Published: October 2026

Keywords:
Drawing, art, couple therapy, Peter Rober, relational drawings, Gianfranco Cecchin.

Maria Magdalini Delliou

My name is Maria Magdalini Delliou. I am a psychologist and a trainee systemic family psychotherapist at the Institute of Systemic Thinking and Psychotherapy. I graduated from the Department of Psychology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and completed my clinical training at "Ippokrateio" General Hospital of Thessaloniki. I work with children, adolescents, and their families at a Special Treatment Center in Thessaloniki, while also maintaining a private practice, providing sessions to adults, couples, and families. In recent years, I have volunteered occasionally with The Smile of the Child and participated in conferences in Greece and abroad.

Abstract

Art, and painting in particular, can offer a different way of seeing and making sense of relationships in therapy, allowing multiple, even contradictory, perspectives to emerge and coexist. This text is an artistic reconstruction of a systemic therapy session with a couple and focuses on the use of painting in couple therapy as an additional space for expression and exploration. The use of drawings in the therapeutic process draws on Peter Rober’s (2009) approach, “Relational Drawings in Couple Therapy”. Through a literary dialogue between voices, whispers, and echoes, the couple’s narratives are interwoven with memories, family relationships, silences, and unspoken meanings. The images accompanying the text are painterly reinterpretations of the couples' drawings.