Art therapy

The godmother of my children is an art therapist. I discovered her job when she had me re-read and correct her dissertation as a result of her studies. She still talks to me often, it is an interesting therapy and different from the usual therapies where we only talk with her therapist. In this case, the word is mixed with the act via art in all its forms.

You may have noticed that in recent years, art therapy books, adult drawing books and mandala books are easily found in the stores.

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Indeed, artistic creation allows with art therapy to access buried feelings.

Art therapy has more and more followers, indeed, it often appears as a new original method to access his feelings and emotions repressed.

Method

The art therapist uses artistic creation that can be painting, theater, dance, collage, modeling, photography, sculpture ... to penetrate the unconscious issues of the individual and lead to a transformation positive of itself. The goal is to start from his pains, his violence, his contradictions to make it the material of a personal journey.

The origin of the art therapy is attributed to the English painter, Adrian Hill, who first made the experiment in 1940. He had tuberculosis and was placed in a hospital, during his convalescence he drew on paper and He let himself go to daydreams, which, to the astonishment of the doctors, accelerated his recovery.

The British Red Cross used this method with their patients and in 1950 the first art therapy training programs were started in the United States.

In France, it was not until 1986 that the concept was finally recognized by the scientific community during an international congress.

Conduct of a session

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During the first session, an interview with the therapist allows the patient to talk about his / her discomfort and expectations. The course of the following sessions varies according to the chosen art, but still pursues the same objective: to develop a symbolic language giving access to its buried feelings to then be able to integrate them.

The role of the art therapist is to promote creativity in the patient who, in front of the blank sheet, often says by saying that he does not know how to draw.

The patient is invited to let go, to let his hand do without mobilizing his brain. If the patient is really blocked, the therapist can offer him a basic idea like the elements, a labyrinth, a rainbow, ... without imposing a specific model to reproduce.

The goal is to give a creative idea to the patient. Once the patient has found the inspiration, the role of the therapist is to encourage the patient to continue or develop a movement or form that is repeated from one production to another and that seems meaningful.

The function of the art therapist is to gently push the patient towards ever deeper. Indeed, it is when the person lets go and leaves superficiality that the therapy advances.

At the end of the session, there is a verbal exchange between the therapist and his patient. After completing his production, the patient is invited to talk about what he felt during the creation, what it inspires him. The art therapist can help with reflection by asking broad questions so as not to guide the patient's words.

Art therapy is particularly indicated for children in whom introspection is often difficult, as for adolescents, often refractory to the classic psychotherapeutic approach. In adults, the method is also very beneficial for people who find it difficult to search their problem by word of mouth or who, conversely, speak easily of them without ever progressing.

The art therapy also gives excellent results with the big patients who express then their pains, with the addicts, the prisoners or the marginal ones for whom the creation of a work induces a revaluation of themselves, but also the older people whose creation responds, among other things, to a need for retrospective reconstruction of their lives before dying.

The arts used

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Each patient will be more sensitive to one art than another.

Here are a few :

Plastic arts

In the case of the visual arts, the work is made of concrete traces of the problems of the individual. By metaphorising them through painting, modeling, collage or even photography, it allows an objective distancing and then an awareness.

Theater, dance and fairy tales

These dynamic arts involve the body, they allow to replay its conflicts.
The dance symbolically represents our contradictions and reinforces the psycho-corporal unity.

The theater fulfills an outlet function as much as a dedramatization.

The tale read, mime or invented exorcises anxieties, mourning, fears and frustrations.

Puppets, masks, makeup and clowns

These artistic expressions give a voice to the unconscious. The manipulation of puppets reveals the repressed by giving him the word, the mask favors the lifting of inhibitions and defenses, makeup confronts with his fantasies and the clown encourages him to play with his vulnerabilities.

Music and voice

Music therapy is a work on vibrations and on the body through rhythm. Music, endowed with an exceptional power of emotional mobilization, thus encourages a progressive reappropriation of its body, opens the ways of communication and develops creativity.

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