Jeanette, Sean, Louis and I are doing our group project on art therapy. sweet.
Last week our goal for the group was to get a book each on our topic so we could start getting into our research.
I got a book out at the Pratt Brooklyn library called THE DYNAMICS OF ART PSYCHOTHERAPY. What I have come to learn is that art therapy is a pretty vast field, which leaves some of the main things I wanted to get clarified a little vague. Although there will still be more research to come, Art Therapy is pretty subjective. There really is no right or wrong way to conduct a session, but the author of the book had basic suggestions and ideas to look into.
Many things to consider when analyzing a piece from an art therapy session (according to this book) are: medium, color, how much space they use up on the page, how tight or free the subject draws/paints, the age and sex of the person, and the subject material of the artwork.
Some suggested prompts for people participating in an art therapy session are: drawing the family or where they are from (this helps better understand the client's background, what they are used to, how they were brought up, or how they view this situation. look for: composition; what figures are doing, how they are arranged, in what order are they in, and heirarchial structure), asking to draw the client's condition, whatever it may be - schizophrenia, depression, alcoholism etc. ( this is a good prompt to understand what they think the problem is, if there is a problem: schizophrenics may make fragmented pictures, depressives can make darks pictures, and it is common of alcoholics to draw water), it may be interesting to ask a patient to draw what they feel, think, or see when they are faced with their problem (you may ask your schizophrenic patient to draw what he/she hears or sees), and another common prompt is to ask a patient to draw what they think will help them (many art therapists believe that the person already knows what he/she needs to get better, they just need help and reassurance).
Very interesting.
2 comments:
hello, cat.
this is classmate, and fellow blogger, Jeanette Hayes. You may also remember me from working in our group together. I think our project is going well, but we need to pull it together a little more so we have one cohesive idea. We know what we want it to be about, but if we narrow it down a little further i think we could have a really ballin' project. we will. and it will rule.
ideas:
*focus on just the process of art therapy?
*focus on past results of art therapy?
*focus on the patients of art therapy?
signing off,
Jeanette Hayez
yupyupyup.
Post a Comment