Dialogues between Nise and Jung: the expressive work of Nise da Silveira and her contributions to analytical psychology

 

 

Marisa V. Catta-Preta

Psychologist with a Jungian approach. Master and Doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at the Catholic Pontifical University of São Paulo (Pontífícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo - PUC-SP) at the Center for Jungian Studies (Núcleo de Estudos Junguianos). Professor of the discipline of Analytical Psychology at PUC-SP and at the Metropolitan University of Santos (Universidade Metropolitana de Santos - UNIMES). Supervisor of Improvement in Psychotherapy for adults from the perspective of analytical psychology (PUC/COGEAE). Coordinator of the postgraduate course in Jungian Psychology (UNIMES). Author of the book A noite da alma - sonhos e insônia and co-author of Sonhos e Arte, Sonhos na Psicologia de Jung, Jung e Saúde e 95 anos de Paulo Freire. E-mail: mvcpreta@pucsp.br> e marisa.martins@unimes.br

 

 

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ABSTRACT

Nise da Silveira was a reference in analytical psychology for basing her work on Jung's references, who supported her work and invited her to exhibit works related to mental health in Brazil, in an exhibition in Zurich. The objective of this article is to analyze aspects of Nise da Silveira's work and her contributions to analytical psychology. The methodology is the use of bibliographical research on some studies by Jung, Nise da Silveira, and other authors who dedicated themselves to understanding the theme. It is considered that the work with schizophrenics and the reading of images used in the Museum of Images of the Unconscious remain a legacy that is still in motion in analytical psychology as a source of research and study. ■

Keywords: analytical psychology, mental illness, art, museum of images of the unconscious.

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1. Introduction

To discuss the work of Nise da Silveira is to invite the reader to know one of the master construction guidelines of my education and of many colleagues working with the Jungian approach. Her profound reflections on the reality of the mentally ill and their social crossings in Brazil, in different political moments and her engagement in the struggles for better public health were determinant for a generation of psychologists who have her as a reference. But it was mainly the respect attributed to human uniqueness and to research in mental health, not only through more humanized methods but through paths that seek to give concrete form to the symbolic expression of the unconscious images of her patients, in a proposal to analyze what Jung brought theoretically for all of us, what delighted me when I first heard about her work. As a student, I read her best-know production, the book "Images of the Unconscious", in the voice of Alice Marques - a doctor who was part of her team for years and was a close friend - at a Brazilian congress, which sparked my interest in studying Nise's work. The refinement of the particularities of her work and the way she related it to the practice of analytical psychology - work approved by Jung and has Von Franz to do the analysis and guidance - brought me great impact. I understood that if I wanted to follow the path of Jungian psychology, I would have to go to Rio de Janeiro to visit the Museum of Images of the Unconscious. When I was there a few years later, Nise was already out of public service and I could not see her. But in exchange for a small gift that I gave to her, she sent me as a souvenir some errata from an exhibition by Carlos, Adelina and Emygdio, given to me by Luis Carlos Mello - which is a gift that I keep with great affection.

The impact of those who know the Museum is great, because over there everything is true. There is, in fact, a carefully maintained collection of works in series that make it possible to see the patient's evolution process. There are many works cataloged and, when we walk through the ateliers, we actually see art being built in the Museum's daily space. The affection, creation and dedication of the museum staff, as well as the way they actually understand Nise da Silveira's work, are spectacular. On my first visit, I left the Museum fascinated and since then I have not only studied even more what Nise left behind, but I have developed a friendship of trust and admiration with the museum staff: Gladys Schincariol, a psychologist who runs the Museum and who is with Nise since she was still a student; Euripides Junior, who took care of the images and is currently in charge of the Sociedade Amigos do Museu, completing his doctorate in 2015 on art and madness collection; and Luis Carlos Mello, who is responsible for the direction and organization of national and international exhibitions of the works. The strength of this team formed by Nise, which conducts this legacy respectfully, is great and today is associated with several collaborators and networks around the Museum. It is with courage and determination, going through various public policies, prejudices of traditional psychiatry and lack of support from governments that neglect the cause of mental health, that this team goes through decades of work in the Museum of Images of the Unconscious - a museum that is still alive and present in discussions in analytical psychology.

Nise da Silveira is one of those names that marked not only mental health and Jungian psychology but also the national scene of her time. Her political positions are known, after all, she was a political prisoner in the room 4 - a famous room for personalities such as Olga Benário Prestes and Maria Werneck, among other important women in the Brazilian political scene. She was a character of Graciliano Ramos in his book Memórias do Cárcere, painted by the artist Di Cavalcanti, a friend of Manuel Bandeira and friend of art critics like Mario Pedrosa - who called Virgin Art what Jean Dubuffet called brute art and included the expressions of individuals who were on the margins of our society.

