Description
Like all other professions, art therapy needs to engage with societal and cultural changes, and with research evidence on best practices to ensure continued relevance and growth. Art therapists have worked increasingly with culturally diverse groups of clients, many of whom are not familiar with the culture of psychotherapy. This has supported the development of a socially aware stance and a blossoming of different approaches, all prioritising art and questioning the power relationships between therapist and client. Co-production is now a widely used approach within mental health services, and the Power Threat Meaning Framework (Johnstone & Al.,2018) offers an alternative to a medical-model on understand human distress.
In this presentation I will outline how new paradigms such as co-production led to important insights in our clients' experience of art therapy, and to a blossoming of new approaches. This is also the case with our approach to research.
I will reflect on how challenging it can be to engage with these new paradigms: although a non-directive, psychodynamic approach can be useful with some clients, the belief that this is the gold standard of art therapy practice remains tenacious, even in the face of convincing evidence to the contrary. This often introduces doubt for art therapists who use other models and who may fear that they are not doing 'proper art therapy. I will use examples of innovative practice and research to illustrate that our diverse, truly client-centred approaches reflect our strengths as a profession.
| Period | 3 Oct 2024 |
|---|---|
| Visiting from | University of Hertfordshire (United Kingdom) |
| Visitor degree | PhD |
| Degree of Recognition | National |
Keywords
- Art Therapy
- Research
- Clinical Practice