Pragmatic and poetic, this book is a tribute to the complexities and mysteries of working with people who are suffering and striving to tell their stories through expressive artistic processes. Its roots lay deep in encounters with children, adolescents, and adults who have come to the author for help over the last three decades. It is grounded in interactions with graduate art therapy students and encounters with important themes in life. This book makes no effort to affix particular meanings to the metaphors discussed in the clinical vignettes, but rather, suggests ways to listen and respond.
Art, Play, and Narrative Therapy shows mental health professionals how the blending of expressive arts, psychotherapy, and metaphorical communication can both support and enhance clinical practice. This book illuminates the ways in which metaphorical representations form who we are, how we interact, and how we understand our larger environment. Author Lisa Moschini explains how to couple clients’ words, language, stories, and artwork with treatment interventions that aid empathic understanding, promote a collaborative alliance, and encourage conflict resolution. Chapters include numerous illustrations, exercises, and examples that give clinicians inspiration for both theoretical and practical interventions.
This expanded new edition reflects the author's efforts to explore the crucial components of the education of the creative arts therapist. The text reflects significant developments in the profession of art therapy, important modifications in the educational standards of the American Art Therapy Association, and profound changes in health care. The book is an expression of the author's belief that the most essential element of art therapy is art as the core of the profession. It is art making that undergirds the profession and is also the key element that art therapists bring to the client-therapist and educator-student relationships. Central, too, to the author's approach is the manner in which mentor and beginning art therapist come together in their efforts to learn and grow. The concern for authentic engagement in the training relationship enhances the beginner's ability to use the self to help clients learn to use art and artistic expression to identify and integrate new insights in their lives. Topics presented include The Image, Making Art, Beginner's Chaos, Journey Metaphor in Education, Mentor/Supervisor, The Art Experience, Core Curriculum, Practical Experience, Science and Soul in the Clinical Setting, The Work of Art Therapy, The Young Student, Gifts of the Male and Female Student, Role of Philosophy, Therapy and Holidays, Metaverbal Therapy, Role of Metaphor, Role of Love, Role of Assessment, and Role of Work. The book is ultimately concerned with the use of art and the artistic relationship to promote human growth. The author's deep understanding of both art and existentialism makes this book a high point in the ever-evolving fields of existential psychotherapy and art therapy.
In order to practice art therapy, one must have faith in the healing qualities of art processes and products. Introduction to Art Therapy: Faith in the Product begins and ends with references to love and faith, including characteristic elements of the writing process and clinical art therapy endeavors. This third edition represents a thorough revision of ideas expressed in the previous two editions, presenting the major themes and issues of the profession in light of the experiences of intervening years. Art therapy is effective with individuals, families, and groups and it works well with the intellectually gifted and the learning impaired. It can also be used with the chronically mentally ill, the terminally ill, the vision impaired, and the deaf. Art therapy is particularly effective with post-traumatic stress disorder--from the aftereffects of war, including physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. Enhancements in this text include: an overview of the spectrum of theoretical orientations within art therapy; a brief history of practice in the United States; fundamental principles of art therapy; curative aspects of art therapy; and metaverbal therapy. The author underscores the nature of the work, describes truths and fictions, explores pathos or pathology, and the therapeutic self. The text examines the social responsibility of art therapists and their colleagues; to record events, give form to culture, nurture imagination, and promote individual and social transformation. In addition, the author presents exceptional case examples including client-prepared artwork that highlights the text. This book will be an inspiration to serious artists that want to be involved in art therapy, and to the veteran art therapists to renew their vocations by living the process of art therapy. This comprehensive and insightful book will be valuable to art therapists, medical and mental health professionals, occupational therapists, and other rehabilitation professionals that aspire to become more effective in reaching others.
Drawing on her extensive experience in expressive arts therapy, Daria Halprin presents a unique approach to healing through movement and art. She describes the body as the container of one's entire life experience and movement as a language that expresses and reveals our deepest struggles and creative potentials. Interweaving artistic and psychological processes, she offers a philosophy and methodology that invites the reader to consider the transformational capacity of the arts. In this essential resource for anyone interested in the integration of psychotherapy and the arts, Halprin also presents case studies and a selection of exercises that she has evolved over her career and practised at the Tamalpa Institute for over twenty-five years.
