Mental Health: Works produced by Egas Francisco in therapy are published in ‘The Primordial in Modern Man’

What cannot be expressed with words, can be expressed with art. This is what the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Isac Karniol and the psychologist and psychoanalyst Patrícia Karniol discovered during sessions with the plastic artist Egas Francisco.

Deeply depressed, Egas rarely spoke and could not explain what he was feeling during consultations. Therefore, a new language was established between patient and therapist through art.

During the meetings, the artist produced around 500 works in his office that are now published in the book “O Primordial no Homem Moderno”, which will be released by Zagodoni, on Thursday (30), at the publisher’s café, in Pinheiros, west zone of São Paulo.

The book is divided into 89 sessions that took place between October 2017 and March 2020 and is illustrated with the paintings produced on those days. Each chapter also covers what was discussed in therapy and what the drawings represented for the artist.

“Egas donated all his sketches to us in a registry office. For study and research and also for exhibition and dissemination”, says Patrícia.

“These sketches are considered true psychoanalytic documents. They change the history of psychoanalysis because, previously, what existed in literature, as in the cases of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), were artists who made psychiatric treatments and took their works to their analysts, only they understood these paintings as gifts. They did not realize that these materials contained information in codes, a whole language of the mind explaining what was happening with these patients”, he emphasizes.

The technique used by Isac and Patrícia is different from art therapy, a therapeutic practice that seeks to treat mental conditions through art, successfully applied by professionals such as the psychiatrist Nise da Silveira (1905-1999), already in the 1940s.

“What we did is not art therapy. In our case, there was a meeting between professional and patient, with a strong analytical influence, in which works of art were produced in this therapeutic contact”, emphasizes Isac.

“In classical art therapy, as applied by Nise da Silveira, material is provided for the patient to express themselves freely through art, but there is no direct therapeutic contact between patient and professional”, explains the psychiatrist.

In the office, patients like Egas express through art -painting, drawing, poetry- what they cannot always say in words. The production is examined by professionals based on psychoanalysis and psychiatry in search of a more adequate treatment.

The patient may be asked what that painting means, for example, and what their feelings are behind it. This is done to identify symptoms and disorders, that is, there is greater interference on the part of the doctor to understand what that person’s conscience is trying to explain through the works.

bullying and art

The method developed by Isac and Patrícia was also applied by Professor Robinéia da Costa Seraphim. The three wrote together “Bullying: Who Are the Targets?”, which will be released by Editora CRV on the same day.

The book tells how this approach was used by a teacher in a school with a teenager who suffered from jokes and verbal abuse from colleagues.

The drawings and the boy’s evolution can be seen in the work.

​Book launch event
When: Thursday (30), from 19:00 to 22:00
Where: Café com Leitura, published by Zagodoni, at Rua Oscar Freire, 2284, in Pinheiros, in the west of São Paulo

“The Primordial in Modern Man”Isac G. Karniol and Patrícia SL Karniol, publisher Zagodoni, 187 pages, R$ 120
“Bullying: Who Are the Targets?”Robinéia da Costa Seraphim, Patrícia SL Karniol and Isac G. Karniol, editor CRV, 98 pages, R$ 63.48

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