EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY: POWERFUL MEDICINE FOR WHOLENESS AND HEALING by Nancy Wallingford Submitted in partial fulfillment of the degree requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY Pacifica Graduate Institute 9 March 2009
UMI Number: 1463308 Copyright 2009 by Wallingford, Nancy All rights reserved INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI Microform 1463308 Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346
2009 Nancy Wallingford All rights reserved ii
iii I certify that I have read this paper and that in my opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a project for the degree of Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology. Kathee Miller, M.A., M.F.T. Faculty Advisor On behalf of the thesis committee, I accept this paper as partial fulfillment of the requirements for Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology. Cynthia Anne Hale, Ph.D., L.C.S.W Research Coordinator On behalf of the Institution, I accept this paper as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology. Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D. President
iv Abstract EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY: POWERFUL MEDICINE FOR WHOLENESS AND HEALING By Nancy Wallingford This thesis utilizes a heuristic and case study methodology for research with expressive arts therapy as a separate field of professional practice that originated in the 1970s. The expressive arts profession today emphasizes the importance of engaging with art in a multimodal manner, as opposed to separating or compartmentalizing the arts, in order to intensify healing and transformation. The literature review explores the history of art and psychotherapy. It considers the depth perspective of Carl G. Jung and his work with active imagination. First-hand and clinical accounts of expressive arts therapists and practitioners are presented. Included is an autobiographical case study of the author s own extensive work with expressive arts and reports of her work with clients. The author looks within herself and her own lived experience to discover the validity of the findings of professionals in the field of expressive arts therapy and suggests how therapists might incorporate expressive arts into their practice. The electronic copy of this thesis is on a single disc containing a single PDF file which can be opened with Adobe Acrobat Reader.
v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Jan Freya for her expert editing and gentle suggestions. Many thanks to my thesis adviser, Kathee Miller, for her enthusiastic encouragement to explore expressive arts in thesis form. A heart full of gratitude to my husband, Roy Wallingford, and my son, David Evans, who believed in me and accompanied me through the entire process with love. I deeply appreciate Sherry Rojas, Virginia Wright, Sandy Cohen, Diane Hofman, Carol Morgan, and Jill Ansell. The warmth of their friendships brought me through the winter of writing. I would like to give special thanks to my dear therapist, Madelyn Swed, who has inspired me every step of the journey. My entire experience at Pacifica Graduate Institute supported me in becoming a deeper, more conscious person with a greater understanding of my relationship to the imaginal realm. I especially want to acknowledge the love and sustenance that I received all along from my wonderful cohort, The Fools, without whom the journey would have been lonely. Above all, I have been profoundly inspired by the many expressive arts teachers with whom I have worked. They form my personal lineage: Shaun McNiff, Anna Halprin, Natalie Rogers, Julie Oak, Lauren Crux, Cathy Williams, and Julie Murphy. In addition, I am grateful that I discovered many of the authors presented here along my transformative path.
vi DEDICATION To my husband, Roy, the wind beneath my wings, To Madelyn, my inspiration, and To my beloved Muse
TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION...1 CHAPTER II THE EXPRESSIVE ARTS: REBIRTH OF AN ANCIENT WAY...6 History of Expressive Arts...6 Shamanism...8 Active Imagination...9 Robert Johnson...11 James Hillman and the Image...11 Archetypal Images...12 Shadow and Wholeness...13 Healing With Expressive Art...14 Humans as Innately Artistic Beings...16 Expressive Arts as Play...17 The Nonlinear, Nonverbal Qualities of Art...17 No Interpretation in Expressive Arts...18 The Role of the Therapist...18 No Harm From Images...19 Process in Expressive Arts Therapy...19 The Multimodal Approach in Expressive Arts Therapy...20 Modalities in Expressive Arts Therapy...22 Movement and Dance...22 Drama...25 Writing...26 Painting and Visual Art...27 Voice...28 Sandplay...29 Expressive Arts in a Group Setting...30 The Spiritual Dimension...30 Preview of Chapter III...31 CHAPTER III MY LIFELONG PARTNER, THE MUSE: A PERSONAL MEMOIR...32 My Personal History With Creative Expression...32 My Use of Expressive Arts as a Therapist in Training...59 Jonathan...59 Julio...60 Anthony...60 Juan...61 Francisco...62 Sonia...63
viii Raul...64 Summary...65 CHAPTER IV CONCLUSION...66 Suggestions for Implementing Multimodal Expressive Arts in Therapy...66 Art s Healing Effect...70 REFERENCES...73 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH...77
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Expressive arts therapy is a cousin to art therapy and has emerged as a separate and independent field of professional practice in the past 30 years. Expressive arts therapy employs various arts movement, drawing, painting, sculpting, music, writing, sound, and improvisation in a supportive setting to facilitate growth and healing. It is a process of discovering ourselves through any art form that comes from an emotional depth.... Expressive art refers to using the emotional, intuitive aspects of ourselves in various media (Rogers, 1993, p. 2). One of the key defining characteristics of expressive arts therapy is the integration of multimodal arts processes with psychotherapy. As each practitioner draws from the palette of all of the arts... there are naturally many different emphases on different arts modalities, different ways of combining them, different orientations to psychology and psychotherapy, and various personal styles of working. (Halprin, 2003, p. 9) This thesis proposes that the expressive arts are powerfully healing when used in a multimodal approach in psychotherapy. Expressing art in each of the various mediums engages a different dimension of a person and a person s psyche. The result is integration and wholeness, which are the essential ingredients of healing. Personal healing and universal healing are intimately connected. Expressive arts connect people to their essential nature and ultimately to planetary healing. This thesis, which utilizes heuristic and case study methodology, is based on the premise that art heals. Art has been used since ancient times for the purpose of healing.
