The Squiggle Game and the emerging images in psychoanalytic psychotherapy trough art

Abstract

Winnicott Squiggle game is a tool of great clinical value due to its complexity and dynamism. It can be used as an initial approach to the patient in a first interview; as well as, in later stages where the therapeutic bond allows a greater creative deployment. The squiggle opens the possibility of working with the spontaneous act. Through improvisation, letting oneself go "without memory and without desire", as the psychoanalytic motto states, we have one of the devices that presents the best diagnostic and psychotherapeutic possibilities.

This article intends, at first, to make an approximation to the technique and how Winnicott used it; then, we will explain the importance of playing and creativity; continue making a historical review of the squiggle technique from its origins, as it is a device frequently used by Expressionism, Dadaism and Surrealism as a way of accounting for the internal world and functioning as a found object. Afterward, we will present the therapeutic use of the squiggle and how it mobilizes unconscious conflicts that allows a work of co-interpretation of what is repressed, forgotten or lost. Finally, a clinical vignette will be presented showing the emerging images of this device, which combines playing, representation and symbolization. This clinical example helps to understand how images, words, sounds and sensations coexist in the squiggle assembled by the principles of the primary process that sets in motion drives that find support in the artistic creation.