Heterotopia: A tool for understanding therapeutic space

Within therapy sessions utilizing the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM), client and therapist enter dynamic and creative spaces wholly different from the external world. GIM is a music-centred approach to exploring consciousness in a therapeutic setting in which the client engages with spontaneously generated imagery while listening to specially selected programs of music from the Western classical genre. The resultant imagery provides the basis for therapeutic experiences. Foucault’s concept of heterotopias provides a useful frame for understanding the spaces experienced in a GIM session. A heterotopia is a place that is also placeless and a time that is also timeless. Principles of heterotopias are discussed and illustrated with case examples from a client’s work in GIM over a period of 15 months. Used in this way, heterotopia is a way of understanding and describing the connectedness of spaces in GIM in a nuanced way that is reflective of the client’s experiences of the images. It points to an integrated way of understanding these juxtaposed experiences within a client’s imagery.