Serbian / Serbia
Stripoterapija
(Comic art therapy)
Petrović, Ana
(text/illus.)
Beograd: Kreativni centar, 2022. – 167 p.
ISBN 978-86-529-1084-7
Psychotherapy | Mental health | Comic
Reading age: 12+
White Ravens issue: 2023
A client is sitting at her psychotherapist’s – and she does so on every double-page spread in Ana Petrović’s humorous comic book. The volume gathers various individual comic panels, which originally appeared as Instagram postings. Each can be read as a new psychotherapy session. The »client« is Petrović’s alter ego – an illustrator. In the course of the sessions, readers learn about her fears and neuroses, but, above all, about her inner life. As a reader, you are inclined to keep nodding and calling out to the client: Yes, that sounds very familiar! Each strip is to the point and focuses on a single question asked by the therapist and the client’s response to it. Through her images, Ana Petrović succeeds in creating great situational comedy, but also truthfulness; for example, when therapist and client are sitting opposite each other as helmeted astronauts during the COVID pandemic: as they sit looking at the Earth from a »social distance«, they contemplate how beautiful it is from afar. [KW]