A classic in art therapy literature since its introduction nearly two decades ago, this book is an expression of the author's desire to link the practice of art psychotherapy to the core issues of life as presented in existentialism. The inclusion of existential in this book's title denotes an interest in human struggle with issues of life in the face of death. The Canvas Mirror is the story of connections: the author's connections with his patients, their connections with each other, and, ultimately, the author's connections with the reader. We are provided in this book with a philosophy of how to be rather than a manual of what to do. The author shows us that it is possible to speak in plain language about the difficulties of therapists' patients if art therapists also speak to themselves in that same language. Unique features include: existential values and artistic traditions; metaphor, ritual, and journey; structuring chaos; existential emptiness and art; tenets of existential art therapy; the frame of The Canvas Mirror; listening to images and relating to artworks; dimensions of creative action; artists of the cutting edge; the changing face of illness; existential leadership and basic tasks; and dialoguing with dreams. Replete with numerous illustrations, this text will serve as a valuable resource to medical and mental health professionals, occupational therapists, artists, students and theorists of art, and rehabilitation professionals. The current state of mental health care, with short stays and a problem-focused approach, makes this book even more relevant today than when it was first published in 1990.
Clay Work and Body Image in Art Therapy provides an important addition to resources available in the field of clay work and art therapy, highlighting the unique sensory aspects of the medium and its ability to provide a therapeutic resource for women who experience body image issues. Chapters offer a comprehensive distillation of current knowledge in the field of body image, clay work, neuroscience, and art therapy, building a theoretical framework around personal narratives. Case studies examine the benefits of exploring body image through clay work within art therapy practice, providing a positive and contained way to find personal acceptance and featuring photographs of clay body image sculptures created by research participants that highlight their individual stories and experiences. As well as offering both clinical and practical implications, the text provides a full protocol for the research and evaluation methods carried out, enabling further replication of the intervention and research methods by other therapists. This book highlights clay work as a significant resource for art therapists, arts in health practitioners, and counsellors, providing an emotive yet contained approach to the development of personal body image acceptance and self-compassion.
"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"--
Recognising that problems with body image are often the lead cause of eating disorders, therapists are increasingly looking for innovative and effective ways to address these issues with clients. This book is packed with simple, inexpensive art-based activities that use a range of media to engage with common body image concerns openly and creatively. The activities employ basic principles from Behavioral Therapy including mindfulness and emotion regulation and use common and familiar objects to create a reassuring environment. Discussion and evaluation are encouraged throughout to enhance awareness and appreciation of self. All the exercises, and their objectives, are thoroughly explained with illustrative case studies and sample artworks from the author's extensive therapeutic experience. These adaptable art exercises will be the perfect resource for any professional to promote healthy body image in group or individual work, with girls and women. They can be used as preventative strategies with girls still developing their identities, and will be especially useful at all stages of eating disorder treatment programs.
Leading art therapy groups is often a challenge, but as Bruce Moon so eloquently describes in this new second edition, making art in the context of others is an incredibly and almost inexplicably powerful experience. By placing the art at the center of practice, Art-Based Group Therapy creates an explanatory model and rationale for group practice that is rooted in art therapy theory and identity. There are four primary goals discussed in this text. First, an overview of essential therapeutic elements of art-based group work is provided. Second, a number of case vignettes that illustrate how therapeutic elements are enacted in practice are presented. Third, the author clearly differentiates art-based group therapy theory from traditional group psychotherapy theory. Fourth, the aspects of art-based group work and their advantages unique to art therapy are explored. Art-based group processes can be used to enhance participants' sense of community and augment educational endeavors, promote wellness, prevent emotional difficulties, and treat psychological behavioral problems. Artistic activity is used in art-based groups processes to: (1) create self-expression and to recognize the things group members have in common with one another; (2) develop awareness of the universal aspects of their difficulties as a means to identify and resolve interpersonal conflicts; (3) increase self-worth and alter self-concepts; (4) respond to others and express compassion for one another; and (5) clarify feelings and values. Through the author's effective use of storytelling, the reader encounters the group art therapy experience, transcending the case vignette and didactic instruction. Art-based group therapy can help group members achieve nearly any desired outcome, and/or address a wide range of therapeutic objectives. The book will be of benefit to students, practitioners, and educators alike. Using it as a guide, art therapy students may be more empowered to enter into the uncertain terrains of their practice grounded in a theory soundly based in their area of study. Practitioners will no doubt be encouraged, validated, and inspired to continue their work. The author succeeds in establishing a framework that allows art therapists to communicate the value of their work in a language that is unique to art therapy.
