A Counselor's View on Mandalas and MARI

My letter to the editor was published in the most recent Counseling Today issue. Here is the complete text before editting for length.

As a former student of art therapist Joan Kellogg, I was delighted to find an article about her work in Counseling Today (Takei, Michele, “A Visual Picture of the Human Psyche,” Counseling Today, Vol. 57: Number 10; pp. 40 – 47). I discovered Kellogg’s ideas following a challenging time in my life when I spontaneously began creating mandalas. I found her informal research into color, form, and symbols in mandalas to be fascinating, and I have continued my exploration of mandalas ever since. 

Kellogg’s schema of the Great Round resonates with my felt experience of life’s varying stages: ups and downs, with high and low energy, productivity and repose. The Great Round taught me that each and every life experience is worthwhile.  Nothing is wasted, there are no dead ends. It appeals to me because it allows me to befriend myself. Before, I had lived life as a wrestling match where I wheedled, bribed, or shamed myself into maximum productivity at all times, in the hope of inching closer to an elusive goal of perfection, attainable only now-- or never. Embracing the concept of the Great Round, I have come to know the value of waiting, the importance of celebrating successes, and of letting process unfold along more natural lines.

While trained in the use of MARI cards, I have always preferred creating mandalas myself. The mandala designs of Kellogg’s Great Round are evocative, and derive from some of human kind’s most ancient art forms, but there is insufficient research to clearly connect any image with a particular meaning. While a connection between the color red and blood is compelling, as mentioned by Ms. Takei in her article, the meaning of colors is also influenced by culture and individual experiences. For example, the color red can also signify flowers, birds, happiness, anger, sunset, sunrise, a sports team, or an Asian wedding dress. Therefore, a counselor cannot speak from a place of certainty about the meaning of a particular image or color. Furthermore, even the most sensitive counselor cannot fully grasp another person’s experience adequately to interpret what their client’s choices mean.

Any image which stimulates imagination can be termed a projective, and can be useful to a counselor working with a client who has difficulty verbalizing. When using a technique such as creating mandalas or choosing MARI cards and colors, we as counselors must remember that we are ethically bound to do our best not to force our ideas on our clients. As a longtime teacher of creating mandalas, I encourage my students to claim their own tendencies to project onto their client’s image by prefacing their comments with, “If this were my mandala (MARI card, color choice), it would suggest to me ________.” And then invite the client to join this line of exploration with “I’m curious about your ideas on this.” Or to observe, “I see you have chosen red. Please tell me something about what red means to you.” Or, even better, to simply say, “Tell me about your mandala (MARI card, or color choices).” In my books about creating and coloring mandalas for self-care, I give additional guidelines for supporting persons entering into their own informative dialogue with deeper, unconscious parts of the psyche.

As counselors we cannot interpret another’s experience. We can, however, witness, reflect, support, cherish, and accompany our client on their journey toward wholeness.

Susanne F. Fincher, MA, LPC, ATR-BC, CPCS   

 

Author: Creating Mandalas, The Mandala Workbook, and Coloring Mandalas 1, 2, 3, and 4