The only woman in her time at the Faculty of Medicine in Bahia, she came to Rio de Janeiro where she worked as a doctor her entire life. A Northeastern woman, at a time when these attributes were enough to generate strong social and cultural prejudices, Nise was firm and always engaged in the great battle in defense of the less favored, the mentally ill, who, in her time, were largely abandoned by their families and by society in psychiatric hospitals that used abusive methods, excessive drug interventions and indiscriminate use of electroshock (MELLO, 2014).

For Jungian psychology, Nise da Silveira's method, which was based on analytical psychology, studies by antipsychiatry authors such as Ronald Laing, in addition to a deep study of art and mental health, brought important contributions due to the fact that it originated in the hands of the only psychiatrist in Brazil, with a reading in the Jungian approach capable of systematizing images of schizophrenic patients and creating a museum with these images. The Museum was a creative idea and extremely important for the research of those interested in the symbolic expression of mostly schizophrenic and psychotic patients. The Museum of Images of the Unconscious, which currently has more than 350 thousand works, is a collection of great importance also for the study of Jung's analytical psychology, because there we see his theory alive and expressed in symbols of personal and archetypical origin (CRUZ JUNIOR, 2015).

The fact that Jung, upon receiving the photos of the Brazilian mandalas sent by Nise, opened the Brazilian exhibition at an International Congress and invited Nise to study at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, in addition to referring her to one of his most important disciples to guide her in her works, brings us the idea of the interest of the creator of analytical psychology himself in her works. This happened after an exchanged correspondence in which Nise sent the Brazilian works to Jung to confirm that they were mandalas, and he does so, confirming that they were really mandalas. Nise later returned to Switzerland twice more, taking a case study, and on these occasions, deepened her studies in Jungian psychology even more, in addition to acquiring Jung's deep respect and interest in the expressions of the unconscious portrayed in Brazil (MELLO, 2014).

Nise da Silveira's work illustrates what Jung postulated in his work through his theoretical concepts.

In this article, I begin a brief introduction to Jung's own work with psychotic and schizophrenic patients and his experience with them. For Jung (2019b):

To my satisfaction, I was able to prove that the illness, although on a reduce scale, can be treated through psychotherapy. However, as soon as psychological treatment is accepted, the question arises about the psychotic content and its meaning. We already know that, in many cases, we are dealing with a psychological material comparable to certain materials from neuroses and dreams, which are understood from the person's point of view. However, in contrast to the content of a neurosis, satisfactorily explainable by biographical data, the psychotic contents show particularities that escape the individual circumstances of life, which we also observe concerning dreams whose symbolism cannot be correctly explained based in personal data (p. 285).

Next, the article portrays the importance of working with art as a symbolic expression for Jung, in his own experiences and with his patients. I consider Jung's personal experiences and his symbolic expression through paintings and stone sculptures, especially present in his memoirs and in the Red Book (JUNG, 2010), in addition to the illustrated works present in his work with images painted by patients and in the Seminaries Dreams and Visions.

I continue in the article highlighting Nise's trajectory in the construction of her work crossed by political and social issues in Brazil and the difficulty of keeping alive the Museum of Images of the Unconscious as a serious research work based on the concepts of analytical psychology. Silveira (1981) writes:

Certainly, abstract language lends itself to giving form to personal secrets, satisfying a need for expression without others owing them. But in the hospital, this translation of lines into words is rare. Do not be under the illusion that where you see interlocking lines, it means ambition. I soon became convinced of the impossibility of establishing codes. Abstract language creates itself at every moment, at the impulse of the forces in motion in the unconscious. It was an empirical finding (p. 19).

Finally, I relate Nise's work to Jung's concepts, present in documentaries and authored books in which case studies are described and analyzed by the author from the perspective of analytical psychology. Her meeting with Jung introduces a series of gaps to be filled on mental illness by the author, who, upon returning from Zurich, creates a study group and promotes the museum's work with information obtained on the collection of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich (MELLO, 2014).

