AATA’s 55th Annual Conference - In Pittsburgh
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Art therapist and professor at the University of Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue
Expressive Therapist Self-Inquiry (ETSI) demonstrates the ways in which the Expressive Therapies Continuum (ETC) serves as a stream of choices, reflections, and actions for inquiring about personal artistic aptitudes, preferences, and aversions. This art-based assessment establishes a framework for investigating the art therapist’s creative process and encourages therapists to look at their own preferences and aversions, which can affect treatment (Hinz, et al. 2022). It provides a framework for the art therapist to organize therapeutic assessments and develops into a mirror of the individual creative process. Referring to the artistic experience in the creative endeavor, ETSI encourages art therapists to master unused techniques, to experiment with unfamiliar materials, and to forge a multilayered understanding of the ETC.
Kagin and Lusebrink (1978) developed the ETC to provide a common transtheoretical framework that would unify expressive therapies through art. Hinz (2019) continued developing the ETC, providing clinicians the opportunity to understand therapeutic processes while integrating behavioral, emotional, and cognitive aspects. Art therapists from around the world are now conducting art-based research on the healing properties of visual expression through various media (Ichiki & Hinz, 2015; Lusebrink, Mārtinsone, & Dzilna-Šilova, 2013; Pénzes et al., 2014; Snir & Regev, 2013; Wong, 2021). This significant model is foundational and applicable across all expressive therapies (Kagin & Lusebrink, 1978). Art making is what sets art therapy apart from other fields, and using the ETC as a foundational theory brings together art therapists of diverse backgrounds (Riccardi, et al. 2022). This model includes information on thae healing properties of various artistic media linked with the processes and the emergent functions most likely to be elicited. Furthermore, the ETC provides a framework for understanding how people influence and are influenced in turn by their experience with using art materials and methods (Hinz, 2019). Further, it is applicable to many cultures, as it respects multiple ways of knowing (Whyte Kanerahtenha, 2020), and allows clients to guide the process through media considerations (Hinz, 2016). It also provides clients with the opportunity to process information and coping tools in response to images, creations, and aversions in art materials (Hillbuch, Snir, Regey & Orkibi, 2016).
In this workshop, through art making and dialogue, the facilitators will guide participants to experience ETSI via interaction with a wide range of art materials. Through hands-on experience, the facilitators will examine the practitioner’s art experience as an implicit and multidimensional source of knowledge (Gavron, 2022). This assessment offers choices by using a series of artworks chosen from a wide variety of media. These diverse, unstructured tasks facilitate a wide range of responses and will allow participants to recognize the techniques of balancing two poles, recognizing the overuse or underuse of an inner process, by exhibiting the quality of the medium. Participants will leave the workshop with a better understanding of the ETC and of the artworks which embody their creative selves. Through the assessment, the art therapists will become familiar with the ETC to use its fundamental theory with future clients.
The balanced expressive therapist can process and experience information with all ETC components. Specific attention will be paid to material interaction, art media properties, art processes, and art products (Hinz, 2016). The ethical challenge of the art therapist resides in allowing the artistic voice to pierce through to honor both the client and the professional. As art therapists, we can learn to lean on the art experience and respond with our aesthetic view as artists. In the studio, the greatest gift we can give to our clients is to know who we ourselves are.
Gavron, T. (2022, September 14-17). The Arts in Supervision: Dreaming and remembering [Conference presentation]. European Consortium for Arts Therapies Education: 6th European Arts Therapies Conference, Vilnius, Lithuania. https://www.ecarte.info/day-4-abstracts/tami-gavron Hilbuch, A., Snir, S., Regev, D., & Orkibi, H. (2016). The role of art materials in the transferential relationship: Art psychotherapists’ perspective. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 49, 19-26. doi:10.1016/j.aip.2016.05.0 Hinz, L. D. (2016). Media considerations in art therapy: Directions for future research. In D. E. Gussak and M. L. Rosal (Eds.), The Wiley Handbook of Art Therapy (pp. 135- 145). Wiley-Blackwell11. Hinz, L.D. (2019). Expressive Therapies Continuum: A Framework for Using Art in Therapy (2nd ed.). Routledge. Hinz, L., Choe, N., Nan, J. Riccardi, M & Van Meter, M. (2022, November 19). The expressive therapies continuum: An essential framework for using the expressive arts in therapy [Conference presentation]. Expressive Therapies Virtual Summit. https://web.cvent.com/event/5e98d5c0-6c92-430f-be6a-185cfc8f3a93/websitePage:c2500363-e3a8-426c-a967-ae10cc699095 Ichiki, Y., & Hinz, L. D. (2015, July). Exploring Media Properties and the Expressive Therapies Continuum: Survey of Art Therapists. Paper presented at the American Art Therapy Association conference, Minneapolis, MN Kagin, S. L., & Lusebrink, V. B. (1978). The Expressive Therapies Continuum. Art Psychotherapy, 5(4), 171-180. Lusebrink, V.B., Mārtinsone, K., & Dzilna-Šilova, I. (2013). The Expressive Therapies Continuum (ETC): Interdisciplinary bases of the ETC. International Journal of Art Therapy, 18(2), 75-85. Pénzes, I., van Hooren, S., Dokter, D., Smeijsters, H., & Hutschemaekers, G. (2014). Material interaction in art therapy assessment. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 41(5), 484-492. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2014.08.003 Riccardi, M., Hinz, L., Whyte Kanerahtenha, M., & Naji, D. (2022, November 6). The expressive therapies continuum as a framework for developing cultural awareness [Conference presentation]. Expressive Therapies Virtual Summit. https://web.cvent.com/event/5e98d5c0-6c92-430f-be6a- 185cfc8f3a93/websitePage:c2500363-e3a8-426c-a967-ae10cc699095 Snir, S. & Regev, D. (2013a). A dialog with five art materials: Creators share their art making experiences. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 40(1), 94-100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2012.11.004 Whyte Kanerahtenha, M. (2020). Walking on two-row: Reconciling First Nations Identity and Colonial Trauma through material interaction, acculturation, and art therapy. Canadian Journal of Art Therapy: Research, Practice, and Issues, 33(1), 36–45. Wong, D. (2021). Materials: Potential and found objects. In D. Wong & R. P. M. H. Lay (Eds.), Found objects in art therapy: Materials and processes (pp. 25-38). Jessica Kingsley Publisher.