Talking Shapes - Michal Bogin

What Lies Beyond The Shapes

I am absolutely mesmerized by the world of primary shapes.

My journey began with a love for painting in colors. For many years, color served as my primary means of expressing feelings, urges, and experiencing a sense of freedom.

Over time, a new mode of expression was added to my way of expressing myself. Shapes began to appear, and I found myself wanting to tell my story and my relationship with the world by using doodles, lines, and delineated, precise shapes. They have exposed me to a new realm, broadened my perspective, and deepened the revelations and insights I have gained about myself.

Soon, shapes became a far more integral part of my work (but of course, I never abandoned the use of colors). I was able to express myself more clearly. The practice enhanced my ability to articulate my thoughts and deepened my ability to understand and express my world.

Shapes have become a language.

Slowly, I began to explore this new language and wanted to learn more about it. Every shape has become, for me, a living entity with a life and meaning of its own.

As time passed, they became a means for me to observe and listen, as well as discover things and gain new insights.

As an art therapist who has worked with children for many years, I became particularly curious about the universal and primary shapes in children’s drawings, and sought to understand the essence and emotional meaning behind each stage of development, which happens in a somewhat regular order.

I began to observe the shapes, viewing them as a visual component that also reflects the inner world. Over time, I realized how primary shapes, as simple as they may be, tell us a story of “who I am” as well as “who I am in relation to the other”.

I was thrilled to discover how these simple shapes can integrate and connect one’s external and internal world. Through the experience and processes I went through, I discovered that the form emerging from within also reflects a dialogue between the individual and the environment.

As someone who often uses the “Focusing” method, the ability to turn inward and pay attention to whatever arises comes naturally to me. This act embodies the very essence of focusing.

When I closed my eyes to focus on what was happening within me, I tried to imagine myself as a shape. In my imagination, I saw a circle, followed by a triangle adjacent to it. They seemed inseparable, and I felt and understood this as a representation of my own family. At times, it represented my family of origin, while other times, it represented me and my children.

The triangle with its three edges is an expanded version of the circle, which is drawn in one line, and it represents the “self.” The triangle has three edges that could stand for a mother, a father, and a child.

Even though I am independent, I also know deeply within myself that my family is a part of who I am, and therefore, I don't stand entirely on my own. The triangle standing adjacent to the circle, and what it symbolizes, has helped me gain this insight. The process has deepened my realization that I am never truly alone. I will always be a part of my surroundings and a part of the world, a part of a bigger whole.

Every shape on the blank paper has a relationship with its environment. The environment “reacts” to the shape, and together they form a metaphoric and visual relationship. This realization, that the shape (representing the “self”) is always a part of its surroundings, came in correlation to what I felt inside, and the realization that these primary shapes are a part of a larger and broader structure, the universe, with its natural primary shapes such as the sun, the moon, and flowers.

Shapes are created from our knowledge of the external world, yet they emerge from within us, from our thoughts and emotions. They represent the material, tangible, concrete world as well as the symbolic and spiritual world that lies beyond the shapes.

There is a constant dialogue between the self and the presence of the greater self. Each shape carries much more than what meets the eye, connecting the individual to the wider world and the universe.

There is a small circle in the fence in my yard that is slightly out of line. Every morning, I pause and observe it. It reminds me of myself. It reminds me that not everything needs to be straight, clear, or precise, and it is possible not to be like everyone else-I can simply be myself.

This small circle that is slightly out of line (but is still a part of it) reminds me that I am a part of my surroundings, with my own voice and my own rhythm.

The Shape as a Mirror of the Psyche – A Developmental Perspective

In my work, I often observe how shapes symbolize the various stages of a child’s development. Apart from the cognitive and the graphical aspects, through shapes, the psyche can also express itself and its relationship with its surroundings.

The circle: “I was born.” I have boundaries. I have a place, and there is the other, all that surrounds the circle.

The circle with horns: The “self” leaning toward the external world.

The triangle: Represents confidence, stability (the base), dynamics (the different directions the edges are pointing), and the various relationships that are built, expanded, and developed.

The cross: a world of contrasts that connect in the center, representing balance, acceptance, and inner harmony.

A shape can represent one’s entire relationship with the world. It can be open and inviting, but also closed or defensive. It can stand alone in the background or next to a different shape. It can be either close or distant, penetrative or gentle. Sometimes shapes even merge and create a new entity, such as the image of the figure.

Shapes speak. They reveal the inner world of a child or an adult, as well as their relationship with the outer world. Each shape carries with it an experience, an emotion, an inner movement.

Understanding the meaning of shapes can provide valuable tools to help us observe and comprehend the world. We can utilize these tools to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and n the relationship between the self and the other.

Learning about myself can influence the way I perceive the world, and the level of interest I find in it. Learning about the world can influence my development and self-growth. The dialogue between the “self” and the shape and its surroundings creates a reciprocal relationship of mutual nourishment and understanding.

Shapes as a Therapeutic Diagnostic Tool

The Cross Serves as a Bridge Between Worlds

I use shapes and their meaning as a diagnostic tool that influences my work as an adult and children’s art therapist.