I conclude by demonstrating the particularity of Nise da Silveira's work, which follows the methodology of reading images postulated by Jung and who, on the advice of the master's advice, as she called him, finds in mythology a way of understanding and systematically studying the images that over time takes on its indelible mark. The idea of founding a Museum of Images of the Unconscious with the productions of patients for research in schizophrenia which, according to Cruz Junior (2015), resulted in a collection of more than 350 thousand works, most of them listed by the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage, was one of her most brilliant creations. The Museum's collection is the largest of its kind in the world. To obtain these data, the author researched several initiatives to work with the mentally ill involving artistic expression, but none of them is compared to the number of works that make up the Museum of Images of the Unconscious (CRUZ JUNIOR, 2015).

In addition, I emphasize the importance of the works' museum and the "living museum" for research in psychology as a place that has more productions cataloged and inserted in the collection even after Nise's death, and the importance of continuing this project and her work in Brazil, with the team that follow her steps and continues the daily work in the research of unconscious images. Currently, the museum's staff is directed by the same members who accompanied Nise da Silveira. They direct the main works of the Museum and its exhibitions in Brazil and abroad, in a struggle to maintain the Museum's work in the mold of its creator.

The objective of this article is to analyze aspects of Nise da Silveira's work and her contributions to analytical psychology. The methodology is the bibliographical research of publications by Jung, Nise da Silveira and contemporary authors who dedicated themselves to research through the reading of their books and published articles.

 

2. The history of Jung's journey with schizophrenic patients

Jung (1990) worked at the Burgholzli psychiatric clinic attached to the University of Zurich, where he became a professor of psychiatry and, in 1905, after studying with Pierre Janet, he continued his experiments with the word association test. According to Jung (1990), the association test popularized his work in the US, with a large number of patients coming to see him in Switzerland. Jung (2019c) only abandoned the use of the test when he started his dream analysis work. After all, in dreams, it was possible to detect the patient's complexes with spontaneous material sent daily by the unconscious.

The cases of psychosis are highlighted in this article and are reported in his memoirs. One of them deals with a patient who made hand gestures non-stop. Jung (1990) believed that in order to understand the disease, it was necessary to know the patient's history. When the patient died, her brother told Jung that she wanted to marry a shoemaker but was refused by him, which triggered her process of going mad. At this moment, Jung understands the gesture of the patient's hands, a symbolic expression of her suffering due to her loss of the past.

At the time when Jung (1990) was working at Burgholzli, where he was chief physician of the psychiatric clinic for four years, and describes how mental illness was seen at the beginning of his work as a psychiatrist, as an assistant physician:

Psychiatric teaching sought to abstract itself from the patient's personality and was content with diagnoses, with description of symptoms and statistical data. From the prevailing clinical point of view, physicians were not concerned with the mentally ill as a human being, as an individuality; it was patient number x, armed with a long list of diagnoses and symptoms (p. 114).

In his memoirs, Jung (1990) reports to learn with his patients, like was with Babette's case. She was a patient who had a prostitute sister and an alcoholic father, and at age 39, she freaked out and had delusions of grandeur. Jung saw in Babette's speech the symbolic compensation of a deep sense of inferiority.

Another patient heard voices, one of which was from God. Jung visited her to read the Bible every two weeks for six years, reminding her of the previous reading. The patient improved, concentrating her voices, which previously spoke throughout the body, only on the left side. The patient, for Jung (1990), had an unilateral cure, but, in any case, it led him to understand that the intuitive act of reading the Bible with her as the voice ordered, somehow brought her from the world of images.

Jung draws attention to the content of the 'patient's symbolic expression, which is not immediately comprehensible to consciousness, but the fact that we do not understand does not mean that it is meaningless. Jung (1990) considers that psychotherapy for such cases had already been used by him at the beginning of his career and does not understand why this method is not applicable for many who treat mental illness. For Jung, healing is possible, and when it often happened, others said it was a misdiagnosis and did not accept the possibility of the individual returning to his conscious reality (JUNG, 1990).

There are many cases that Jung reports in his work, and his view of each individual is unique, therefore, the method must be a construction based on what the patient brings and it requires from the psychotherapist an individual preparation with personal analysis in addition to technical preparation. Jung (2019b) realized that he could not work the symbology behind a psychosis without the study of mythology, as the presence of archetypal images often brought important meanings to the understanding of the narratives expressed by the patient's soul.

It is interesting to note that, for Campbell, according to an interview portrayed in the book ''The Hero's Journey", mythology also has a pedagogical function, bringing to man an orientation in moments of crisis in which rational aspects are not able to encompass the entire experience. Thus, he sees in mythology the individual's connection to society, its integration and its meaning.

