Behind the Mask: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Interaction in the Design Studio

What I read

In this text, the author explores the relationship between a student's educational experience in the architecture studio and a patient's experience during psychotherapy. He concludes that there are a number of similar attributes between the two situations, and suggests that studio professors can pull extensively from therapy in order to improve teaching and learning.

The author begins by indicating a lack of scholarly research on questions of the type of creative process occurring in the design studio and what would represent a strong set of interactions between a professor and a student. One reason may be because professors are resorting to a defensive response, as they themselves may have experienced a negative and difficult-to-understand experience in their own education. This text, then, looks to psychoanalysis for parallels that can be drawn between the two disciplines, with these primary conclusions: "design is fundamentally related to the activity of creative play," "the interaction of studio instructor and student and the interaction between analyst and patient share some important characteristics," and "phenomena known to take place in the interaction between analyst and patient… may also occur in the design studio environment."

The author describes how a design studio differs from traditional education, focusing primarily on the amount of time a student engages in an intense and direct engagement with a professor. Problems, in a design studio, have unknown results, and professors encourage unique behavior such as "playing" with a problem. For students, "the design studio process can be mystifying" because "the instructor cannot really explain until the student has already begun."

Next, the author describes an anecdote of the architect Louis Kahn, who suggested that a material has a "want" to be a part of a building. He explains that it's clear that Kahn didn't literally believe that a brick has desires, but instead, he was using a form of projection. We experience objects in this way through a "kind of apperception—that is, we are conscious of the object as a receptor of contents of our own unconscious." This is only possible if we don't push against the "absurdity" of the purposeful projection. This is similar to the way an infant explores the world, where objects are transitional. Transitional objects define a transitional space, which is considered a space of play. For a child, this play is unstressful: it "can be so intense as to lead the child to lose all sense of time and of place." It can be a shared space, too, and might be the seed of "intense experiencing" that adults encounter later in creative or religious contexts. It is then argued that the same space is what is being constructed and experienced in an architecture studio, where "we try to teach our students to escape from the limits of linear logic and what we and they logically think are the limitations of external reality," and this occurs by helping a student "find a way to discover the freedom experienced in play." The most important moment in play is when the child surprises themselves, and that's identical for a student.

The author then describes a psychoanalytical model and the parallel interactions between an analyst and a patient, one that requires safety and trust and a unique form of listening and questioning, where "it is essential that the question and answer be neutral." This metaphor becomes difficult because a patient, or student, brings their own history to the experience, and that may limit the ability for the "correct" relationship to become established.

Two aspects of the model are described. Mirroring, in the studio, is the idea that a student is being heard and understood, and that a professor is "responding to the student by describing precisely what the student has offered," and is in response to dialogue but also the artifacts that have been produced. Transference shows up in situations where someone is particularly vulnerable. A student is asked to "regress" to a way of being that began in childhood, characterized by play. A professor may not "follow the rules" that a student has learned while growing up, and that sort of irrationality can be triggering to students. This can also work in the other direction through countertransference, where a professor may be re-experiencing parts of their own education (some of which may have not been effective.)

The author concludes by noting that, while psychoanalysis provides a useful way of thinking about studio education, there are differences. One is that the prompt for a great deal of studio interaction is not spoken—it's prompted by what a student has made. Another is that studio "takes place on an academic schedule" which means that there's little time to consider the meta-relationship that is occurring during the learning; this is not necessarily bad, as the author notes that "just as making children self-conscious about playing tends to interfere with their ability to engage in play, making students prematurely self-conscious about engaging in design may impinge their ability to do so freely."

What I learned and what I think

The relationship between teaching (probably anything, but particularly in close-proximity, which is somewhat unique to design) and therapy is very evident in experiences that surround the classroom, such as reflection, negative introspection about progress, and so-on. I have not reflected a great deal on that therapy-like activity actually happening during professor/student designing itself.

Playfulness has always made sense to me in teaching, so that students can realize that they can give room to exploration. That's been one of the parts of divergent thinking that I really do appreciate—not the idea that design has to land in something unexpected or novel, but that divergence requires and gives room for play, and that playful stance means that unknowns can be pursued. There's a jump in there; why does being playful let me distance myself from attachment of solutions? A kid says that "this is a gun" about a branch, and then it's a gun, and then another kid says "now it's a sword," and then it's a sword. I can control the stuff I have, the raw material, if I let it be controlled. That's probably close to the "this brick wants to be an arch." Maybe it's the same? But why is it important for making things?

The issue of craft and capability plays such a big role here. I can just say that a stick is a sword and it is. But I can't say that a building looks like this if I can't draw the building; or really, I can say it, but because I can't show it, I don't believe it and neither does anyone else. The playfulness requires substantiation. That's a huge block—it's like claiming the sword, looking at it, going "wow that's a branch," and giving up. But I can't just imagine that the work is good; it has to actually be good.

Maybe that's part of teaching by drawing-on-top: when I transform what someone made into what they wanted it to be, I'm sort of affirming their claim. I'm also saying that they aren't very good at imagining, though. The craft has to come first, or none of it works.

So much of the conversation in Bauhaus education lore was about the work itself, and so much of the conversation now is about how students feel learning to do the work. Was/is one wrong? Are they the same?

The author sort of gestures to the impact of the realities of the box of higher education, but never goes into detail on it; not the point of the text. But I keep coming back to the limitations of that and how fundamental those constraints really become. No physical studio space. Only a short period of time with a professor. Professors who don't speak to each other. Professors who don't want to teach, or don't know how to teach, or are too angry to teach. Students who don't want to be there. Students who are too tired to be there, because they have real life to manage. No foundational craft abilities. No abilities at all.

But somehow, designers pop out the other end, and probably always have, and probably always will.

It's like borderline defeatist/celebratory.

Anyway; great to get away from critique. Annoying to keep coming back to Schön. I can't believe how much pedagogy we are resting on one person.