For example, if I notice my patients are going through a process of making a major decision, and during this period they draw the form of a cross or use the cross as a composition in their paintings, I can refer them to the meaning of the cross as a shape that can hold contrasts.

During a period of indecision, and as time goes by, when a drawing or a composition in the form of a cross emerges, I can point out the meaning of the cross as something that contains opposites. This can allow patients to explore ways to reconcile the two desires and find a space to live in peace with them. Then we can search together and find a way for the two opposing desires to coexist in peace.

Often, my patients are bothered by the tension between their internal reality and the external reality. One example of this is Rina, a sixty-year-old woman who would often arrive late to our meetings. When I spoke to her about it, she began to cry. She told me about the trauma she experienced when she was six years old, when her dad died. Since then, she felt as though time had stopped. She told me that since that moment, she had begun to perceive time in two different temporalities: one, which she referred to as “universe time,” and the other, which she referred to as “real time.”

She then started, spontaneously, to draw her unique perceptions of time.

First, she drew a circle with numbers that seemed like a clock, and then she drew a horizontal line beneath it. She began to observe the drawing, and while doing so, she spontaneously added a vertical line to it, starting from above and moving downward.

She was excited to discover that, in fact, she had drawn a line that connected the sky and the universe with the earth and the real world.

She had created a cross.

When she looked again at the drawing and the different directions the shape was pointing to, she began to see it as a reflection of the difficulties she was facing and the tension between her internal infinite perception of time and the external linear time.

Her memories and the insights she gained from deeply observing the drawing and linking the two directions of the cross helped her integrate the contrasts and resolve the tension. She was then able to connect the earth and the sky, the traumatic past and the present, and help them coexist.

“When I look at the balanced and stable cross, I realize how strong I am. This is very different from my perception of myself as weak.”

One week later, she began to show up on time to our meetings.

A Circle, a Dot, and Horns in an Ever-Changing World

Around the age of three, following the experience of scribbling, children begin to draw a circle, representing the creation of the “self”. The enclosed image symbolizes the fact that they now perceive a “self” along with an “other” as well as the outside world and their surroundings.

The circle can also teach us about the human complexity (and perhaps even the paradox) of the “self” and the “other”-two ways of being that are formed together as an inherent part of a relationship.

In the next stage of development, a dot is added to the circle, and out of this dot, the child begins to draw horns. This dot inside the circle represents the seed of life.  The “vitality within” symbolizes the inner world, which is now becoming richer. Out of this inner vitality, one can start interacting with the outside world, which is what the horns represent-they light the world and enrich it.

Over the past years, I have hosted self-discovery creative workshops that involve the use of primary shapes. In these workshops, I use the cards I have created, “Focus into the Soul”, with which I have had some surprising and exciting revelations.

For example, I discovered that the meaning of the circle with the horns can change from children to adults. Horns that appear in adults’ paintings and selected cards often express different emotions and meanings than those painted or drawn by three-year-olds.

An adult carries responsibilities and assignments that stem from their environment, and the horns that interact with the world often describe emotions related to these responsibilities. For infants and children, horns represent the inner seed, the vitality, and the inner light that aspires to light the outer world, while for adults, horns might represent their assignments and tasks, “what I need to do,” which is why they sometimes use them to express fear or anger.

There is always a deeper meaning beyond the shapes we see, created by the person who drew them as well as those who observe them. Shapes carry echoes from the past and waves of current emotions while also conveying our feelings, fears, wishes, and hopes for the future as we envision it. They ask to be created, and they represent our thoughts and our deepest emotional processes, both concrete and symbolic. Each shape unfolds many layers of meaning.

Through this observation, I learned to listen to what people bring to their interactions with the outside world. I learned to see what the shape reveals, as well as what its surroundings reveal about the relationship with it. I discovered the effect the outside world has on the inner world, and vice versa.

Through this way of observation, we can sometimes discover that there is still a spark of a primary shape left from our childhood, a promising spark that can always be rekindled.

Let’s End Our Journey With a Tune

Today, after staring at a doodle that was drawn on one of the “Focus into the Soul” cards, a tune came to my mind. This happens sometimes: a shape invites me to look inward, to search within myself and let it speak out, while gently reminding me that we can always keep observing, living, giving meaning, and enjoying the simplicity in things.

These primary shapes-the circle, the dot, the line, and the cross-are more than just graphic symbols. They are a way for the psyche to express itself, to connect a person to the outside world, and to express the complexity of the simultaneous process of separation and integration.

In turbulent times, when the outside world is in chaos, I return to simple primary shapes: the line, the dot, the circle, and the triangle, and to the simple gaze, thrilled by the possibility of an existential simplicity from which we can start rebuilding everything.

The shapes, the gaze, and the insights we gain are paths that lead us to understanding the psyche and the environment; they are another tool that allows us to heal.

Michal Bogin: boginmichal@gmail.com

Website: https://www.artforsoul.co.il/

https://www.artforsoul.co.il/art-therapy-combined-with-focusing-focus-into-the-soul-development-cards/