Jung (2019b) considers that in most cases of schizophrenia, it has already been proven that individuals would not present changes in the brain, although this was a disease with physical and psychological manifestations. He also considers how at Zurich clinic his method was to treat the psychological investigation of mental illness. According to Jung (2019b), knowledge of the individual's history is essential for any analysis of the case.

Therefore, Silveira's (1981) idea of observing the patient and understanding that over there is a symbolic expression is aligned with the work that Jung developed with schizophrenics, which he later extended to his private practice for all patients, not only the psychotics and schizophrenics.

The work with reading images that are born in the unconscious and emerge in the consciousness was created by Jung, but the scope that Nise gave to this practice, with the creation of a gigantic archive that is the museum's collection, was a huge contribution to analytical psychology in the world.

 

3. The use of art to work with schizophrenia by Nise da Silveira

When Nise da Silveira created the occupational therapy sector with workshops and a painting studio, we need to consider that it was a courageous initiative, as her action predated the antipsychiatry movement that was started with Cooper and Laing, in England, Basaglia, in Italy, besides others who questioned madness revisiting the patient's history as Foucault.

Nise (SILVEIRA, 1992) highlights Laing's performance because he privileges the psychotic's experience, seeking to understand what is behind the disease. Laing was in Brazil in 1978 and, upon visiting the Museum of Images of the Unconscious, he was moved and kissed Nise's hands, touched by what he saw and that had a strong relationship with what he had lived in his experiences with schizophrenic patients (MELLO, 2014).

Nise not only refused to press the button of electroshock but was firmly against the lobotomy. In her work on Lucio, an intern with schizophrenia at the Engenho de Dentro hospital, Silveira (1992) reveals the beautiful sculptures he always produced in the form of warriors, expressing the struggle between good and evil and the deformation he had in his artistic expressions after surgery. Despite Nise's appeals, his family allowed him to undergo lobotomy surgery, losing all his creative capacity, becoming passive and without any stimulus to create images (SILVEIRA, 1992).

 

4. Dialogues between Nise and Jung - Art as a symbolic expression

Nise began her work with patients, whom she used to call clients, with a sewing workshop in a space without tables and chairs, on the floor. For those who did not want to participate in the workshops, she once took off her socks and made a ball, so they could play football and have a playful space. This shows that, even in situations where there is no material, it is necessary to be creative and provide a space for the patient to create. Thus, Nise turned difficulties into opportunities for creative practices, using her sensitivity and practicality. In one of the accounts, in one of her biographies, written by Mello (2014, p. 294), she would say: "I have Lampião under my skin... If I hadn't, I would have already been crushed a long time ago."

The monitor, in addition to being oriented to work in the painting studio, participated in the study group, studies known and attended by many doctors, psychologists and professionals from other areas, as well as hospital residents. Her great friend and doctor Alice Marques, as the hospital's director, manages to open more spaces for occupational therapy. The service expands into shoemaking, basketwork, theater, gardening, music, carpentry, binding and recreation workshops. Also, since 1946, there were workshops for woodcuts, painting and expressive activities, and the works were so important that Nise was inspired to create, in 1952, the Museum of images of the Unconscious. In December 1946, the first exhibition was held inside the psychiatric hospital (MELLO, 2014).

Criticized by traditional psychiatry, Nise has the support of artists and intellectuals who understood the greatness of her work, such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade, who writes a beautiful text in her honor, where he says:

Nise interrogates the unconscious and manages to bring spontaneous artistic representations out of it, proof that not everything in its authors is chaos and annihilation: conditions that generate a beautiful activity persist, to be properly studied for the benefit of the future man, making him more transparent in his inner caves (MELLO, 2014, p. 263).

In art, understood by her as the place of strongest symbolic expression, she explored several possibilities. When the interns started to draw mandalas, Nise wrote to Jung so the "master" could validate and confirm that the draws were mandalas. In a letter he confirms, and years later, Nise registers for the II International Congress of Psychiatry and Jung himself sends Nise a formal invitation to participate. He opened the Brazilian exhibition and highlighted the fact that, in the paintings, there are common themes portrayed by schizophrenics, but the paintings presents bright colors in the background, which seems, to him, to show that these patients painted wrapped in an affective atmosphere of acceptance by those who accompanied them. Nise were with Jung twice in interviews, and in her biography, Mello (2014) recounts the emotion of a first meeting and Jung's advice that she should study mythology to better understand the images. In addition, Jung also invited her to attend the Swiss Institute, where she completed her education.

The great encounter between Jung and Nise takes place, therefore, through the images. We know that, for Jung, working with images was something that empirically permeated his life and practice with his patients.

