Understanding and managing emotion in psychological therapy is a complex
and challenging problem for practitioners and clients. The traditional
emphasis on verbal language as the mediating process in therapy is expanding
with the inclusion of multimodal creative arts, based on visual, auditory, and
kinaesthetic perceptions, to better support the reaccessing of emotion. This
can be followed recursively by the use of words to develop narrative and
meaning. The main research emphasis in this thesis was on visual art. Studies
of other art forms may follow. Philosophical understanding, neuroscience
advances and developments in psychological therapy underpin and explain
this therapeutic expansion.
A qualitative research approach is taken, engaging several different actions
from within that research paradigm. The thesis is written as a metaphorical
journey and conveys the experience of art dialogue and the experience of
researching, as parallel stories. Psychological learning journeys undertaken by
its author and a colleague, some clients, therapists and teachers, are described
in three encounters.
The first encounter explored visual art dialogue as a process addition to a
developing experiential phenomenological approach using multimodal
creative arts (The MIECAT Process � Lett 2001). The objective was for the
colleagues to experience a lengthy creative arts sequence, developing and
undertaking the process of visual art dialogue. Multilevel actions and
outcomes were recorded throughout the collegial engagement. The collegial
encounter required that the co-researchers pursue their own personal
psychological meanings and report on their experience of the process.
Personal narrative meanings exposed in exploring visual art dialogue, are not
discussed, the emphasis being on confirming how actions occurred and their
effectiveness for application. Actions stopped where direct verbal therapeutic
engagement might occur.
Following collegial experience, visual art dialogue was used with clients and
other therapists and teachers, to question its broader relevance. The second
inquiry, involving three clients of the author, asked how the process would
support professional actions in a therapeutic situation. The third encounter
engaged other therapists and teachers to expand on questions of by whom
and how, art dialogue could be used.
Psychological therapy theory suggests process location within a humanistic
framework, in an eclectic focus or supporting the development of an
experiential, phenomenological psychology process approach based on the
known functions of mind and body. The associated personal and professional
aspects of the experience of process exploration constituted a step in authorial
understanding and may contribute to increasing knowledge of the creative
arts applied to psychological therapy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/216602 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Alexander, Loris, na. |
| Publisher | Swinburne University of Technology. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.swin.edu.au/), Copyright Loris Alexander |
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