Download What is art therapy? - Addictions and Mental Health Ontario

Addiction
“What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a
signal, a symptom of distress. It is a
language that tells us about a plight
that must be understood.”
Alice Miller
Art therapy is
“The diamond road to the unconscious”
Dr. Martin Fischer
personal communication
Charmaine Michaels, 2007
Themes, the repressed, the
forbidden
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Birth
Death
Love
Hate
Sex
Perversion
Destruction
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Violence
Hunger
Greed
Jealousy
Envy
Ambition
Dependence
Art therapy
Makes the unconscious, conscious…..
Makes the intolerable, tolerable
Thus, helping to regulate affect and
consequently, control impulse.
Containment
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Art work provides containment to the
expression or communication of potentially
difficult material
Art work acts as an aid to the recognition and
differentiation of feeling states
Non verbal expression provides a sense of
being able to trust feelings
Art therapy provides patients the opportunity
to assimilate feelings evoked from the
cognitive component of the program
Advantages of art therapy
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Means of non verbal communication
Can bypass verbal manipulation
Focuses the individual
Quality of communication is enhanced
and confusion reduced
What is art therapy?
“Art therapy involves the use of different art
media through which a patient can express
and work through the issues and concerns
that have brought him or her into therapy.
The therapist and client are in partnership in
trying to understand the art process and
product of the session.”
Case & Dalley
Kohut & Winnicott (1971) “both pointed out
that artistic work can be a means of dealing
with pain and tension by providing a way of
expressing them (rather than keeping them
operating within the body-mind) and by
transforming the tension into a self-regulatory
mechanism, like the transitional object.”
Lachman-Chapin
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