In the recently released book "The Art of C. G. Jung", Hoerni et al. (2019) comments that Jung's artwork, prior to the release of the "Red Book", which was made public by Shandasani (JUNG, 2010), had never been published and organized. Thus, the author brings a classification of the artwork with Jung's drawings and paintings of his internal costumes and images, landscapes and watercolors, the sketch of his houses in Kusnacht and Bollingen, objects in his house with various types of materials, the drawing of the coat of arms from his family that he reworked, stone sculptures in his house in Bollingen, as well as drawings on cards, stone carved in the memorial of Toni Wolf and Emma Jung. In the "Red Book" (JUNG, 2010), numerous aesthetically treated and beautiful images reveal not only the unconscious aspects of Jung, translated into images and dialogues, but also his artistic side that amplifies your symbols with a wealth of detail and precise traces of those who are familiar with artistic expression.

His patients were always encouraged to work on their symbols and expand their meanings, even away from his presence and therapeutic session. Thus, we have records of images of a patient's spontaneous visions in the Seminars and Visions conferences, where he begins by explaining that the lectures and this study were intended to talk about the transcendent function through dreams and images expressed by drawing and painting, promoting the synthesis of his patient. The idea was to show through this material how it was possible to establish an internal conciliation, through the overcoming of opposites present in the symbolic possibilities (JUNG, 1983).

For Jung, the symbol is defined in a different way and, in this regard, he writes: "We call a symbol a concept, a figure or a name that may be known to us in itself, but whose content, use or purpose are specific or strange, indicating a hidden, obscure and unknown meaning" (JUNG. 2019c, p. 201).

Thus, for Jung (2019c, p. 201), the basis of the symbol is the transcendent function that allows us to make the connection between conscious and unconscious contents. This gathering of contents can promote a synthesis, another possibility that results from this union of opposite contents.

Thus, symbolic life is not only expressed in dreamlike or spontaneous images reflected in art, but may be contained in other forms of representation of the symbol. The word itself can have a symbolic meaning or, according to Ramos (2006), also the symptoms that arise in the body, as revealed by psychosomatics in analytical psychology. However, in art, it is viable to observe a possibility of symbolic expression through painting, sculpture, music, poetry, among others.

Considering that the schizophrenic patient has a difficulty in communicating clearly and objectively, especially when talking about his emotions and what goes on inside himself, Nise da Silveira finds in art a strong ally as a proposal for the patient's symbolic expression. Furthermore, possibilities of this expression coming from the written records of a patient, such as the one of Beta, a patient who expressed herself in a notebook while hospitalized as a psychotic, are also truly relevant. In her book, Beta D'Rocha (2002) reports that through the studies at the museum and when she started to attend the art studio, she understood how important were the notes made by her in a notebook, which was received from her sister to write her experiences at the hospital: "From then on, I started noticing the connections between one crisis and another and feeling that they could be translated when seen in the form of symbols. [...] The first observation was that most of the symbols brought, in their entirety, a connection between the inner world and the outer world" (D'ROCHA, 2002).

The painting works of Adelina Gomes, Carlos Petrius and Fernando Diniz became documentaries and case studies of unique importance. These documentaries were made by Leon Hirzman, a famous Brazilian filmmaker, who portrays the painted images, as well as the authors, with text by Silveira (1981). These documentaries brought enormous repercussions to the work of these artists, mentally ill people undergoing treatment, and whose history was narrated by their own images and analyzed by Nise. Silveira (1981) describes these clinical cases, analyzes their images and follows Jung's advice to use his knowledge of mythology and research with comparative material to interpret symbols that expressed archetypal images. These contents originated from the unconscious, from its deepest layers and merged with personal issues with a strong affective content, repressed, forgotten and which start to be portrayed in painted images (MELLO, 2014).

When treating each case, Silveira (1981) used the same methodology that Jung applied to dreams: the serial analysis. She placed before her countless images of patients, cataloged, dated and followed the path of the images from the sequence that revealed the mythical narrative. When identifying the myth corresponding to the images, she verified the relationship between its content and the patient's life history. Silveira (1981) clearly observed in the series of images collected in years of work with patients, the transformation of symbols and the patient's return to layers closer to consciousness. She founded, as Jung had done earlier, that the unconscious psyche had a self-regulation function that naturally led the patient to attempt psychic reorganization and self-healing. Jung (2019c, p. 203) considers that: "Just as the organism appropriately reacts to an injury, an infection or an abnormal life situation, so the psychic functions react to unnatural or dangerous disturbances, with appropriate defense mechanisms."

