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Sometimes it is not easy for us to describe our feelings in words – it is easier to express emotions by painting a picture, writing a poem or sculpting a sculpture. But creativity can not only distract from problems, but also help solve them. Psychotherapist Evgenia Belyakova* talks about the method of art therapy.
Young Goethe fell in love with a married woman. He suffered and thought about death. And then he wrote The Suffering of Young Werther. He put all his pain into the mouth of the hero, who committed suicide at the end of the novel. And Goethe, having described his experiences and done with the hero what he wanted to do himself … recovered from unhappy love. He lived to a ripe old age and fell in love more than once.
Creative people have a special gift: creating a work of art, they have the opportunity to move away from what they have experienced, to rethink it. The method of art therapy allows each person to create their own life in the literal sense of the word: to sculpt happiness, draw sadness, write about conflicts and dance mood … To realize one’s potential and, as a result, to come to harmony with oneself is within the power of everyone – art therapy is not required special training.
express feeling
For the first time the term “art therapy” began to use the English doctor and artist Adrian Hill (Adrian Hill). In the 40s of the last century, working with patients in hospitals in Great Britain as an art teacher, he noticed that creative activities distract his patients from difficult experiences and help them cope with the disease.
Classical art therapy involves self-expression through the visual arts: painting, graphics, photography, drawing, modeling. But today this method also includes other types of arts used for psychotherapeutic purposes, such as puppet therapy, mask therapy, and music therapy. A complex method has also appeared: art synthesis therapy works with the help of painting, versification, dramaturgy and theater, rhetoric and plasticity.
OUR ARTISTIC IMAGES REFLECT THE PROCESSES OCCURING IN THE UNCONSCIOUS.
Better understand yourself
For those who first encounter art therapy, the question often arises: how do these classes differ from lessons in a theater studio or a literary workshop? There is a clear boundary between art therapy and artistic creativity. For participants in psychotherapeutic groups, art is not an end in itself, it is only a means that helps to better understand oneself. These classes are focused not on the result, but first of all on the process. In special classes, for example, painting or modeling, all efforts are directed to creating the most perfect work of art. One of the tasks of art therapy is to help a person to recognize and learn to express their own feelings, and the artifacts that arise during this process have only applied value – they serve as material for analyzing the experiences that gave rise to them.
“It was my own ambitions that brought me to art therapy,” says Svetlana, 35, an editor at a major publishing house. – In response to a request to entrust me with the launch of a new magazine, I heard from my boss: “You are a great editor, but here you need to be creative.” Then I realized: if I don’t want to remain just an “excellent editor” all my life, I need to change something in myself.
In the classroom, it turned out that deep down I doubt my creative abilities and, moreover, I am mortally afraid of failure – and this fear is clearly visible to my employer. In the classroom, I did not learn to be creative at all, I worked with my fear. I drew and sculpted it, I studied it, I learned to interact with it. It took a long time before he ceased to be the main one in our tandem. Today, fear no longer interferes with me, and I am confident that I can adequately perform any work.
*Evgenia Belyakova – clinical psychologist, theater director, author of the art synthesis therapy methodology.
Read more:
- What does this picture tell me? “Spring” by Sandro Botticelli
Manifest the unconscious
The effectiveness of classes directly depends on the professionalism of the art therapist. He must not only master the techniques and techniques of those types of arts with which he works, but also have a medical, psychotherapeutic or psychological education. An artist or dancer who does not have such knowledge cannot be an art therapist, since he is not familiar with the causes and mechanism of the development of anxiety states. The creative individuality of the psychotherapist, his erudition, flexibility of thinking, and mobility are also of considerable importance for the result of the work.
