This text encourages both patient and therapist in creating the solutions to difficult problems. Despite the proximity which therapy fosters, the practitioner is asked to retain the capacity for surprise and exploration and to use the relationship as a creative force for new beginnings.
What is the true nature of thinking? Can it best be understood as a solitary activity of a lone individual? This book suggests that our grasp of creativity is impoverished because we fail to recognise the vital roles that partnerships, collaborations, friendships, and communities play in our thinking, learning, and understanding.
Working Across Modalities in the Arts Therapies: Creative Collaborations offers an in-depth insight into cross-modality and transdisciplinary practice in the arts therapies. Including contributions from drama, music, dance movement and art therapists, as well as professionals from related disciplines, it vividly demonstrates how the alchemy of these collaborations produces innovative interventions and new approaches to working with clients. Compelling examples of collaborative practice cover a variety of client groups, ranging from Syrian refugee children and women with eating disorders, to homeless war veterans and sex offenders.?Together, the authors make the case for the effectiveness of cross-modal and transdisciplinary approaches when working with otherwise hard-to-reach and complex populations. This book is a guide to good practice and an invaluable resource for both experienced arts therapists and those new to the field. It will also be of benefit to healthcare and education professionals, arts practitioners, and anyone with an interest in the subject.
'The Collaborative Psychotherapist' provides step-by-step guidance on how psychotherapists can work with their medical colleagues on a routine basis. The book includes case studies, interviews with therapists and a medical doctor, checklists, model letters of introduction, and suggestions for follow-up communication.
Collaborative Therapy: Relationships and Conversations That Make a Difference provides in-depth accounts of the everyday practice of postmodern collaborative therapy, vibrantly illustrating how dialogic conversation can transform lives, relationships, and entire communities. Pioneers and leading professionals from diverse disciplines, contexts, and cultures describe in detail what they do in their therapy and training practices, including their work with psychosis, incarceration, aging, domestic violence, eating disorders, education, and groups. In addition to the therapeutic applications, the book demonstrates the usefulness of a postmodern collaborative approach to the domains of education, research, and organizations.
Integrating the psychology of love and creativity, this pioneering book explores both how a couple’s involvement as lovers influences their creative collaboration and how working together affects their relationship. Representing a variety of genres—painting, sculpture, photography, and installation art—the celebrated couples profiled here include, among others, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, and Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel. Intrigued by this process of "intimate creativity," psychologists Irving and Suzanne Sarnoff (themselves partners in love and work) decided to conduct in-depth interviews with partners in visual art because they defy the supremely individualistic tradition of their field. Whatever their age or sexual orientation, these artist-couples combine their talents to form a collective identity as a professional team. Passionately intense about their shared commitment, they communicate endlessly to resolve conflicts and reach consensus. Providing mutual validation and support, they increase their productivity and the quality of their work; they minimize their fear and frustration and enhance their pleasure in being together. The authors also draw on historical and contemporary literature about similar couples, ranging from Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber to Gilbert and George to Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Stimulating and engaging, this book highlights the features of a unique collaborative process, considers the connection between creativity and sexuality, and suggests possibilities for any couple to expand their intimacy.
The contributors to this volume adopt a socio-cultural approach to understanding collaborative creativity across a wide range of domains such as music composition, business, school-based creative writing and art, fashion design, theatre production and web-based academic collaborations. Central to the socio-cultural approach to creativity is the recognition that it is a fundamentally social process. It thus follows that, if we are to understand and characterize human creativity, we need to examine the cultural, institutional and interpersonal contexts that support and sustain such activity. We also need to understand how cultural tools and technologies resource collaborative creativity. The volume offers a distinctive and valuable contribution to this growing field of scholarship by presenting new empirical findings, reviews and critiques of existing literature together with suggestions for how this field should develop.
In this engaging guide, Matthew Selekman presents cutting-edge strategies for helping children and their families overcome a wide range of emotional and behavioral challenges. Vivid case material illustrates how to engage clients rapidly and implement interventions that elicit their strengths. Integrating concepts and tools from a variety of therapeutic traditions, Selekman describes creative applications of interviewing, family art and play, postmodern and narrative techniques, and positive psychology. He highlights ways to promote spontaneity, fun, and new possibilities—especially with clients who feel stuck in longstanding difficulties and entrenched patterns of interaction. The book updates and refines the approach originally presented in Selekman's acclaimed Solution-Focused Therapy with Children.
Creativity often leads to the development of original ideas that are useful or influential, and maintaining creativity is crucial for the continued development of organizations in particular and society in general. Most research and writing has focused on individual creativity. Yet, in recent years there has been an increasing acknowledgment of the importance of the social and contextual factors in creativity. Even with the information explosion and the growing necessity for specialization, the development of innovations still requires group interaction at various stages in the creative process. Most organizations increasingly rely on the work of creative teams where each individual is an expert in a particular area. This volume summarizes the exciting new research developments on the processes involved in group creativity and innovation, and explores the relationship between group processes, group context, and creativity. It draws from a broad range of research perspectives, including those investigating cognition, groups, creativity, information systems, and organizational psychology. These different perspectives have been brought together in one volume in order to focus attention on this developing literature and its implications for theory and application. The chapters in this volume are organized into two sections. The first focuses on how group decision making is affected by factors such as cognitive fixation and flexibility, group diversity, minority dissent, group decision-making, brainstorming, and group support systems. Special attention is devoted to the various processes and conditions that can inhibit or facilitate group creativity. The second section explores how various contextual and environmental factors affect the creative processes of groups. The chapters explore issues of group autonomy, group socialization, mentoring, team innovation, knowledge transfer, and creativity at the level of cultures and societies. The research presented in this section makes it clear that a full understanding of group creativity cannot be accomplished without adequate attention to the group environment. It will be a useful source of information for scholars, practitioners, and students wishing to understand and facilitate group creativity.
Presenting an innovative framework for tailoring cognitive-behavioral interventions to each client's needs, this accessible book is packed with practical pointers and sample dialogues. Step by step, the authors show how to collaborate with clients to develop and test conceptualizations that illuminate personal strengths as well as problems, and that deepen in explanatory power as treatment progresses. An extended case illustration demonstrates the three-stage conceptualization process over the entire course of therapy with a multiproblem client. The approach emphasizes building resilience and coping while decreasing psychological distress. Special features include self-assessment checklists and learning exercises to help therapists build their conceptualization skills.