A research symposium involving Expressive Therapy
Friday, March 30, 2007, 8:30 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Lesley University, Porter Exchange Building, 1815 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Massachusetts
“Art: Creating Experience Through Touch”
Amy Morrison
Often we are told to not touch the art. That art is meant to be seen but not physically interacted with. This presentation explores art that is made to be touched, to be experienced through our senses. The exhibit titled "Pulse: Art, Healing and Transformation", shown at the ICA will be our jumping off point. We will examine the context in which this experiential art is exhibited and the lives of the artists who create such work. The presenter will speak about her art piece, “Holding While Being Held" that was exhibited in the Marran Gallery at Lesley University, the impetus for creating this piece and the process of creating it. Discussion will entail community and meaning making regarding this art form and how presentation participants can create and offer their own experiences through art that can be touched.
“Spirit and Form: An Encounter with Embodied Imagery of the Divine in Hindu India”
Hadass Harel
In this presentation, the presenter will concretely and visually invite participants on to the ground floor of her research: she will share imagery of street statues of the goddess Kali, photographed by her during the Hindu festival of Kali puja in Kolkatta. Gathered in a true ethnographic fashion, the images, (floating in a sea of others), were with her for a long time before a clear focus of their statement as “research” begun to emerge. In a myriad ways, her study is still a work in progress. At this mid-point in her research, the presenter would like to share with lecture participants the steps now behind her: The mechanics and the guiding principles of visual research – and the meaning and implications of the statues within their original segment of Hindu religion, culture, and aesthetics. The presenter would like to invite discussion of challenges and potential directions awaiting her in the next portion of her study. Can meaning and spirit travel, via Art, beyond the confines and the dialectics of a particular culture? What are some of the ways one might measure, and debate, such meaning as it is embodied in concrete form?
“Group Facilitation Using Fairytales and Expressive Therapies”
Lourdes F. Brache-Tabar
As a beginning professional and student, the presenter would like to share the work she has done using various modalities of creative arts in group psychotherapy that took place over the course of three years. She hopes to have the opportunity to learn what other therapists are doing with body work and creativity. Her research interest is in young women and women in their midyears.
“What I Think About Me: Assessment of Self-Concept in Adolescent Girls”
Donna C. Owens, Tonya Ferraro
Self-concept is what you think about yourself. This workshop will present preliminary findings in a study designed to create a creative self-concept tool for use with adolescent girls. The participants are enrolled in the United South End Settlements’ Arts Incentives Program (AIP). AIP is a clinically informed, arts-based, youth development program that works with high-risk girls ages 11-18. Its mission is to help those young people living at the cusp of trauma and disregard be successful in all areas of their lives through skill-building in the arts, arts-based mentorships, art making, performance, and exhibition of their work. The proposed tool is based on creating paper dolls and is measured against a proven self-concept assessment. Participants will be given the opportunity to experience the tool. Further research is being done and participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and contribute ideas for future study. It is hoped that this assessment tool can be broadened to include other aspects of identity beyond self-concept. Other areas informally assessed using this tool have included fine and gross motor skills, communication skills, and family dynamics. Much more research in many areas is needed to move this assessment forward.