2 Art and creativity are the soul s medicines what the soul uses to minister to itself, cure its maladies, and restore its vitality (McNiff, 2004, p. xiii). Traditionally considered to provide deeply healing medicine in indigenous cultures, art has been paired with psychotherapy in recent history. Art therapy involves the creation of art by clients during the psychotherapeutic session. The art piece is viewed as being symbolic, and the therapist usually interprets the work. The therapist often makes diagnostic evaluations based on the art of the client. Therapy using expressive art, on the other hand, does not interpret the creations of clients and values process over product. Art in its many forms gives voice to the soul. All art forms are interrelated, as are the myriad images of the soul. The inclusion of different media in expressive arts therapy reflects a desire to embrace all of life in art s healing process (McNiff, 2004, p. 6). There is an experience of unity and wholeness when the arts interweave to create harmony and healing. Daria Halprin (2003) stated that the use of art for healing must be fostered, protected, and passed on as one of humanity s most significant legacies and bodies of knowledge. As our technological capacities grow, we are looking for ways to reconnect with our bodies, our creativity, and our spirits.... Art is as essential to our survival as food, shelter, medicine, and the natural environment (Halprin, 2003, p. 230). This thesis holds that all human beings are born to create art in their daily lives. The capacity to make art does not belong to the select few called artists. Everyone is innately an artist. Throughout history, art making has been a basic necessity for health and balance. This thesis studies the healing aspect of using expressive arts in psychotherapy by examining the experience of numerous expressive arts professionals, art therapists, and
3 professionals in the field of psychology. Chapter II reviews the history of the relationship between art and healing from ancient times to the present. The depth psychological perspectives of Carl G. Jung and James Hillman are discussed. Robert Johnson (1986) wrote that the main purpose of using art in therapy is to provide communication between the ego and the parts of the unconscious from which one is cut off. It sets one off on a path toward wholeness, toward an awareness of one s larger totality, simply because one has learned to enter into communication with the inner self (p. 142). Also in the review of literature, a comparison is drawn between the expressive arts and play. In his book, Playing and Reality, British psychiatrist Donald Winnicott (1971) put forth the significance of play in psychological healing when he stated that in play, the individual child or adult is able to be creative and use the whole personality, and that it is in being creative that the individual discovers the self. The healing aspect of the process of creating art is explored as well as the power of messages inherent in the images created. The process of art-making and witnessing images is nonlinear and nonverbal. It involves the right side of the brain, which is creative, intuitive, and emotional. The usually-dominant left side of the brain steps out of the way to allow the wisdom of the world of imagery to speak in its own language. The role of the therapist in expressive arts therapy is to offer a safe container in which the client may create, using whatever modality he or she chooses. The therapist assumes the important role of witness as the client s expressive process unfolds. The client and therapist may then debrief the experience with words, thus bringing cognitive understanding to the encounter. The majority of the therapy session takes place in the
4 realm of the imaginal. The presence of the therapist-witness creates an alchemical container in which transformation takes place. A number of expressive arts mediums used in therapy are considered in this study, including movement, drama, writing, visual art, sound, and sandplay. Each has its own particular medicine and expressive dimensions. In addition, the interweaving of various modalities, one after another, is explored as a means of deepening the creative process. Art therapist Shaun McNiff stated, My experience of the strongest creative medicine is associated with groups (McNiff, 2004, p. 23). This study addresses the benefit of expressive arts in a group setting. Expressive arts groups can take the form of therapy groups, and they can also be used effectively across disciplines in such areas as education, healing from illness, hospice work, work with prisoners, and alcohol and drug rehabilitation. The use of art therapy with those suffering from serious mental illness and trauma is briefly discussed. Art as process may also be used as a spiritual practice. As one plumbs one s own depths, one simultaneously touches the universal. The expressive arts are powerfully healing on a personal level, and at the same time, they touch the web of life and create healing energy in the macrocosm. At a time when there is so much suffering and illness in the world, the expressive arts offer a way of wholeness, healing, and transformation. Chapter III is a case study which employs heuristic methodology. Clark Moustakas developed the heuristic research method. According to Moustakas (1990), Indwelling refers to the heuristic process of turning inward to seek a deeper, more extended comprehension of the nature of meaning of a quality or theme of human experience (p. 24). The author describes her own midlife journey through darkness and
5 despair, during which time she felt compelled to go within herself to create art for many hours a day using numerous modalities of expressive arts. She immersed herself in the expressive arts as personal practice and process. She worked with her therapist using expressive arts, and she also joined expressive arts groups. The process was an inner process that was deeply healing and transformative. Talk therapy is still the dominant form of psychotherapy. It can be limited because it relies exclusively on the verbal mode of communication, which is controlled by the mind. The guiding purpose of this thesis is the support and encouragement of the use of expressive arts in psychotherapy as way to integrate mind, body, emotions, and soul. The whole person can be engaged in expressive arts. It follows that the process is more holistic and touches a deeper river of creative life force and healing. Expressive arts can be considered a new and powerful frontier for psychotherapy and world healing.
