I would like to illustrate my assertion above by presenting a few characteristic patient-artist
experiential correspondences on the one hand, and by attempting to show a match between the
background problems of patients in relaxation and those of creative artists.
Please look at the works “Levitation” (Slide 1) and “Self-Portrait” (Slide 2) by the great Austrian
Jugendstil master Egon Schiele (1890–1919). Schiele was a famous prodigy. Three of his
siblings died during his childhood, which was permeated by a fear of death. He was afraid of his
father, who had syphilis and suffered from tabetic psychosis. Schiele began painting at an early
age and was discovered early as well. In 1921 he was charged and convicted by a court at St.
Pölten for “abusing models during the painting of naked children and youths”. His “SelfPortrait” now displayed was painted while he was being held in custody pending the trial. The
backgroound tensions discernible in the work are fear, humiliation, terror at the prospect of
punishment, and a depressive mental state.
While looking at the picture let us listen to reports by a 22-year-old student at the Budapest
Academy of Music regarding changes in his body image during the warmth exercises of
autogenic training: “I began floating, as though there had been no bed under me (see
“Levitation”; Slide 1). My body became twisted, with my neck twisting out of my shoulder; my
face became hot, even my hands (see “Self-Portrait”; Slide 2). My blood vessels were pulsing, at
the moment they are, too. My hands, fingers and even my eyes were burning. The most
intriguing thing was that especially on my left side, at the level of my heart, it felt as if my hand
had moved there, my fingers were spread apart, as when one places them on one’s heart to take
an oath, and my heart was throbbing, as though gripped in an embrace by the prongs of a fork. I
stiffened with terror; there was something frightening in the whole thing, but luckily it passed. It
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resembled the feeling one has when unexpectedly attacked and when one defends oneself by
reflex.”
The report ends there. The experience is strikingly similar: Schiele’s “Self-Portrait” seems to
depict precisely this! However, the similarity of the problems in the background are even more
striking. The male patient was sensitive and introverted. He was diagnosed as having panic
syndrome and reactive depression. The activating background factor was his confrontation with
his fellow trainee-teachers. His fellows accused him of being too familiar with his students and
being suspiciously kind to them. He was gravely affected by these accusations, which he thought
were unfounded, and was greatly put out by the humiliation.
The self-portrait by the artist and the experience of this student at the Academy of Music
concerning body-image change during relaxation both bear the tensions of a mental state
characterized by a sense of humiliation stemming from an accusation of sexual abuse, on the
basis of which the “sameness of imagery” can no longer be regarded as accidental. What does
this body image tell us? The Hungarian psychoanalyst Imre Hermann saw twisted, spiralling
postures as expressions of aggression. In this case one logically thinks of aggression turned
against the self. “Twisted surfaces” also represent regression to the early tactile experience
establishing space and the vestibular kinesthetic space. These ideas of space represent qualities
independent of measure (“measure” means realistic proportions, size, etc.). In empathic
understanding one should apply the principle of congruity: one must identify the mental state
corresponding to the part of the body image depicted. On the basis of the congruence principle
the “hand taking an oath”, and the “fork-like” grip may reflect innocence.
Let me give another graphic example for testing the validity of our hypothesis.
Let us take a close look at Van Gogh’s well known “Self-Portrait” (Slide 3). The Dutch artist
(1853–1890) painted this picture in the autumn of 1888, prior to his hospitalization in a mental
sanatorium, in his studio, which he shared with Gauguin, at Arles. It was at this time than Van
Gogh’s friend left him, and he in his rage mutilated himself. He painted this picture as a
souvenir for his friend, and also as a return favour for Gauguin’s self-portrait “Les misérables”.
He wrote to his brother at this time: “Sometimes I am caught by such an agitation that it runs
into an attack of fainting. My life is sick to the roots… What can one do in such a situation? …
I paint the thoughts that appear when I see things. The restless colours of the self-portrait were
transmitted to the canvas in paint-whirls shaped in the form of dynamic spirals.
In order to “read from” the painting, the eye must follow the whirling paths of paint, and it gets
tired, tense and dizzy from tracing of the twisting lines. They all suggest and induce agitation.
While looking at this painting let us listen to the experiences of a 35-year-old psychosomatic
patient, who suffered from attacks of migraine. He had the following experiences during the
second session of the relaxation training: “My head was in a critical state, as though I had
entered a whirl of forces. Magnetic force constituting a halo embraced my skull and tightened
round it. The magnetic force whirled in circles around my eyes, pushing my mouth ahead, and
my eyes bulged against their cavities. My neck pulled down between my shoulders in a spasm,
while my cheeks were pushed away from each other. My head was a fiery ball, almost bursting
from tension, I couldn’t bear it...” With the help of the description the paroxysmal tension
underlying the migraine of this engineer can be traced, as the whirling of forces in Van Gogh’s
self-portrait. It is as though the words describing the body feelings in relaxation are providing a
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description of Van Gogh’s portrait. The psychological tensions of the two men are manifest in
paroxysm and possess an aggressive charge; this can be clearly grasped from the twisted shapes.
Torsion is associated with aggression. Aggression - similarly to space that cannot be orientated
(such as the Mobius stripe) and the uni-surface twisted plain – alters a two-surface plain entirely.
Twisting is an aggressive act, states the Hungarian psychoanalyst, Imre Hermann. In young
children the twisted, one-surface plane and a non-perspective approach predominate, as does –
for example – the right-left orientation. In thought there is no measure, only quality independent
of measure. Thus, its approach is that of evaluation, measure is represented by love and hate.
Love makes things bigger, it aggravates and expands, while hate twists, turns and compresses
things, squeezes them out, tears them out from their dimensions, flattens them out, makes them
small in, or makes them disappear from the visible plain.
This can be traced in Van Gogh’s self-portrait, but also in the depictive following of the body
feelings of the engineer. Having discussed these two examples, we should have take another
look at Table 1, where we can see that torsion-type kinesthetic experiences significantly
characterize psychosomatic patients during relaxation. In anxiety patients they are frequent at the
beginning of the training, but during it their occurrence gradually decreases. Thus, it is possible
that repetition of the experience represents a succession of self-healing acts and serves
neutralization purposes.
In conclusion, on the basis of the examples presented, we can say the following:
1) The assumption concerning the relationship between psychological states, the idea of space
and experiences of body-image experiences can be supported;
2) Regressive mentalizations – such as those due to altered states of consciousness in relaxation
and those due to artistic inspiration – correspond to regressive depictions of space and regressive
experiences of body image.
3) The experiential product of the person in relaxation is the result of the creative act of which
Kris describes as regression in the service of the self. It gives underlying psychological tensions
expression, and in this way the verbal articulation of the experience and its artistic, depictive
representation can be both regarded as positive self-reparatory processes.
Thank you.
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