This study looks at the effectiveness of digital media to create response art and deepen attunement with adolescent clients as well as develop self-awareness in the therapist. An arts- based qualitative heuristic self-study was used to analyze data gathered over a six-week period. The subject was the researcher/therapist and the data was gathered during the second-year practicum while working with adolescents at a non-public school. Data was gathered through a process of creating two post-session response artworks using video, animation, or digital drawing and a written reflection for each artwork. Nine artworks and eight written reflections were created in total. The data was analyzed using a phenomenological lens and a digital art therapy lens. Certain themes, such as use of color, rhythm and pace, self as subject, client process, progression of affect, management of environment, and representation of containment were analyzed. These themes revealed a high probability for digital media to assist in deepening attunement with an adolescent client and a more limited chance of development of self- awareness.

Between March 11, 2020 and May of 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) counted over 100 million cases of COVID-19, resulting in three million deaths worldwide (WHO, 2021). In order to examine the effects of art-making on social and psychological well-being, seven graduate students from the Marital and Family Art Therapy Program at LMU conducted the following study utilizing a qualitative, arts-based research approach through collaborative autoethnography (CAE). The research question — What are the effects of personal art-making on well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic? — was posed by the seven graduate student authors. The data revealed that pandemic-time art-making impacted well-being through three primary avenues: by acting as a means to cope, to adapt, and to process. Each of our emerging themes highlighted the use of art-making as a tool, and each theme described this phenomenon in a unique and pointed way. First, our art-making impacted our well-being during the pandemic by serving as a tool to cope with the stressors of the pandemic by minimizing, banishing, or making them tolerable. Going one step further than coping, art-making also served as a tool for adapting. It acted as the mediating force between the pandemic’s external impacts and our ensuing internal experiences. Finally, art-making impacted well-being throughout the pandemic by serving as a tool to process corporeal experiences, emotional experiences, and other personal realities. In order to build upon our findings, we propose future research on the impacts of personal art-making on wellness through collaborative autoethnography by participant-researchers representing diverse cultures within their social and environmental contexts.

This study examines the use of response art through a Jungian lens, and its impact on the researcher’s understanding of one school-aged client’s experiences in therapy. The research/therapist was the subject of this art-based qualitative self-study, and the data was gathered over a seven-week period during the researcher’s second-year practicum at a community-based mental health agency. Data was gathered through the researcher’s weekly creative responses to the client’s artwork during therapy sessions. The researcher created drawings, three-dimensional artwork, as well as written reflections to process feelings in response to the client’s artworks during sessions. A total of six artworks and six written reflections were created. The visual and symbolic approach of the Jungian lens was utilized during the analysis of the data in order to deepen the researcher’s understanding of the client’s non-verbal and internal experiences. Themes of containment, safety and individuation were found during analysis. The use of response art and its subsequent analysis through a Jungian lens allowed the researcher to address issues of countertransference and increase client attunement.