CHAPTER II THE EXPRESSIVE ARTS: REBIRTH OF AN ANCIENT WAY History of Expressive Arts In ancient times, art was viewed as having healing, transformative, and spiritual powers. Painting, storytelling, dream sharing, mask making, dance, and chanting were an integral part of community life. In The Expressive Body in Life, Art and Therapy, Daria Halprin wrote: Art played a significant role in the integration of the individual, family, and group from the ceremonial marking of passages into life and death, marriage, and war to the treatment of disease and the interaction with the forces of nature as well as a means of prayer and connecting with the divine. (2003, p. 37) Indigenous people today still incorporate art as an intrinsic part of life and the collective experience. In the 18th century, Rene Descartes world view of separation between body and mind began to take hold. Western civilization succumbed to centuries of dualistic thought in all areas of life. Art became a separately valued entity, relegated to museums, concert halls, and stages. Artistic expression has become the province of the artist, rather than the birthright of all people. Halprin (2003) remarked that much of our art today has become another commodity in the marketplace, based on the criteria of entertainment, fads, and manipulation (p. 38). In the 19th and 20 th centuries, psychiatry became interested in the connections between imagery, emotion, and mental illness. The underpinnings of art therapy took form with an interest in artwork by patients in European insane asylums, particularly with
7 the early 19 th century work of Hans Prinzhorn, an art historian turned psychiatrist. Prinzhorn held that the creative process of art making is basic to all people, with or without mental illness, and that art was a natural way to achieve psychological integration and wellness (Malchiodi, 2007, p. 27). Sigmund Freud s theories of repression, projection, the unconscious, and symbolism in dreams signify the importance of visual images to understanding mental illness. He concluded that his patients frustrations in describing their dreams might be alleviated if they could draw them (Malchiodi, 2007, p. 9). Cathy Malchiodi (2007) pointed out that Freud also realized that art is closer to the unconscious because humans visual perceptions predate their capacity for verbal expression. In the 20 th century in the United States, Margaret Naumburg and Edith Kramer were two early pioneers in art therapy who adapted Freud s ideas. According to Stephanie Brooke (2006), Naumburg encouraged clients to freely associate to their finished artwork as a means to uncover unconscious material. In contrast, Edith Kramer, who developed art as therapy during the 1950s, argued that healing occurred within the art-making process itself. The first annual conference of the American Art Therapy Association (AATA) was held in 1970 in Warrenton, Virginia. The field of art therapy has continued to grow and expand. In the AATA Newsletter of 2004, the organization provided the following definition: Art therapy is the therapeutic use of art making, within a professional relationship, by people who experience illness, trauma, or challenges in living, and by people who seek personal development. Through creating art and reflecting on the art products and processes, people can increase awareness of self and others, cope with symptoms, stress, and traumatic experiences; enhance cognitive abilities; and enjoy the life-affirming pleasures of making art. (p. 4)
8 Expressive arts therapy as a separate field of professional practice is a comparatively recent development. Its origins can be traced back to the early 1970s when Shaun McNiff, Paolo Knill, Norma Canner and others founded the Expressive Therapy Program at Lesley College Graduate School in Cambridge, MA. The philosophy of this program embraced an intermodal or interdisciplinary approach to the arts therapies, in contradistinction to the specialized arts therapy training programs then in existence (Levine & Levine, 1999, p. 9). In the late 1980s, expressive arts pioneer, Paolo Knill, began to develop training programs in Europe and North America which were affiliated with Lesley College. These programs featured training in intermodal expressive arts therapy. The European Graduate School, based in Switzerland, began to offer Masters degrees in Expressive Arts Therapy in 1996 (Levine & Levine, 1999). The International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA) was founded in 1994. IEATA saw itself as an alternative to the specialized arts therapy organizations, not only in terms of its intermodal character but also because it encouraged educators and artists as well as therapists to become members (p. 10). Shamanism The roots of art therapy and expressive arts therapy go back to shamans in indigenous cultures. The work of the shaman is to bring out harmful and unhealthy elements from people s bodies and to heal mind, body, and spirit using images and rituals. Knill and others in the expressive arts community believe that the arts are capable of uniting ritual, imagination, and the dreamworld in a way that no other activity can (Knill, Barba, & Fuchs, 2004). In his book, Art Heals, art therapist Shaun McNiff wrote: The arts speak the language of the soul, and they have the ability to manifest and return soul to our lives just as the shaman does.... It is this realm of soul that
