Therapists’ rooms

Andrew Robinson, an MA Photography student from the University of Brighton, recently visited our Hove clinic to photograph our rooms for a project around the therapist’s chair. We are delighted to be able to share some of Andrew’s images on our blog. His artist’s statement can be found below. Andrew can be contacted via baronbouchard@hotmail.com. 

In 1938 Sigmund Freud came to Great Britain, exiled from Nazi Austria. Amongst the possessions rescued from Vienna was his famous couch, which still resides in his home in Hampstead.

In the modern therapist’s room, the décor is bland, but the room is a place of trauma and heightened emotion.

The chairs are a site of trauma, of a fleeting intense ideal relationship that is secure and completely private. The relationship only exists in the space of that room. At the end of each session, a parting occurs that presages the end of the relationship for ever – the end of the therapy. The chairs then stand empty.

Sometimes that relationship is strained, awkward, confused. Sometimes it is concurrent. Sometimes only the client struggles. The only thing that matters in the room is the relationship between the people who use the chairs, in a room that has no other function.

Andrew Robinson

Further reading:

The therapy room

The role of the therapy room in the clinical frame