Expressive Arts Therapy

Photo by Nicole Geri on Unsplash Day 9 – Napoli (2019) warns particularly of the harm done as the fields of creative arts therapies remain silent about the “historical, systematic efforts to eradicate Native identity and sovereignty in the United States” (p. 1) and the continued oppression of American Indian peoples today by “situated and subjugated knowledge, cultural appropriation, cultural genocide, and colonial amnesia” (p. 1).   Reading her work, it’s hard not to acknowledges the careless use of these same oppressive practices within our own training, theories, research, and practice.   In 1999, the first text to “gather a multiplicity of perspectives which represent the field of expressive arts therapy” was edited by Stephen and Ellen Levine (p. 9).   They trace the early training of arts therapists in an “interdisciplinary approach” introduced at Lesley College in the early 1970s. Lesley’s program was noted to be in “contradistinction to the specialized art...

In 2018, I was invited to speak on a panel at the first symposium of the Critical Pedagogy in Creative Arts Therapies group. At that panel presentation I read this poem which I had written several years prior to the meeting.   I am reminded of this poem, as I write new poems, as I try to find my voice.     Also, check out Joshua Bennett's work - https://www.drjoshuabennett.com/  The link below is to his poem that inspired mine.   A manifesto             After Joshua Bennett   “Say it” you command sing it   and yet I seem to have lost my voice I seem to have lost The very thread That I wrapped around my finger So that I wouldn’t forget   That I am beautiful That you are worthy Of trust   The very thread That runs through my Story   What is my story?   Make it You say Take it You say Trust the process ...

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash Day 7 - In the introduction to her book, Living a Feminist Life , Sara Ahmed (2017) talks about the idea that “feminism is about how to live, about a way of thinking about how to live” (p. 1). She poses feminist life as a questioning life, a question of how to live.   Also, as a question of how we think about the life of those around us,   it might mean asking ethical questions about how to live better in an unjust and unequal world (in a not- feminist and antifeminist world); how to create relationships with others that are more equal; how to find ways to support those who are not supported or are less supported by social systems; how to keep coming up against histories that have become concrete, histories that have become as solid as walls. (p. 1)   I think becoming a “therapist,” of any kind, also includes this questioning.   As therapists, we are prioritizing relationships. We are prioritizing well-being and social just...

Photo by Thomas Ashlock on Unsplash Day 6 – In 2015, the American Counseling Association (ACA) endorsed The Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (MSJCC; Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015), in a “call for counselors to ‘develop knowledge of theories that explain how their privileged and marginalized status influences their experiences and worldview’ (p. 5)” (Singh, Appling, & Trepal, 2020, p. 261).  Singh, Appling, and Trepal (2020) outline the importance of counselors developing “a critical consciousness about the power that both counselors and clients hold in the counseling relationship, especially as this power relates to privilege and oppression” (p. 261). They recommend using four theories of multicultural and social justice perspectives to examine assumptions inherent in traditional theories of counseling which reinforce or are rooted within oppressive structures within the larger culture.  Singh, Appling, and Trepal (...

Photo by Elisabeth Arnold on Unsplash   Day 4 and 5   – Expressive arts therapy, like its sibling creative arts therapy professions, must ask itself the complex question of how we can disentangle our theory and practice from a counseling stance or helping profession that does not acknowledge the “broader socio-political discourse” (Norris, 2020b, p. 2).   Norris (2020a) calls for a “radical imagining” within the international field of music therapy.   She insists that “anti-Black violence, systemic oppression, and other acts of injustice” exist not only as reflections of larger cultural issues, but also within the very culture of music therapy itself via its “racially-evasive” and “depoliticized” theory, training, research, and practice (Norris, 2020b, p. 2).     The same critique and call for a re-imagining must be taken up by expressive arts therapy. Early definitions of the field of expressive arts therapy note that the possibility...

  Day 3 - Mary Watkins' (2019) book, Mutual Accompaniment and the Creation of the Commons , opens with this epigraph, by Lilla Watson.     How does this quote help us to bring a critical consciousness to the work of expressive arts therapy?  Given the professionalization of "acts of helping" (Watkins, p. 1) how do we bring a critical consciousness to the very practice of "therapy" and "counseling."    Watkins (2019) notes that she has decided to   move away from models based on individualism and unidirectional helping to those that acknowledge our inherent interdependence and potential mutuality. I turn away from expertism and toward mutual, dialogical, participatory, and horizontal relations… Through the assumption of professionalized roles based in “expert” knowledge, these practices too often usurp the understandings and agency of those they intend to help. (p. 1).   For Watkins, the answer is to intentio...

Day 2: From Toni Cade Bambara (1980/2000): Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation - one of the ways I practice the commitment to explore bodies of knowledge for the usable wisdoms they yield. In writing, I hope to encourage the fusion of those disciplines whose split (material science versus metaphysics versus aesthetics versus politics versus...) predisposes us to accept fragmented truths and distortions as the whole. (p. 154)   This quote from Bambara's essay, What it is I think I'm doing anyhow , spoke to me about the disciplinary splits within the creative arts therapies. How does expressive arts therapy define itself?  Are we yet another "specialization" within the creative arts therapies?  Can expressive arts therapy serve a function as a unifying force, or at least a reminder of the dangers of fragmentation and distortion so prevalent within our highly specialized cu...

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash Day 1:  I'm on sabbatical again - thank you Lesley University!! I have 100 days before I'm due back on campus. So I've decided to do a small project of choosing something I'm researching, reading or writing about to share on this blog each day. I've been writing about expressive arts therapy.  My goal has been to articulate a critical perspective on expressive arts therapy, but as usual, writing is never easy, and I feel pretty alone in the writing process.  I like to write (sort of). I like to read (definitely!). And I know there is a connection between the two.   For me, research, theorizing, and critical reflection are not only for me.  Although I do enjoy the process of playing with ideas, writing (and by extension teaching and practice) for me is my work - my attempt to be part of a future building and change process that is done in community! I've been feeling a bit bereft of community, so here is my attempt ...