“Conversas sobre Deus” (2022) is the cover of the book Cara a cara. La creación del psicoterapeuta, by Hélder Chambel, published in Spain by Ágora Relacional Editores, 2023.

Testimony Hélder Chambel, Psychotherapist

An “aesthetic moment” with “Conversas Sobre Deus” by Sara Miguel

The English psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas describes an interesting human experience, he called it the “aesthetic moment”, which he defines as an encounter with the “spirit of the object”. An aesthetic moment can be difficult to describe. It is a moment of encounter, with something or someone, artworks provide aesthetic moments, they are moments in which we are strongly impacted by something that transcends us, in that moment we lose the notion of space and time, we experience another existential dimension in a kind of hypnosis where we feel fused, for example, with a photograph, a painting or a song, or with the gaze of a person. They are “places” to which we belong in some way, but we don’t know how to describe why or what the meaning is. I believe that aesthetic moments are a good reason for the human existence.

At the end of 2022, I had finished a book that would soon be published by Editora Ágora Relacional in Madrid. It’s a book about the work of a psychotherapist, this psychotherapist that I am. The publisher had asked me to suggest an image for the cover, I spent more than a month with this subject in mind, but I didn’t find anything that was what I was looking for. I had already given up and was preparing to tell the publisher that I would leave this matter to them. Then, by chance, I came across Sara Miguel’s artwork “Conversas Sobre Deus”, and at that moment I was sure that I had found the cover of my book. It was a few seconds of fusion between my feelings, what I feel is the book and Sara’s artwork, an aesthetic moment, I don’t know how to describe it, after a few seconds I wrote to Sara Miguel asking for permission to use her artwork as the cover of my book. Thank you, Sara Miguel.”