An “encounter” with an image

In this video, Ivy Daure recounts the genesis of Amour Monstre as an “encounter” with an image: a little character from an exhibition that immediately made her think of the couple and its paradoxes.

1. A simple clinical idea

   The relationship can be emotional nourishment and a therapeutic resource — it reassures, supports, affirms —, but it can also become deprivation, lost love, even mistreatment, and leave each partner very vulnerable.

2. The first images in session

   Ivy began using a few images in session to create an effect of surprise and invite people to define their couple otherwise than through the facts: entering the “dance” of representation, they describe the relationship, its ambivalences, and the way they feel within it.

3. The urgency of a real support

   The tool took on a new dimension when Ivy was invited to pass on her way of thinking about couple therapy: it became urgent to turn those few images into a genuine, structured support.

4. A picto-language of the bond

   She then met the illustrator Nicolas Sadaune, and together they co-created a series of images conceived as a picto-language of the bond: cards that help put words, emotions and contexts on what the couple is going through, and make the therapeutic work more concrete, more shareable, and easier to mobilise.