Day 15 - Expressive arts therapy: the evolution of a name

 Day 15 – I’m really moving forward in my writing – and today I’ve spent the day reworking an article I began several years ago about the professionalization of the field of expressive arts therapy.  Here is onsection of the article I hope to submit.  I’m sort of surprised by how relevant this all still feels.

Expressive arts therapy: the evolution of a name

The name “expressive arts therapy” has evolved along with the field for over 40 years. Beginning in the 1970s at Lesley University (then Lesley College), students and faculty embraced an interdisciplinary, arts-based approach to the teaching and learning of arts therapy. They called their department “expressive therapies” but throughout that time the term “expressive arts therapy” and “expressive arts therapies” also began to emerge alongside “expressive therapies” which was used in both its singular and plural form to refer to an integrated arts approach (McNiff, 2009). In his description of the evolution of the field, McNiff, the founder of the Lesley program, recalls, “When people asked, ‘what is expressive arts therapy?’ I would answer, ‘It is the use of all of the arts in therapy’” (p. 30).  At the same time, terms such as “artist-therapists” and “arts therapists” also began to find purchase.  McNiff notes that an early professional association for these arts therapists that wished to establish a discipline “not limited to a particular media” was the American Association of Artist-Therapists, that later named itself the National Expressive Therapy Association, in part because of its affiliations with Lesley faculty and alumni (pp. 32-33).

 

“Expressive arts therapies” was also sometimes used as an umbrella term referring to the arts therapy disciplines as a unity. One book that explored the use of the arts as healing tools entitled “The Expressive Arts Therapies” was published as early as 1981 (Feder & Feder, 1981), and while the book outlined visual arts therapy, music therapy and dance/movement therapy, the authors recognized, “A major theme of this book is the contention that the expressive arts therapies share some fundamental assumptions about the use of nonverbal expression and communication in the treatment of individuals” (p. 229).  McNiff (2009) notes that in his early text, The Arts and Psychotherapy, also published in 1981, he used the term “expressive arts therapy” to denote an approach which allowed for the “full range of expression” (1981, p. viii). “An integrated approach to the arts in therapy allows us to respond to the client’s emotional state, and it facilitates expression in the most direct and forceful manner possible” (p. viii).

 

At the same time the label “creative arts therapies” found its way into the professional world via the National Coalition of Creative Arts Therapies Associations (NCCATA) founded in 1979.  “Creative arts therapies” is an umbrella term referring to the disciplines of art therapy, dance/movement therapy, drama therapy, music therapy, psychodrama, or poetry therapy.  Like expressive arts therapists “creative arts therapists are human service professionals who use arts modalities and creative processes for the purpose of ameliorating disability and illness and optimizing health and wellness” (http://www.nccata.org). Unlike its sibling professions of art therapy, dance/movement therapy, drama therapy, music therapy, psychodrama, or poetry therapy, expressive arts therapy is not organized around the application of one specific art modality; instead, expressive arts therapy is a radically inclusive approach that “is grounded not in particular techniques or media but in the capacity of the arts to respond to human suffering” (Levine & Levine, 1999, p. 11).

 

During the 1970s and 1980s at Lesley, cluster groups or core groups of graduate students took on the task of studying, embodying, researching, and exploring the use of the arts as therapy. At times these groups had an integrated arts focus and at other times, the groups were grounded in one modality (e.g., art therapy, dance/movement therapy, psychodrama) (Kossak, 2009).  McNiff and his faculty were “interested in superseding their disciplinary divisions and realizing the untapped potential for the use of the arts in community, therapy, and education” (Estrella, 2005, p. 184), and as such there was a move to embrace all of the arts for both those students and faculty that specialized in the use of one art form and for those interested in a more inclusive use of the arts.

These were all means of furthering arts integration. This was at the core. Some of us, led by Paolo [Knill], studied arts integration by exploring ways of working with all of the arts together in a session and others chose to simply work with different arts modalities in response to particular situations. We strove to achieve integration through individuals experiencing their own processes of synthesizing experiences rather than through a prescribed curriculum. (McNiff, cited in Kossak, 2009, p. 177).

 

The term “intermodal” also found its beginnings at Lesley – Paolo Knill, a founding faculty member at Lesley, wrote a monograph in 1978 entitled, Intermodal Learning in Education and Therapy. In it he began to articulate an approach that would provide a foundation for a whole generation of expressive arts therapists and that would permeate the field of “Expressive Arts Therapy” (Estrella, 2005).  For many the term “intermodal” became synonymous with “expressive arts therapy” and at Lesley the term became a signifier of their identity for many students in the integrated arts track. The “intermodal” approach is rooted in theories of poly-aesthetics, that is, in the idea that the arts are interrelated and the imagination utilizes all arts in an interrelated way. Knill (1994) says, “The artistic tradition that provides a basic foundation for the discipline of intermodal expressive therapy is rooted in human imagination and is characterized by an interrelatedness among the arts” (p. 319). 

 

By the early 1990s, Knill was interested in “intermodal expressive therapy” being recognized as a “discipline unto itself, with its own theoretical framework and focus” and with “its primary focus in the artistic tradition that all the arts have in common” (p. 319). In his 1994 article, Knill uses “intermodal expressive therapy” and “expressive therapy” interchangeably.  A footnote to the article says, “The term Expressive Therapy was first coined in 1974 to describe the master’s degree program by the same name at Lesley College, which since that time has promoted the interdisciplinary or so-called ‘intermodal’ use of the arts in psychotherapy” (emphasis in the original, p. 319). While the term became ubiquitous, as the field expanded many theoretical and practical approaches to an integrated arts field (described in the next section), not only the intermodal approach, became foundational, and for many, especially those outside the Lesley community, the term “expressive arts therapy” became the correct term to embrace these many approaches.