For Jung (2019e), the principle of self-regulation can be seen in dreams and spontaneous images that are produced, and parts of its meaning can be integrated by consciousness, as the ego is able to establish a dialogue with these unconscious aspects. But in the case of schizophrenia, this ego is fragmented and therefore the path back to this dialogue is more difficult and winding.

The presence of archetypal images requires another form of magnification around the image by the therapist, which he called amplification. So, Jung (2019e) writes when we are faced with an archetypal content:

From there, it is clear that it is a collective emotion, that is, a typical situation that is strongly affective, which is not, in the first place, a personal expression, but only becomes of such a nature at a later stage. It is, first of all, a general human problem that, for not having called subjective attention, seeks to open the way, objectively, to the dreamer's consciousness (p. 247).

For example, Silveira (1981) observed in her patient Adelina Gomes, whose theme was maternal repression and a bad outcome of a loving relationship strongly repressed by the mother, the description of the myth of Daphne. In it, the fleeing nymph of the God Apollo is transformed into a flower. Vegetable metamorphosis appears strongly in Adelina's images as well as images of the terrible and repressive mother. Sculptures also depict these characteristics of the terrible mother; some compared to Neolithic sculptures where these mothers even had crustacean claws. The images evolve to newer themes and more loving mothers. A version of Demeter and Persephone emerges, goddesses representing this inseparable mother-daughter dyad. Until Adelina arrives in the image of the Virgin Mary. Also, in her paintings, after a series of mothers, the cat appears, representing her instincts so strongly repressed. Interesting to note that in her first outbreak, Adelina strangles her house's cat. Therefore, we realize that the images and themes form a plot that can be gradually revisited in a clearer way. The schizophrenic patient paints her images while Nise watches her from afar, but the patient does not talk about the images - she just portrays her and says few things about them. However, the fact that these images are shared and come to consciousness allows a great improvement for this patient who changes her attitude and behavior with other interns and the museum staff and monitors. Gradually, Adelina found a chance to live a little closer to reality. In fact, she dated an intern, and her relationship with the male became healthier, as well as her excessive aggression disappeared.

Adelina's case is a study where we see a live and dynamic psyche, capable of expressing an internal drama through images, painted in an imagetic narrative that needs to be translated so that there can be an understanding of its content (SILVEIRA, 1981).

The fact that Nise placed in images this alive and dynamic psychic of several patients, such as records of their unconscious lives, empirically validates Jung's theory, and allows an opening for important research on schizophrenia, still seen in a prejudiced way in our culture.

Silveira (1981) opened several fields for research. She created a museum of images, maintained painting and art ateliers, trained her technical team in terms of therapeutic attitude, made precious documentaries of her works and inaugurated a study group of Jung with her team and other health professionals, as well as patients. She wrote books recounting her work, gave interviews discussing mental health issues, held national and international exhibitions showing that schizophrenics were able to express their emotions, that they also had a voice that, when silenced, is represented by images. She performed plays, with tributes to Dionysus, a character very much alive in the paintings of the interns, a frequent theme that interspersed with other gods and pagan gods and goddesses, which portrayed the difficulty of suppressing the instincts of human life preached by the Christian life (MELLO, 2014).

The Adelina's case was presented in Zurich and linked to other European case studies. According to Mello (2014), Nise reported that Marie Louise von Franz helped her organize the images and Jung himself also included some of the Brazilian images in the archive of the C. G. Jung Institute, in Zurich.

For Jung (2019d), love could only exist with the presence of instincts and spirituality together. The denial of one of these instances can lead the individual to a huge division that is still present in contemporary times. Thus, we see that Adelina's story, although with sociocultural crossings, is still present in the history of many women who suffer from love disappointments and have a fragile ego to deal with this pain and suffering.

Regarding the mandalas, as they began to appear in the occupational therapy sector, Nise sent photos to Jung and he recognized this symbol that appears in several paintings of his patients and that appear in religions (MELLO, 2014).

Jung (2019f, p. 356) comments that "[...] mandalas preferably appear after states of disorientation, panic or psychic chaos". Its objective is, according to Jung, to transform chaos and bring a certain order into a compensatory attitude of the psyche, whose self-regulating function we have already dealt with before.