“Baquine/ Velorio del Angelito: Transforming Individual Mourning through “The Imagistic Exchange: Communication through Imagery in the Mother/Daughter Relationship”
Denise Malis, with Mekkin Lynch
Our original grouping and initial experiences with community are based in family. The connection to others and to ourselves stems from these early interactions and communications. Family as imagery often marks an interesting juncture in the lives of woman artists as it attempts to define the psyche and the relational base of women’s social and psychological stages of growth. The importance of relationships is central to the development of a woman’s identity and psyche. According to Jean Baker-Miller (1991) and Carol Gilligan (1982), women are rooted in their relationships. Both Baker-Miller and Gilligan differentiate between male vs. female development, citing areas of autonomy and separation vs. connectedness and intimacy. Art therapists on the whole tend to be predominantly female. It is important for art therapists to understand their own biases, communication patterns and familial relationships. Art therapists have to be aware of issues such as transference and countertransference and underlying dynamics. These dynamics often echo the early communication which takes place within key relationships that have occurred during their development. Art therapists find strength from their ongoing connection to their art making process. A fundamental component of art therapy is based in non-verbal communication. Specific to art therapy and communication is the centrality of images and image making (as process and product). In consideration of this it is vital to explore female communication, specifically the interaction and relationship between mother/daughter. Personal and professional growth is often interconnected and threaded through relationship. Visual references to the mother/daughter relationship will be viewed in artwork by the presenter, art therapist Denise Malis, and her daughter, Mekkin Lynch
“Creating An Accessible Art Environment”
Jessica Case
The Creative Arts Program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) is a multi-faceted program that offers patients the opportunity to explore studio art, music, dance/movement, theater/drama, and writing workshops, as well as a humor program. By using or being exposed to the creative arts, individuals can discover different ways to be in the present moment, as they imagine and create their future. The creative arts are gentle therapies that are especially helpful during difficult times, when patients might feel overwhelmed with diagnoses and treatment plans. The Arts Studio provides a place where there is no confrontation, labeling, or definition in order to find a quiet and healing space inside. These approaches encourage and support the exploration of the personal creative process by making them readily available. Art is made accessible to patients of all different artistic levels in this program by catering to the individual and providing a wide variety of opportunities. In this presentation, the presenter will provide examples of workshops, projects, and case studies that have allowed her to make the arts accessible to patients of all artistic levels in a variety of ways.
“Who Am I This Week?: The Doctoral Process as Transformative Learning and Identity Re-formation”
Steven W. Durost
The Doctoral Program is a transformative experience, creating shifts in how one thinks about the world and how one views one's self. Sometimes the changes are slow and unnoticed and at other times the renovations happen so fast, one is left wondering "who am I today?" This wild, wonderful and scary process has been called Transformational Learning. Occurring when deep shifts take place in one's thinking, feeling and behavioral patterns...shifts which can alter one's sociocultural perspective, physical awareness, relational interactions, internal monologues, etc. The presenter is interested how transformational learning alters one's sense of self and thereby changes one's identity. Through this "re-formation" process, identity is questioned, analyzed, reorganized and made anew. The presenter will look at Elliott Mishler's discussion of identity formation as non-linear in contrast to Erikson's identity formation as a series of developmental stages. The presenter will also draw on the theory of transformational learning and identity formation to discuss the "mind-altering" experience of working towards a doctorate. Participants will be asked to contribute to discussion on key element in creating transformational learning environments, especially at the doctoral level. Doctoral candidates will find comfort in the information and stories presented, coming away with a knowledge that they are not alone in feeling the world is changing around them…from the inside out.
“The Social Nervous System and Its Correlates to Community Based Art Therapy”
Michael Franklin
Community as well as the human nervous system is built out of meaningful collective interactions (Chilton Pearce, 2002; Cozolino, 2002; Dissanayake, 1992; Porges, 2001; Schore, 2000; Timm-Botos, 1995). The arts offer unique opportunities to foster and solidify these social connections (Hannaford, 1995) through poetic uses of movement, sound, language and visual images. Each of these artforms, when witnessed, has the potential to express complex life events and foster social bonding. More than ever we need safe community spaces that can offer social connection and witnessing by uniting disparate groups of people together in safe environments like a community art studio. In addition to this perspective, thoughtful explanations that articulate why these practical studio spaces are important for social and cultural policy makers are essential for the field of art therapy. This presentation will discuss these themes, focusing on the neurological connections between the social brain and the social nervous system (Caldwell, 2004; Chilton Pearce, 2002; Cozolino, 2002; Porges, 2001; Schore, 2000) along with the importance of the studio environment (Allen, 1992; Franklin, 1996; McNiff, 1997; Moon, 2002). These topics will be addressed through an investigation of the social brain, specifically attachment behavior (Karen, 1994; Schore, 2000; Siegel, 1999) and mirror neurons (Gallese, 2003; Rothschild, 2004). The community based art studio (Allen, 2001) becomes a place to nurture the social brain and build on earlier forms of attachment behavior (Karen,1994; Schore, 2000; Siegel,1999) that can often be ignored in adolescence and adulthood. Art, at its core, is subjective and objective, private and public, communicating the depth of personal experience within a social context. Due to its correlation to deep emapthic experience, the art process, when practiced in community, offers connections to early attunement experiences and empathic mirroring (Gallese, 2003; Lachman-Chapin, 2001). Several of these related yet to be integrated topics will be discussed in a unified presentation of the social nervous system and studio based art therapy.