9 draws together the arts, therapy, shamanism, and contemporary spirituality.... I see the artistic image as a shaman, a guide and helper, returning soul to the world. (2004, p. 205) The expressive arts naturally lend themselves to group process with a therapist facilitator, who acts as a shaman. Shamanism, like art therapy, is based upon the energy that is generated when people create together in a ritual way.... The group increases the power of the shamanic process with its energy, and it becomes the tribe (p. 206). Expressive arts can be understood as a sacred journey on which both therapist and client embark. Art therapist Bruce Moon stated, Being an art therapist is sacred, for the doing of art opens to us the mystery that is within our clients and ourselves (2008, p. 127). The process of art making is both a meditation and a visitation by psyche s images. Active Imagination Chodorow (1991) describes how Carl G. Jung broke with Sigmund Freud in his views on repression, libido, and the nature of the unconscious. Jung and Freud were unable to reconcile their differences. Their collaboration and friendship came to an end in 1913. Following the break with Freud, Jung went through a difficult period of inner uncertainty and disorientation, which led him to undertake a deep process of psychological development, which involved confrontation with the unconscious. During the years 1913-1919 he published very little....when he emerged from these years of relative retreat, he was ready to take on the leadership of his own school of psychology (p. 51). Chodorow (1991) described Jung s dark years of retreat, when he immersed himself in childlike fantasies and play. He built a small town out of blocks, stones, and
10 mud on the shores of the lake next to his home. Through the process of symbolic play, he was led directly to the core of his deepest complexes (Chodorow, 1991). As Jung continued the process of imaginative play, he not only retrieved long forgotten memories from his past, but he was flooded with images from his unconscious. He immersed himself in his inner world. The years when I was pursuing my inner images were the most important in my life in them everything essential was decided. It all began then; the later details are only supplements and clarification of the material that burst forth from the unconscious, and at first swamped me. It was the prima material for a lifetime s work. (1961/1989, p. 199) Jung described the images in writing and drew and painted them as well. He came to call this process active imagination. Active imagination is Jung s analytical method of psychotherapy. It involves opening to the unconscious and giving free rein to fantasy, while at the same time maintaining a conscious viewpoint (Chodorow, 1991, p. 34). Chodorow stated that Jung s use of active imagination is based on the natural healing function of the psyche, which tends to take one directly to, and eventually through, the emotional core of one s complexes. Convinced of the healing power of images produced by psyche, Jung encouraged his patients to explore their images from the unconscious by creating art. This according to individual taste and talent could be done in any number of ways, dramatic, dialectic, visual, acoustic, or in the form of dancing, painting, drawing, or modeling (Jung, 1945/1969, p. 202). Jung often had patients dialogue with images, as if they were entities in their own right. It is technically very simple to note down the other voice in writing and to answer its statements from the standpoint of the ego. It is exactly as if a dialogue
11 were taking place between two human beings with equal rights (Jung, 1957/1975, pp. 88-89). Robert Johnson Jungian analyst Robert Johnson has extensively explored the process of active imagination. In his book, Inner Work (1986), Johnson referred to active imagination as a dialogue that one enters into with the different parts of oneself that live in the unconscious. In your imagination you begin to talk to your images and interact with them. They answer back. You are startled to find out that they express radically different viewpoints from those of your conscious mind (1986, p. 138). According to Johnson (1986), transformation of negative patterns becomes possible by concretizing the images from within through active imagination. By going to Active Imagination, letting the archetypal themes take on symbolic form, and participating in the drama, we transform the situation. The archetypal forces no longer play themselves out offstage, out of sight in the collective unconscious, but come up to the conscious level through imagination. (p. 158) James Hillman and the Image Jungian analyst James Hillman is the originator of post-jungian archetypal psychology. In the collection of excerpts from his writings, A Blue Fire (1989), Hillman challenged the very foundations of psychology and asked us to rethink, to re-vision, and to reimagine (p. 1). He suggested that there is nothing that is not imagistic, not poetic (p. 6). Hillman considered images to be the basic givens of psychic life. According to Hillman, images are self-originating, inventive, spontaneous, complete, and organized in archetypal patterns (p. 22). Hillman (1967) radically shifted the depth psychological perspective from one of egocentrism to polycentrism. In his view, images from the unconscious are spirits or
12 gods. One senses their presence as did all earlier peoples who still had soul. These presences and powers are our modern counterparts of former pantheons of living beings, of animated soul parts, protective household gods, and ominous daimones (pp. 118-120). Because Hillman felt that images were ensouled, he advocated meeting the image on that soul level. We can actively imagine it through word play which is also a way of talking with the image and letting it talk.... This is indeed different from interpretation. No friend or animal wants to be interpreted, even though it may cry for understanding. (1989, p. 25) Archetypal Images Some images are universal or archetypal. They are present throughout human history and across cultures. One meets them in mythology, literature, art, and writings on world religions. Jung conceived of two layers of the unconscious (Hopcke, 1989). He called the first layer the personal unconscious and the second layer, the collective unconscious. According to Jungian-oriented psychotherapist, Robert Hopcke, Jung maintained that the collective unconscious contained those patterns of psychic perception common to all humanity, the archetypes. The collective unconscious was considered by Jung to be the ultimate psychic source of power, wholeness, and inner transformation (p. 14). In the process of creating art and using active imagination, images may appear from the collective unconscious that are archetypal. In Art as a Way of Knowing (1995), artist and registered art therapist Pat Allen spoke of the numinous, archetypal aspect of some images. Archetypal images emerge that help to place your personal experience within a larger context of the imagination of humankind (p. 87).