“At first we were taught to move expressively,” says 45-year-old Lyudmila. – When I began to enjoy the movements, from my own body, I put on a tiny ballet in which I danced with my Anxiety. It was amazing! It was like I actually met and talked with her. After class, I burst into tears, but they were good tears. It was as if something had released me from the inside. ”
Art therapy is based on the positions of psychoanalysis, according to which the artistic images we create reflect the processes taking place in the unconscious. This symbolic language allows you to freely express your fears, desires, internal conflicts, childhood memories, unfulfilled dreams. Re-experiencing them in this way gives us the opportunity to explore and experiment with them. With the help of art, deep feelings are expressed more freely and more easily than during rational psychotherapy. They are not forced out, but sublimated (translated) into creativity. Perhaps that is why art often turns out to be the only tool that clarifies unconscious feelings and experiences.
Discover your talent
“I was very upset by the divorce, it was especially painful that my husband left for my close friend,” says 29-year-old Larisa. – I felt such strong hatred for both of them that I stopped sleeping, lost weight, cried all the time. In the melodrama, the script of which we wrote in class, I made myself the heroine, and their villains. With what pleasure I expressed in the play everything that was in my soul! And in the final severely punished them both. I felt absolutely healthy, my sleep and appetite were restored, the joy of life returned.”
Art therapy allows you to win back any traumatic situations: misunderstanding of loved ones, their coldness or overprotection, betrayal, grief, loss of trust in the world.
31-year-old Anna, on the instructions of a psychotherapist, came up with and staged an impromptu play “The Frog Princess”. The heroine of the fairy tale dreams of turning into a swan and flying away from her swamp. But she meets a prince who marries her. The goldfish offers her help, but the princess is struggling with a sense of duty to her unloved husband, fear of change and a cherished dream – to fly. “The art therapist asked me how this fairy tale is similar to my life. And I realized that almost everyone: my parents were cold to me, and I married the first one who came across, just to escape from the family. All these years he drank, and I saved him. I do not like my job, but I have to earn money … When my problems turned into a performance, I seemed to see my life from the side and felt that I was ready to start all over again.
Art therapy helps to understand your inner world, realize your own potential and evaluate the possibility of change. And when the problems become clearer, you can move on to a new stage – create a new drawing, performance or poem on the topic “What will my new life look like”.
Who needs it
Institute of Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology. (8 499) 978 3290.
Institute of Practical Psychology “Imaton” (812) 320 7154.
Working in an art therapy group helps each participant to better understand their inner world, realize their own potential and assess the possibility of change. Art therapy allows you to successfully work with anxiety, irritability, fears, as well as self-doubt, low self-esteem, communication difficulties.
She is able to soften the gap with a loved one, help resolve conflicts in the family and overcome the fear of mastering a new field of activity. Art therapy is a valuable tool in providing psychological assistance to children with various emotional and behavioral disorders, developmental problems, since it is much easier to establish contact with a child through games and drawings.
Stages of work
Art therapy classes can be individual or group. The features of the work depend on the direction, but it is always a set of exercises that have a specific psychotherapeutic goal. This goal must be explained by the leader of the group.
The main task of the art therapist at the first stages is to overcome the indecision and fear of the participants before unusual actions. In addition, the leader teaches the task, shows techniques and techniques.
In the future, the art therapist teaches the participant to pay attention to how life’s problems manifested themselves in his work. During the session, he decides in which direction to move, and also leads the “reflective analysis”, during which each participant talks about what they did and about the feelings that they experienced. The duration of the course varies from three months to two years. The cost of one lesson is from 650 to 800 rubles.
Alexander Kopytin “Theory and practice of Art Therapy” St. Petersburg, 2002.
“Art Therapy: New Horizons” Cogito Center, 2006.
Break free from addiction
With the help of art therapy, you can work with your addictions. Take three sheets of paper: on the first, draw your state before the onset of this or that addiction; on the second – sensations at the moment when she takes possession of you; on the third – what you will feel when you get rid of it. Do not concentrate on what exactly should appear in the picture – liberate emotions and try to depict your feelings and sensations.
Then, on the back of each sheet, write a few adjectives that characterize your state at that moment, for example: “I am dreary, lost” or “I am cheerful, light, bright.” Read these words and look carefully at your drawings – they will give you the opportunity to see exactly what is happening to you and understand that you are able to change it.