Art Therapy, Trauma, and Neuroscience combines theory, research, and practice with traumatized populations in a neuroscience framework. Recognizing the importance of understanding both art therapy and trauma studies as brain-based interventions, some of the most renowned figures in art therapy and trauma use translational and integrative neuroscience to provide theoretical and applied techniques. Therapists will come away from this book with tools for a refined understanding of brain-based interventions in a dynamic yet accessible format.
Art Therapy and Clinical Neuroscience offers an authoritative introductory account of recent developments in clinical neuroscience and its impact on art therapy theory and practice. Contributors explore the complex relationship between art and creativity and neurological functions such as those that occur during stress response, immune functioning, child developmental phases, gender difference, the processing of imagery, attachment, and trauma. It deciphers neuroscientific language and theory and contributes innovative concrete applications and interventions useful in art therapy. This book is essential reading for art therapists, expressive arts therapists, counselors, mental health practitioners, and students.
Presenting a neuroscientifically aware approach to art therapy. Art Therapy and the Neuroscience of Relationships, Creativity, and Resiliency offers a comprehensive integration of art therapy and interpersonal neurobiology. It showcases the Art Therapy Relational Neuroscience (ATR-N) theoretical and clinical approach, and demonstrates how it can be used to help clients with autobiographical memory, reflecting and creating, touch and space, meaning-making, emotions, and dealing with long-term stress and trauma. The ATR-N approach, first developed by Noah Hass-Cohen, is comprised of six principles: Creative Embodiment, Relational Resonating, Expressive Communicating, Adaptive Responding, Transformative Integrating, and Empathizing and Compassion (CREATE). The chapters in this book are organized around these CREATE principles, demonstrating the dynamic interplay of brain and bodily systems during art therapy. Each chapter begins with an overview of one CREATE principle, which is then richly illustrated with therapeutic artwork and intrapersonal reflections. The subsequent discussion of the related relational neuroscience elucidates how the ATR-N work is grounded in research and evidence-based theory. The last section of each chapter, which is devoted to clinical skills and applications, integrates practices and approaches across all six of the CREATE principles, demonstrating how therapeutic art making can help people decipher the functional mystery of their relational nervous system, enhance their emotive and cognitive abilities, and increase the motivation to learn novel concepts and participate in a meaningful social discourse.
Using clay in therapy taps into the most fundamental of human experiences - touch. This book is a comprehensive step-by-step training manual that covers all aspects of 'Work at the Clay Field', a sensorimotor-based art therapy technique. The book discusses the setting and processes of the approach, provides an overview of the core stages of Gestalt Formation and the Nine Situations model within this context, and demonstrates how this unique focus on the sense of touch and the movement of the hands is particularly effective for trauma healing in adults and children. The intense tactile experience of working with clay allows the therapist to work through early attachment issues, developmental setbacks and traumatic events with the client in a primarily nonverbal way using a body-focused approach. The kinaesthetic motor action of the hands combined with sensory perception can lead to a profound sense of resolution with lasting therapeutic benefits. With photographs and informative case studies throughout, this book will be a valuable resource for art therapists and mental health professionals, and will also be of interest to complementary therapists and bodyworkers.
This book focuses on somatic art therapy for treating acute or chronic pain, especially resulting from physical and/or psychological trauma. It discusses the role of the psyche in physical healing and encourages combining of traditional medicine and holistic perspectives in treatment. Translated from the French text, this volume provides case studies and examples from the author’s art psychotherapy practice of 40 years, including the four-quadrants method. Chapters review the current treatments for chronic pain and PTSD and focus on art therapeutic methods to treat those conditions, such as art therapy protocols for PTSD. The book exposes the underlying rational of somatic art therapy, covering art therapy effectiveness, Levine’s somatic dissociation, van der Kolk’s somatic memory, and Scaer’s procedural memory concepts. Also featured are chapter contributions from art therapists Sophie Boudrias, Mylène Piché, and Dr. Patcharin Sughondhabirom. By providing a unique, clear and concise synthesis of available art therapy methods this text will appeal both to the general and professional public, including professional art therapists, psychotherapists, helping relation professionals, and medical practitioners.