13 Jung indicated that archetypes have two characteristics. They are images and at the same time emotions. If the image is charged with numinosity, that is, with psychic energy, then it becomes dynamic and will produce consequences. It is a great mistake in practice to treat an archetype as if it were a mere name, word, or concept. It is far more than that: it is a piece of life, an image connected with the living individual by the bridge of emotion. (1961/1976, p. 257) Shadow and Wholeness The process of using expressive arts in psychotherapy is a journey on which both client and therapist embark. It is a journey inward. In the process, one confronts the personal and the collective shadow. Being an expressive therapist demands a religious posture of staying open to all the soul s light and shadow.... Attending the painful, ugly, shocking and repulsive can then be tolerated with compassion, as images that exist separately from moral judgment and are essentially beautiful. (Knill et al., 2004, p. 86) The witness role of the therapist is critical, in order for the experience to be contained and grounded. The images themselves and the emotions that result from the communion with those images are as multi-faceted as the psyche itself. Natalie Rogers (1993) stated: In becoming whole people, fully actualized and empowered, our journey must include searching the unconscious to uncover those aspects of self we have pushed aside, ignored, repressed, or hidden.... Once we uncover the unknown, the process then includes letting these parts find their rightful places in our psyches. (p. 176) In the images evoked by expressive arts, one encounters the full range and extent of one s own humanness and begins the process of integration. Allen (1995) pointed out that humans divine essence is whole and that image making is an act of remembrance. It is to remember, to return arms and legs to one s divine nature by taking back and owning all parts of ourselves. The more of our self we
14 own, the less our need for enemies to embody our disowned darkness (p. 191). Expressive arts draw from the unconscious, creating a bridge to consciousness. Chodorow stated that an essential part of active imagination is to keep one foot in each world, that is, to develop the capacity to bear the tension of the opposites to open fully to the unconscious while at the same time maintaining a strong conscious orientation (1991, p. 115). The psyche provides images and insights which are profoundly healing. When the psyche has access to these energies from the unconscious, the shadow is engaged and both the unconscious and the conscious are impacted and transformed (Bradway, Chambers, & Chiaia, 2005, p. 149). Allen (1995) suggested that no interpretation of the image is necessary. Merely making the image and living with it catalyzes change and movement. As discussed in chapter three, I lived through a long, terrifying encounter with my own shadow during the midlife years. Expressive arts were my lifeline during that period and my vehicle for transformation. My personal therapists at the time accompanied me on a difficult journey and encouraged my encounter with the unconscious through image making. To facilitate the deepest transformation, the therapist must be willing to witness the perilous aspect of the client s journey, the dark night of the soul, and assist emerging healing energies as well as support the client s endurance in meeting this challenge. (Mitchell & Friedman, 2003, p. 206) Healing With Expressive Art People around the world and throughout world history have used art to heal. McNiff stated, Art and creativity are the soul s medicines what the soul uses to minister to itself, cure its maladies, and restore its vitality (2004, p. xiii). McNiff
15 suggested ways in which images can heal. They generate stories, imaginal dialogue, and other forms of artistic expression. He stated that, in addition, images act directly on one s body, mind, and senses. The very real energetic expressions, or auras, generated by images are a major frontier for art and healing (p. 72). Halprin (2003) commented that clients bring to psychotherapy the story of their wounding or the myth of the wound (p. 181). The client then explores the myth through expressive arts, which is an integrative process of mind, body, emotions, and soul. Embodied mythologizing acts as the glue which brings the broken pieces into relation with one another.... That struggle connects us with the larger myths of suffering, with our common humanity and spirit (p. 181). According to Malchiodi (2007), for children or adult children who have been abused or have witnessed violence, art is a way to express themselves when talking seems unsafe or when words are unavailable to describe their fears, anxieties, and other feelings. Adults as well as children have the capacity to use art to express complex and overwhelming emotions and to transform their emotions through art.... I believe that art is a potent way to access the felt sense and the body s memories of trauma as well as transform overwhelming emotions that result from crisis. (p. 140) Joy Schaverien (1997) stated that relating directly to the therapist may be experienced as too threatening for the psychotic client and other fragile personalities. Relating through a mediating object can facilitate therapy. When a client creates an image, the picture offers the advantage that, whatever the feelings or thoughts attributed to it, they may be safely contained out there, separate from the artist.... Thus the picture mediates in the therapeutic relationship, creating a space where none at first exists. (p. 35)
