Art Therapy (Week Eight/Nine)
Art can be used as a therapeutic method of helping bring forth dialogue between the client and therapist. It works as a container for emotions, it brings forward and creates distance to confront and work through thoughts and experiences. While also allowing the client to find emotional clarification through interpreting their own art with guidance from their therapist. One of our readings for class describes this practice as; "Art psychotherapy seeks to create a safe, uncontaminated space and to enable the client to speak in a language they 'don't understand': to have new thoughts and experiences. The shift in modalities from orally retelling a distressing history to creatively exploring an untainted and alternative present often allows for stuck perspectives to be re-visioned or reframed and for new perceptions to appear." (Learmonth and Huckvale, 2008) To better understand the capacity that art therapy can have for a person/client we did a few different act...