Expressive Arts Therapy

Day 83 and 84  – Helen Keller, Disability advocacy, and the dominant narrative   I don’t know how old I was the first time I saw the 1962 movie “The miracle worker.” I only remember my imagination being completely captured by both Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller.   Anne Sullivan has always been the person I “wanted to become.”   As I’ve been thinking about how to weave context into my new writing about a critical approach to expressive arts therapy, I have been thinking about the things that capture my imagination – the early and enduring images I carry with me.   And the image of Patty Duke, as Helen Keller, making the connection between the fingerspelling of w-a-t-e-r, and water is one of those images.   I think that as a young child I had found some magic in learning and in the idea of being seen and cared for in the way that Anne Sullivan was portrayed as caring for Helen.   I think I felt I was often closed off in my own world and waiting for ...

Photo by Vinicius "amnx" Amano on Unsplash Day 82 – In my last post, I ended with the question of what role expressive arts therapy will play in these fights for justice and in the social movements for justice going forward – and today as I spend time with the following ideas – I was reminded that what we allow ourselves to imagine, how we direct our imagination, is critically important (for example, Samara Almonte writes about no longer dreaming of the apocalypse but instead imagining a world where mutual community care is a priority – and is a big part of what we as humans do). Almonte says,   Building systems based on care and relationships is not an easy process. The vulnerability and trust that this work requires us to demonstrate may be beyond what many of us have been indoctrinated to experience. However, [we] must continue taking small actions in this direction, in order to dream beyond an apocalypse.   And here I see a role for expressive...

Ayisha Siddiqa   Day 81 – I wanted to follow up on Ayisha Siddiqa’s work and to find out a bit more about her – I love this interview of her on the Eco Justice Project website by Amber Chen.   Ayisha is a co-founder of the international youth-led coalition called Polluters Out . Begun after the collapse of talks at the COP 25, Polluters Out saw their mission as one of restoring the voice of youth and indigenous activists in taking on the issue of the control of the Fossil Fuel industry on Climate Change.   The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change hosts a yearly “Conference of the Parties” (COP) bringing together the 197 nations which agree to ratify a treaty to “combat ‘dangerous human interference with the climate system’ and stabilize levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere” ( The New York Times, April 18, 2022 ).   The energy and activism of the young people involved is very inspiring!   Polluters out began with 150 members...

  Day 80 – Today I listened to an On Being podcast of an interview between Krista Tippet and Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson – a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native.   I was completely smitten by Ayanna and the interview. Ayanna spoke of her work on several projects including, The All We Can Save Project – in which she focuses on solutions we can take to be part of a collective response to the climate crisis and our disconnection from each other and the planet!     She spoke of her hopes to focus on potentials, possibilities, and to be part of the “generative narrative.”   Johnson spoke of using the arts to inspire us to free up our imaginations to generate solutions.   The On Being website describes the interview as Tippet drawing out Johnson and “her creative and pragmatic inquiry: Could we let ourselves be led by what we already know how to do, and by what we have it in us to save? What, she asks, if we get this right ?” ...

Photo by ben o'bro on Unsplash Day 78 and 79 – I continue to think about the Humanistic and Person-centered approach to counseling – in large part because of the work of Natalie Rogers, Carl Rogers’ daughter. We are once again asking students in the Expressive Arts Therapy specialization to read Natalie Rogers’ (1993) book, The Creative Connection: Expressive arts as healing. It’s something we struggle with, in part because it is quite dated! The book is almost 30 years old and has a bit of a hippie flavor to it, but it is also quite accessible and gives students a good “humanistic” introduction.   I usually include this disclaimer with my introductory email to Orientation students:   Please note the N. Rogers (2000) is a reprinting of a text originally written in 1993 - and in many regards it is quite dated - despite that, Natalie Rogers began one of the main approaches in Expressive Arts Therapy - the Person-Centered Expressive Arts Therapy approach, and as such, thi...

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash Day 77 – So, I wrote a long essay yesterday on “the critical stance” – and just as I was finishing it, had a glitch with my computer and lost it all!!!   Why is it so painful to write extemporaneously and then to lose it?!   It reminds me that these ideas are often not fully formed but just budding – seeds of conversations and thoughts.     So, bear with me as I keep writing and thinking off the top of my head! The ideas I wrote yesterday may show up again here today, but they are certain to be shaped a bit differently, and certainly won’t be the same. What’s your experience of writing like this?   I’m starting to prepare for returning to teaching (I will teach three courses this summer – Orientation, the introductory workshop for the year-long course Expressive Arts Therapy Supervision II/iii – for students doing their second field placement, and Principles and Practices of Expressive Arts Therapy). I’m super exci...

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash Day 76 – Thomas Kuhn was the American philosopher credited with introducing the term “paradigm shift” to the academic community.    In reading more about Latinx identity, and Latinx psychology, I came across this recent article on Alternate Cultural Paradigms in Latinx Psychology by Consoli, Lopez, and Whaling (2022).   In it, Consoli, Lopez and Whaling (2022) describe one of the most challenging aspects of getting underneath what has not “worked” about mainstream Western theories of psychology:   While Thomas Kuhn defined paradigms as the “universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners” (Kuhn, 1970, p. viii), he did so from a largely unacknowledged, mainstream western perspective. Neglecting its own cultural roots made it noticeably difficulty to acknowledge cultural differences.   This, in turn, ignored different for...