16 Humans as Innately Artistic Beings Creating by means of expressive arts is based on the assumption that people are innately artistic and that lack of skill or mastery of an art form should not impede one from creating art. There is no right or wrong to creating art. One needs to find ways to recapture the spontaneous freedom of expression enjoyed by children. Rogers (1993) said that the creative process includes exploring, experimenting, messing around with materials, being playful, and entering into the unknown. We cheat ourselves out of a fulfilling and joyous source of creativity if we cling to the idea that we need to be artists, specialists who have fully developed the craftsmanship of expression (p. 18). Natalie Goldberg (1986) is a writer who has led hundreds of writing classes and workshops. She stated that writing is a practice that helps one penetrate one s life. She spoke about the importance of beginner s mind in the creative process: When I teach a beginning class, it is good. I have to come back to beginner s mind, the first way I thought and felt about writing. In a sense, that beginner s mind is what we must come back to every time we sit down and write.... Each time is a new journey with no maps. (p. 5) Moon, a well-known proponent of expressive arts therapy, artist and therapist, felt strongly that skill and mastery is needed to create art, even for the purpose of healing. He stated. As clients/artists experience success in the ability to handle media and solve artistic problems, the capacity to deal with other aspects of life is enhanced. We art therapists must take seriously the quality of clients artwork and our own. At every opportunity, we should encourage clients not only to vent feelings, but also to do so in a skillful and artistically articulate manner. (2008, p. 131) Because of my own personal experience with expressive arts, described in chapter three, Moon s viewpoint is incompatible with my thesis.
17 Expressive Arts as Play Expressive arts reawaken the fundamental joy and creativity of play that people experience as children. D. W. Winnicott (1971) proposed that through creative play and the transitional space in which this play can take place, the child or adult is able to discover, and recover, himself or herself. In such play, the deepest currents of image, feeling, and meaning can be explored tangibly and in symbolic ways. Chodorow (1991) stated that symbolic play activates the image-producing function of the psyche. Michelle Cassou claimed that play is one of the most basic and primitive elements of the human psyche, and that ultimately art is simply a deep and essential play (1995, p. xix). Play therapy has primarily been used with children; however, play therapist, Dottie Ward-Wimmer (2003) asserted that adults, as well as children can benefit from the use of expressive arts and play in therapy. According to her, play is a natural and enduring activity in adults. It has healing powers for the mind and spirit that we are only beginning to appreciate and learn to use. The results of integrating play into our psychotherapeutic practice with adults are becoming clear and measurable (p. 10). The Nonlinear, Nonverbal Qualities of Art Expressive arts take one out of the limited realm of talk therapy and verbal expression. Mary Starks Whitehouse was a pioneer in movement therapy who frowned on the exclusive use of talking in therapy. She stated, People in our time are mostly highly verbal; they mostly run their lives with their heads. There is a great emphasis on reason, thinking and understanding, knowing in an intellectual way, explaining, controlling. The heart and the guts are often left out. (1999c, p. 37) In expressive arts, the mind is bypassed, and creative expression is spontaneous. The transmission of imagination cannot be encapsulated in the planned outcomes of linear
18 causes and effects. The life of imagination is based upon an unpredictable flow of ideas and the creation of new relationships (McNiff, 2004, p. 228). No Interpretation in Expressive Arts Creativity flourishes in an environment in which there is no judgment or criticism. The same is true for interpretation. McNiff lambasted those who analyze and diagnose the art work of their clients. Literal-minded psychological interpretations often amount to a form of image abuse that obscures the deeper meanings of art expressions and blocks their healing powers. Labels shut off the energy-generating capacities of images and defend the controlling minds of interpreters from the uncertainties and surprises that an open engagement with art inevitably produces. (2004, p. 70) He went on to say that by immediately labeling a red picture as aggressive or a black picture as depressive, we sacrifice a more in-depth exploration of our thoughts and feelings about red and black (p. 79). In such a case, stereotypical clinical evaluation replaces curiosity and an attitude of not-knowing. Jung provided minimal interpretation of images, always allowing for the free association and active imagination of his patients. I had to try to give provisional interpretations at least, so far as I was able, interspersing them with innumerable perhapses and ifs and buts and never stepping beyond the bounds of the picture lying before me (1945/1969, p. 203). According to Jung, it was the patient who was the expert on his own images. The Role of the Therapist The role of the therapist-witness is powerful in the expressive arts process. In an interview with Frieda Sherman in 1978, Whitehouse said that the depth of the therapist corresponds to the depth that he or she can bring out in a client. The process of getting
19 into your own depths is the process that makes you able to accompany someone else into their depth. And they are not going there unless you ve been there (Sherman, 1999, p. 29). No Harm From Images The consensus in the expressive arts community is that images are not dangerous. Allen advised those involved in expressive arts to remember that the image is the messenger of your soul and never comes to harm you.... The image needs to be known, seen fully with loving attention and encouraged to speak, treated as you would treat an ambassador from a different world. (1995, p. 60) She maintained that there is no singular meaning to an image. Meaning changes as subsequent images are made. She said of her own experience, After more than twenty years the images continue to speak and instruct me. They remain alive, and I get to know them even more deeply now (p. 62). Process in Expressive Arts Therapy In expressive arts, the emphasis is on the process itself. The image that is created cannot be planned in advance; it is a gift from the soul. In Life, Paint, and Passion, artist Cassou stated, The tool of creation is given to you to undo the web of knowing that is woven around your brain, mind, and heart, a web that pressures you to yield to the expected result, to adhere to the blueprint of your projected life. (Cassou & Cubley, 1995, p. 176) She advocated using art as a way to inhabit and explore the present moment, not as a means to an end. Art is a path to authenticity and one s passion. Natalie Rogers (1993), expressive arts therapist and daughter of Carl Rogers, stated that creativity is a life-force energy that flows like a river through each person.
