Читать книгу The Creative Arts in Counseling - Samuel Gladding T., Samuel T. Gladding - Страница 25

Along with the increased growth of creative arts in counseling has come the formulation of modern rationales for using them in the helping process. Numerous reasons beyond the fact that they have a historical precedent exist for using the creative arts therapeutically. The Appalachian Expressive Arts Collective, which comprises professors in a number of academic departments at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, has given many such motives. Among them are that these arts celebrate “connectedness, deep feeling, . . . intuition, integration, purpose, and the totality of the human experience” (Atkins et al., 2003, p. 120). This group and others have influenced the counselor education program at Appalachian State University to include a specific track on creative arts therapies in counseling. Other counselor educators (Ziff et al., 2017) have summed up the research to find that the arts, such as music, film, movement, painting, and literature, may also play a role in the development of empathy in various age groups and different professions. More reasons to use the creative arts in almost all helping professions follow.

The first reason for helping professionals to use the arts in therapeutic settings is that they are a primary means of assisting individuals to become integrated and connected. Often people who become mentally disturbed, such as those with an eating disorder, have a distorted view of themselves (Robbins & Pehrsson, 2009). They become estranged from reality, become alienated from others, and thwart healing forces within themselves from coming into action. This type of estrangement is a phenomenon that Carl Rogers (1957) described as incongruence. It prevents growth and development. Many of the arts, such as dance, music, and poetry, have the potential to help individuals become integrated and more aware of themselves. For instance, Robbins and Pehrsson (2009) found that poetry therapy and narrative therapy gave women with anorexia nervosa a voice (a catharsis) that helped them reclaim their individual power.

A second reason for using the arts in counseling involves energy and process. Most creative arts are participatory and require the generation of behaviors and emotions. Activity involving the expressive arts gives individuals new energy and is reinforcing because it leads somewhere. In many cases, the input and output energy cycle involved in the arts is similar to that among marathon runners. Initially, runners use energy to cover mileage at a set pace. Later, after considerable physical pain, they experience what is known as a runner’s high, a feeling of renewal and energy that allows them to pick up the pace. After such an event, they can analyze what happened and how what they have learned can influence their future as a runner. This type of reflecting and talking, especially with arts activities, can lead to new and usually improved functioning for the people involved.

A third reason for incorporating the arts into counseling involves focus. There is an old African American saying that for people to achieve, they must keep their “eyes on the prize.” The arts, especially those that involve vision, allow clients to see more clearly what they are striving for and what progress they are making toward reaching their goals (Allan, 2008; Lazarus, 1977). Other nonvisual arts, such as those dealing with sound, also encourage this type of concentration.

Yet a fourth rationale for using the arts in counseling involves creativity. To be artistic as a counselor or to use the arts in counseling “enlarges the universe by adding or uncovering new dimensions” (Arieti, 1976, p. 5) while enriching and expanding people who participate in such a process. Thus, counseling as an art, and the use of the arts in counseling, expands the world outwardly and inwardly for participants. Better yet, the artistic side of counseling allows and even promotes this expansion in an enjoyable and relaxed manner.

A fifth reason for including artistic components in counseling is to help clients establish a new sense of self. Establishing this new sense of self is especially important in resiliency work in which clients are attempting to recover from adversity (Metzl & Morrell, 2008). At such times, there is a need to engage in creative processes such as art or drama for persons who have been traumatized to gain a fresh perspective on life and themselves. Awareness of self is a quality associated with age. It usually increases in older adults (Erikson, 1968; Jung, 1933). This ability to come more into contact with the various dimensions of life can be promoted and highlighted through the use of the arts in counseling. The visual, auditory, or other sensory stimuli used in sessions give clients a way to experience themselves, whatever their circumstances, differently in an atmosphere in which spontaneity and risk-taking are encouraged within limits. Clients are able to exhibit and practice novel and adaptive behaviors. Thus, clients gain confidence and ability through sessions, and the arts assist them to become continuously (Allport, 1955). A sixth reason for including the arts in helping, such as counseling, involves concreteness. In using the arts, a client is able to conceptualize and duplicate beneficial activities. For example, if writing poetry is found to be therapeutic, clients are instructed to use this method and medium when needed (Mazza, 2017). By doing so, they lay out a historical trail so that they can see, feel, and realize more fully what they have accomplished through hard work and inspiration. Such a process allows their memories to live again and may lead to other achievements.