On the agenda of the analyses cases carried out by Silveira (1981) and published as studies and research sources, the stories of Lucio and his sculptures of warriors that culminated in his sad end after the lobotomy surgery are included in her second book. After the surgery, she describes how Lucio's creative soul was captured and destroyed. Unable to make contact with the art again, when he did, sometimes he had only an unwilling expression and all of his talent did not even seem to have existed at all. Also, the paintings of Emygidio, portraits of the disorder of the unconscious psyche where the inner world coincides with the external and intersect disorderly, gradually, through his painting, these spaces were delimited, which was reflected in his improvement as well (SILVEIRA, 1992). According to Mello (2014), the art critic Mario Pedrosa praised his painting and considered him an artistic genius.

Silveira (1981) coined some concepts that symbolically and imagistic express her "therapeutic work." One of these expressions is the "catalyst affection" which represents the possibility of a therapeutic space that provides the patient's creative expression through an affective and encouraging bond. Silveira (1981) showed an enormous concern with the qualification and training of the monitors who would be closest to the patients. For this, they should not intervene in what they were painting, but provide, as in chemistry, a speed of reactions from an encouraging and therapeutic posture.

Von Franz (1999) will discuss the importance of an affective field in the bond with the patient, which can provide a transforming space. Gambini (2008, p. 138) uses the idea of what he calls the "ground" of therapeutic work, that is, the space capable of causing transformations to arise and be born with the presence of the patient and the psychotherapist. Therefore, we see that Silveira (1981) understood the therapeutic importance of monitors who, even though they are not psychologists, should assume a posture of investment in their own internal process and knowledge, so that they could be with the patient without particular interventions, as they knew that just as in the analytical process, when observing the paintings and living with the patients, they would also be transformed. For this reason, they frequently participated in the events and study groups of the Museum of Images of the Unconscious. The catalyst affection was an encouraging attitude, but not directive, as to what the patient would paint.

Another expression of Nise is what she calls "emotion of dealing", which is about doing or expressing oneself with the hands, with therapeutic action. Or even "the innumerable states of being", an expression that was inspired by the reading of Antonin Artaud, a French poet who was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, who was able, even as a patient, to make a severe criticism of traditional psychiatry and the use of techniques such as electroshock. Silveira (1981) said that this expression would be more appropriate than the word schizophrenia, which labeled and diagnosed the patient taking away from his humanity. Now, if we think of the complexes, appointed by Jung of subpersonalities, present in the psyche of all of us, whose core is always linked to an archetype, we can visualize this plurality of ways of being that can surface in consciousness, especially if the ego, the great teacher of consciousness, present deep fissures, as in the case of schizophrenia.

For Jung (2019c, p. 87), the complex is formed by a cluster of associations with an accentuated or traumatic affective tone. Artaud' vision of these countless states that can be experienced, actually reveals the multiple nature of our psyche, since Jung's complexes are endowed with their own energy and behave like personalities that he calls "partials", even possessing a "physiology of their own" and schizophrenia will deliberately manifest themselves as partial personalities (JUNG, 2019e).

Therefore, there are many contributions from Nise da Silveira with her work, which are not limited to a series of paintings saved and expressed by patients but are part of a research of great sophistication, presenting a series of images that reveal the archetypical character of the human stories to which they are related.

In addition, many patients presented improvement in their clinical condition and related better with their families, with other interns and with the team. That was when Nise created Casa das Palmeiras, a clinic where the patient made a transition from the hospital to his family and community life. It was a home for the patient to spend part of the day and still have reference to the treatment previously received and to work with art as an expression of his emotions. In this sense, we can say that Silveira was a precursor of the Psychosocial Care Centers (CAPS), as Casa das Palmeiras was a place just for the patient to spend the day, accompanied by family members or alone. Nise was very concerned about the issue of the graduate and wanted to ensure that the patient could actually be reintegrated into society. Therefore, Casa das Palmeiras served as a bridge between institutionalization and the return to social life (MELLO, 2014).

For Nise, psychiatry was something she integrated into her trajectory, as well as Jung, who brought his psychiatric experience as an important passage of fundamental learning in her life. In 1950, Jung writes to Bleuler's son a letter, as he continues with his father's work at the psychiatric clinic Burgholzli:

I owe a great deal to psychiatry and have always kept myself inwardly close to it, from the beginning I was concerned with a general problem: from which stratum do the most impressive ideas of schizophrenia come? The resulting issues apparently took me far away from clinical psychiatry and made me wander around the world. On these adventurous journeys, I discovered so many things that I never dreamed of in Burgholzli; but the rigorous way of observing, which I learned there, accompanied me everywhere and helped me to objectively understand the strange psyche (JUNG, 2019a, p. 171).

Silveira (1981) also had another interesting feature: she used to observe patients, especially when they were painting or performing some activity. According to the author, she liked to see the expressions and the force that propelled them to the images. This made it different from her looking at the images, as she participated in their creation in a silent but affective way.