“Creative Art Therapy for Healthy Aging”
Sunhee Kim
Art is one of the most powerful ways of producing many different kinds of experiences, and it contributes to mental development and social adjustment. Some of the therapeutic benefits of art are gaining a sense of connection between internal and external reality, feelings of mastery by giving form to and integrating conflicting feelings, and satisfying creative and expressive urges. The presenter sees art as both stimulation to and an expression of overall mental functioning, and it often bridges unseen cognition and outward physical evidence. Art helps us sustain our lives, not only to achieve feelings of joy and fulfillment, but also to maintain our health on basic and necessary levels. Art is an important method for developing a sense of connection to and understanding of our environment, including the people around us. All of these are true to in old age. We consider, however, old age as a period of deceleration and diminishment in the energy of life. Many of the elderly feel that they have lost their worthiness and connection to the world. Various mental health disciplines, including psychotherapy, are used to relieve their stress and improve the quality of their lives. Better yet, creative arts, such as music, art, drama, and dance can span time and space therapeutically, thereby targeting specific issues and needs of the elderly. The arts can connect us not only to our inner selves and self-worth, but also to other people, who can share time and space through the medium of the art. Furthermore, group arts experiences enable empathic connections among elderly participants, creating social support from the same factors that outside the therapeutic environment expose individuals to isolation and pain.
“Body-Mind-Spirit in Context: Beyond an Individualistic, Toward a Relational Paradigm”
Colleen D. Brown, Kaitlin Mulcahy, Tara Mullan Rousseau
This discussion will suggest that to be fully wholistic, an understanding of the intrarelationship within the human – body-mind-spirit – must consider the human as an interrelational being, and thus the whole relationality of body-mind-spirit within its social and ecological context. Social and environmental pathologies, and healing agents, must be considered vital to explore in the process of finding what hinders, and heals, the body-mind-spirit of an individual. Beyond the isolating limitations of an individualistic, biospsychospiritual approach to assisting human healing, or wholeness, community-based health and healing work offers experiences of and insights into the relationality of body-mind-spirit beyond the individual human being, into the wider world through which s/he is created by, and creates, relationally meaningful existence. Through a discussion about work within a community-transforming, family-centered social service agency in Brooklyn, individual social healing from sectarian trauma in Belfast, and accompanying the homeless community in Boston, the presenters will share their own movements from an individualistic to a community-oriented understanding of wholistic healing: body-mind-spirit in context.
“The Mind, Body, Spirit Connection in Transpersonal Drama Therapy”
Saphira B. Linden, Lynn Bratley, Chris Carbone, Patrick Hughes, Colleen Jordan, Pete Kovner, Jaclyn Newman
Transformation as we define it is not about changing, but rather uncovering who we are in our essential selves. Drama Therapy with a transpersonal approach assumes health rather than pathology which helps clients and audiences shift their identities from a limited sense of self to their essential core self, which can never be tarnished by conditioning, abuse or trauma. It works with balancing all parts of one self and holds all emotions as sacred coming from love in pure and distorted forms. The Transpersonal approach also honors the interconnectedness of all living beings including plants, animals and humans. The presenters will demonstrate with actual case studies the application of the Transpersonal Drama Therapy principles. Examples will be shared from a wide variety of populations and methods. In all cases, the presenters will be distilling from a broader experience, the highlights of their work using this approach. The connection between Mind, Body, and Spirit is fundamental to understanding how Transpersonal Drama Therapy happens. Since transpersonal drama therapy is an embodied therapeutic form, it takes the Mind, Body, Spirit connection even further than other therapeutic approaches. The presenters will talk about how some anecdotal research has been conducted informally toward the end of eventually creating more rigorous research to demonstrate the efficacy of this approach.
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