20 Dam it up and we become psychically ill, blocked, and physically stressed. The expressive arts offer a way to keep the river flowing (p. 187). McNiff (2004) described the art process as intuitive, labyrinthine, and welcoming of uncertainties, risks, and dark places (p. 29). Multimodal expressive arts therapists Knill et al. found that the same principles are true in psychotherapy as in the creative process. In viewing therapy as an artistic process, we find that the process itself (not the therapeutic process-ing) offers by far the most significant therapeutic value. Often healing occurs metaphorically, minimizing the need for any verbal processing at all (p. 140). Expressive arts and psychotherapy can both be seen as creative activities. A significant aspect of expressive arts is that they are created with the body, not the mind. Jung felt that it was essential to have embodied experience. When the great swing has taken an individual into the world of symbolic mysteries, nothing comes of it, nothing can come of it, unless it has been associated with the earth, unless it has happened when that individual was in the body.... And so individuation can only take place if you first return to the body, to your earth. (1930-1934/1976, p. 473) The Multimodal Approach in Expressive Arts Therapy The basic premise of the expressive arts community is that art is inherently multimodal. McNiff stated: Art, like the healing process, not only includes all of life but certainly the specific elements of gesture, body movement, imagery, sound, words, and enactment. These elements complement one another and cannot be separated in either art or life. Dividing the therapies of art, music, dance, drama, and poetry into specialized professions adds to already factious atmosphere of the mental health field. (2004, p. 169) The term creative connection was used by Rogers (1993) to describe the process of allowing one art form to influence another directly.
21 Using various expressive arts in sequence heightens and intensifies our journey inward. When we start by expressing ourselves through movement and sound... and then go immediately to color or clay, our art work changes.... Like a spiral, the process plumbs the depths of our body, mind, emotions, and spirit to bring us to our center. (pp. 44-45) Daria Halprin is a pioneer in multimodal expressive arts therapy. In The Expressive Body in Life, Art, and Therapy (2003), she wrote that by combining the various mediums, one strengthens the interplay between body, emotion, and imagination. Each medium speaks with a particular resonance to our physical, emotional, and mental levels of being.... Although we focus on each of the art mediums one at a time, we also shift back and forth from one to the other so that we are constantly working with the interplay between the mediums and between the psychic and sensory motor material that arises. (p. 132) Augusto Boal, founder of Theater of the Oppressed, based his multimodal approach to the arts on the nature of wholeness. We start from the principle that the human being is a unity, an indivisible whole. Scientists have demonstrated that one s physical and psychic apparatuses are completely inseparable.... A bodily movement is a thought and a thought expresses itself in a corporeal form.... That is the first unity, the unity of the physical and psychic apparatuses. The second is that of the five senses none exists separately, they too are all linked. (1992, p. 49) In expressive arts therapy, a client often uses more than one medium for expression during a session. The client converses through an art form with the image. A central tenet of a multi-modal, or integrative, arts approach is that when one responds to an artistic expression like painting through another artistic modality such as writing a poem, a transformative process of ever-intensifying expression is promoted whereby the client/ artist comes to know the meaning of artworks more deeply. (Moon, 2008, p. 29) Moon also proposed that the therapist use an arts-based model for responding to clients artworks and images. He suggested that art is best interpreted by creating a second art piece or dance. In an art-based response to clients and their artworks, the effort is not to
22 unearth the truth about images or their makers, but rather to help clients go deeper into the meanings of their artworks (p. 166). Modalities in Expressive Arts Therapy The following pages present separate art modalities as well as multimodal approaches to expressive arts. Although the field of expressive arts espouses the multimodal approach, practitioners also recognize the potency of each art form in its own right. Chapter three contains a discussion of my own process with singular mediums as well as multimodal experiences. Movement and Dance Mary Starks Whitehouse was a pioneer in movement therapy. In her practice, Whitehouse felt that the core of the movement experience was the sensation of moving and being moved. Ideally, both are present in the same instant, and it may be literally an instant. It is a moment of total awareness, the coming together of what I am doing and what is happening to me (1999b, p. 43). The conscious mind witnesses the activity of the unconscious. The moment when I am moved happens... is a moment when the ego gives up control, stops choosing, stops exerting demands, allowing the self to take over moving the physical body as it will (1999a, p. 82). Whitehouse (1999b) maintained that the latter way of moving was actually the inner movement of the psyche interacting with the body. We do not know in what way the psyche is the body and the body is the psyche but we do know that one does not exist without the other. And I would go so far as to suggest that just as the body changes in the course of working with the psyche, so the psyche changes in the course of working with the body. (p. 42) Janet Adler (1999) is one of the pioneers in dance therapy. A student of Mary Starks Whitehouse, Adler further developed the work, and in 1981, founded and directed
