Intent

This project is a multi-part series of illustrations made to present an aspect of cognitive therapy and an affliction of the human psyche in a digestible way. My goals were to (1) visually communicate an intangible and unquantifiable set of information, (2) contribute to the network of artists using their work to create awareness around mental health, and (3) find a way of sharing concepts of cognitive therapy that may not be accessible to people to whom therapy is not. The research for this project involved sifting through scientific journals, in-person interviews, recording and analyzing my own experiences, and conversations with a cognitive therapist.

Organization

This research led me to break the many examples of cognitive distortions into volumes of ten illustrations as not to overwhelm a person with information while interacting with this project. Each distortion is presented separately on a single card with its definition on the back, rather than stacked or bound, because that is how they seem to occur in the mind making them difficult to differentiate from one another. By presenting the illustrations together in one poster without their definitions, there is a certain amount of power that they lose that is regained by myself and (hopefully) the viewer by using them in the making of art.

Visual Representation

Each illustration attempts to put a face to these incorporeal, but still organic, experiences in order to make them more recognizable. During the research process, I began drawing these curvy, unnatural but relatively human figures that I called ‘ghouls’ as a way to express how I was doing each day. These developed into the colorful depictions of the cognitive distortions seen in this project.