The observation and research were constant, as well as the studies ranged from Jung to Bachelard, Machado de Assis, Freud, among many other names that she left in her private library. This list of readings was left by her to be discussed in the study groups, fulfilled until today by the BENEDITO project, a group of people interested in debating the contents of texts proposed by Nise.

In her old age, like Jung, she came closer to instinctual life and nature, especially the animals she loved. She had several cats and wrote about the symbolism of cats. She considered the animals as co-therapists because, due to their unconditional affection, they were able to bring the patient from his internal images to a bit of conscious reality. At the end of her life, she used to go to a Buddhist retreat in Santa Tereza. She died saying she was going to "other galaxies" and wrote in a poem that the space poet "carries neither staff nor bag" because she has freedom (MELLO, 2014).

 

5. Final considerations

Whenever it is about Nise da Silveira, one has the impression of having forgotten something of the countless possibilities and contributions she brought to psychology. It always seems little to portray what this great woman and professional did for mental health and analytical psychology, especially in Brazil.

Nise da Silveira was the first Brazilian to study at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, to meet Jung and receive his recognition for her work. If that were not enough, she continued her work with schizophrenics and researched the manifestations of archetypal images present in the symbolic expression of these patients, following the same perspective that Jung created in his method of reading images, based on amplifications and studies of comparative material in mythology and alchemy. Currently, we are going through a political moment where we still hear about aggressive techniques and interventions for healing patients. The discussion of medicalization and the possible return of psychiatric hospitals reminded us of the dark times that Nise went through in her practice as a psychiatrist. As professionals who listen to the human soul, we need to be attentive to the noises announced to destroy the freedom gained and the advances of mental health. We still have a lot to learn from Nise and Jung and we have more Jungians and Niseans seeking to expand these ideas by fostering studies and research.

Nise da Silveira's extensive work, still alive today and expanded to various groups throughout Brazil, needs to be constantly revisited and further deepened. We do not take full advantage of the immense legacy she left us for research, especially with psychotic and schizophrenic patients. The legacy that Nise left us didactically demonstrates the structure of the psyche proposed by Jung, composed of deeper layers of the collective unconscious that are manifested by archetypal images. She portrays in her relationship built with the patient and respecting his inner potential, what Jung understood as a constructive method in the therapeutic relationship.

In her work, we see the myth alive and understand what Campbell said throughout his life, about the transformative and educational power of mythical narratives, the sacred origin of these narratives that portray the human and are present in the most archaic images manifested by our psyche, crossing our cultural and personal complexes.

In her book Cartas a Spinoza, we see her look at the transpersonal and we visit the frontiers of constructed rather than fragmented spirituality. In her love for Antonin Artaud, we see her empathy with his ideas and poetic language.

Nise has an imagery speech present in the narrative of her patient's clinical cases, where she transforms their biographies into lives full of symbols and emotion. It gives back to these people, who were so mistreated and objectified by traditional psychiatry and society of prejudices, a symbolic life. By returning this to her patients or clients, she is able to restructure a certain psychic and affective balance, making everyone less socially invisible.

Nise treats symbolic expressions as her second language, always dedicating herself to the study of art, music and theater. She had great artist friends and everyone's support because they understood this second language - the symbolic language. After all, the artists also go through many metamorphoses similar to the so-called "crazy", but are able to return from the world of images without being consumed by them. They have an ego that supports this contact and are able to share and transform their emotions into art, without being overwhelmed by unconscious content. After all, we know that the symbol is an energy transformer that can take us from a psychic level to another.

Jung also obtained in the image his other language, expressing himself through images and giving immense importance to his symbolic life. We see this throughout his life reported in his memoirs and of which his books are testimonies of his ways of thinking about human being in their psychic dimension. In his last essay, dedicated to the book "The Man and His Symbols", completed a few days before his death, he leaves his last message for lay people. He emphasizes the importance of dreams with access to the unconscious and the importance of having a symbolic life that brings meaning to us.

So Nise and Jung lived the world of images and learned to look beyond verbal expression. Both realized that, in addition to words, there is a message expressed in other symbolic forms, and that even in words we can see symbols express themselves. In order to translate the symbols, Jung reminds us that the intellect alone will not take care of it and, therefore, it is necessary to resort to other ways of reading the symbolic language and the messages of the soul. Understanding these images was the task of Jung and Nise. Expanding this legacy is the work of all of us! ■

 

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Received on: 03/24/2021
Revised on: 06/25/2021