A body-focused, trauma-informed art therapy that will appeal to art therapists, somatic experiencing practitioners, bodyworkers, artists, and mental health professionals While art therapy traditionally focuses on therapeutic image-making and the cognitive or symbolic interpretation of these creations, Cornelia Elbrecht instructs readers how to facilitate the body-focused approach of guided drawing. Clients draw with both hands and eyes closed as they focus on their felt sense. Physical pain, tension, and emotions are expressed without words through bilateral scribbles. Clients then, with an almost massage-like approach, find movements that soothe their pain, discharge inner tension and emotions, and repair boundary breaches. Archetypal shapes allow therapists to safely structure the experience in a nonverbal way. Sensorimotor art therapy is a unique and self-empowering application of somatic experiencing--it is both body-focused and trauma-informed in approach--and assists clients who have experienced complex traumatic events to actively respond to overwhelming experiences until they feel less helpless and overwhelmed and are then able to repair their memories of the past. Elbrecht provides readers with the context of body-focused, trauma-informed art therapy and walks them through the thinking behind and process of guided drawing--including 100 full-color images from client sessions that serve as helpful examples of the work.
Arts Therapies in International Practice: Informed by Neuroscience and Research brings together practice and research in the arts therapies and in neuroscience. The authors are all arts therapists who have reviewed their practice through the lens of modern neuroscience. Neuroscience confirms the importance of embodiment, choice, and creativity in therapy with a range of clients. Arts therapies directly provide these. The authors demonstrate how the arts therapies can be adapted creatively to work in different social and ethnic communities, with different ages and with different states of health or ill health. Although there is diversity in their practice and country of practice, they reaffirm key concepts of the arts therapies, such as the importance of the therapeutic relationship, and the key role played by the arts modality with its effects on the brain and nervous system. This book will appeal to a wide readership, including arts therapists, expressive arts therapists, a range of other psychotherapists and counsellors, students and their teachers, and those interested in the neuroscience of human development.
"Psychological trauma can be a life-changing experience that affects multiple facets of health and well-being. The nature of trauma is to impact the mind and body in unpredictable and multidimensional ways. It can be a highly subjective that is difficult or even impossible to explain with words. It also can impact the body in highly individualized ways and result in complex symptoms that affect memory, social engagement, and quality of life. While many people overcome trauma with resilience and without long term effects, many do not. Trauma's impact often requires approaches that address the sensory-based experiences many survivors report. The expressive arts therapy-the purposeful application of art, music, dance/movement, dramatic enactment, creative writing and imaginative play-are largely non-verbal ways of self-expression of feelings and perceptions. More importantly, they are action-oriented and tap implicit, embodied experiences of trauma that can defy expression through verbal therapy or logic. Based on current evidence-based and emerging brain-body practices, there are eight key reasons for including expressive arts in trauma intervention, covered in this book: (1) letting the senses tell the story; (2) self-soothing mind and body; (3) engaging the body; (4) enhancing nonverbal communication; (5) recovering self-efficacy; (6) rescripting the trauma story; (7) making meaning; and (8) restoring aliveness"--
Using Neuroscience in Trauma Therapy provides a basic overview of structure and function of the brain and nervous system, with special emphasis on changes that occur when the brain is exposed to trauma. The book presents a unique and integrative approach that blends soma and psyche beyond the purview of traditional talk therapy and introduces a variety of trauma-informed approaches for promoting resilience. Each chapter includes case studies, examples, and practical and adaptable tools, making Using Neuroscience in Trauma Therapy a go-to guide for information on applying lessons from neuroscience to therapy.
Nonverbal interactions are applied to trauma treatment for more effective results. The model of treatment developed here is grounded in the physical, psychological, and cognitive reactions children have to traumatic experiences and the consequences of those experiences. The approach to treatment utilizes the integrative capacity of the brain to create a self, foster insight, and produce change. Treatment strategies are based on cutting-edge understanding of neurobiology, the development of the brain, and the storage and retrieval of traumatic memory. Case vignettes illustrate specific examples of the reactions of children, families, and teens to acute and repeated exposure to traumatic events. Also presented is the most recent knowledge of the role of the right hemisphere (RH) in development and therapy. Right brain communication, and how to recognize the non-verbal symbolic and unconscious, affective processes will be explained, along with examples of how the therapist can utilize art making, media, tools, and self to engage in a two-person biology.