23 the Mary Starks Whitehouse Institute, the first school in which the discipline of authentic movement was studied and practiced. Adler defined the discipline of authentic movement as the relationship between a person moving and a person witnessing that movement. She said that movers work with eyes closed, slowly bringing their attention inward. Witnesses focus not only on what the mover is doing, but on their own inner experience. As the body finds form for the expression of what is at first formless material, personal consciousness evolves (p. 77). As long as the mover is developing an internal witness, the presence of an external witness is critical. As the work develops and the discipline of the mover becomes refined, she learns to internalize the witness.... The mover learns consciously to witness her own unconscious material as it finds form through her movement (Adler, 1999, p. 145). Joan Chodorow was one of the first dance therapists in California. She studied with Mary Starks Whitehouse in the 1960s. She said that the core of work with dance/movement in psychotherapy and analysis is the experience of the mover, the experience of the witness and the relationship between them that serves as container and process (1991, p. 152). According to Chodorow, to use movement in therapy is to work directly with the most basic and primitive aspects of human experience. Powerful images, feelings and memories may arise out of self-directed movement and out of the relationship that contains it. Because the process involves the use of the body to express the imagination, it tends to take the mover to complexes that can be traced back to the sensory-motor period of infancy and early childhood. (1999a, p. 258) She uses the process of active imagination in movement therapy. She also acknowledged the autonomous nature of images in her work: We must give the inner figures credibility equal to ourselves.... By dancing a figure from the unconscious, one is more likely to be totally involved with the
24 process and more able to seriously own and acknowledge that aspect of one s being. (1999b, p. 245) Chodorow reminded the reader that in ancient times, the dancer was both healer and priest. Through the centuries, mind and body became split apart. As the life of the body was suppressed, so too was the receptive, feminine principle (1999c, p. 267). In the late 1960s, Anna Halprin began experimenting with the relationship between dance and drawing for healing. She was among the first artists to work in a multimodal manner. She named her unique method, the psychokinetic imagery process... [which is] an active and expressive engagement with sensations, images, and narratives. This intermodal arts model is now central to almost all of the expressive arts therapy approaches (D. Halprin, 2003, p. 131). Her work revolved around nonstylized movement connected with kinesthetic awareness and the inner images or story of the dancer. Daria Halprin (2003) furthered the development of the expressive arts field, building on the work of her mother, Anna. Their work at Tamalpa Institute has been groundbreaking in the field. The intermodal model of psychokinetic imagery uses three mediums engaged in various orders. We might start with movement, follow with drawing, and finish with a written dialogue, or we might start with a drawing, follow with movement explorations, and finish with a poem.... As each medium relates to and informs the other, powerful insights are generated which shed light on the circumstances of our lives. (p. 133) Halprin s interweaving of movement, art, and writing is on the cutting edge. Daria Halprin (1999) stated that movement is a complex language which contains all the sensations, feelings, emotional states, thoughts, and memories that one has experienced in life. Movement can be used as a tool (or a medium) to re-pattern the
25 imprints in the musculoskeletal system (p. 137). Halprin cautioned movement therapists about working with clients who have a high degree of body-mind fragmentation. Highly disturbed or traumatized individuals need to be guided slowly and gently into and out of imaginative work and deep body experiences which may disrupt a delicate balance between imagination and illusion (p. 143). She found that working with strong bodily experiences often reactivates trauma. Drama Drama is an art form that is naturally multimodal. Psychodrama is a method by which people explore their problems through enacting them in a role-playing fashion rather than by just talking. Psychodrama was developed around the mid-1930s by J. L. Moreno, who found that improvisationally dramatizing the actual scenes in the client s life allowed for the equivalent of play therapy with adults (Blatner, 2003, p. 34). He was also one of the founders of role theory, which implies that all people are playing roles. We can all choose to play those parts differently; we can let go of a role, shift roles, balance roles, expand our role repertoire; and engage in other operations that shift these units of behavior, viewpoint, attitude, and social expectations around like pieces on a chessboard. (p. 45) The Sesame Method was created by Marian Lindkvist in the late 1970s in London (Pearson, 1996). Sesame uses movement and drama as a therapeutic art form. In a Sesame session, people move or dance to the sound of music. A circle is formed and a story is told. People then take on parts and enact the story. They improvise using movement, singing, and speech. All the work of the session is done within the art form, with no attempt at interpretation of personal material, reflecting Jung s emphasis on the importance of symbol (p. 2).