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Preface

“Counseling is a professional relationship that empowers diverse individuals, families, and groups to accomplish mental health, well-ness, education, and career goals” (D. M. Kaplan et al., 2014, p. 366). Counselors focus on helping clients make developmentally appropriate choices and changes. Effective counselors are aware of the multidimensional nature of the profession and choose from a wide variety of interventions when working with diverse populations. The creative arts are a sometimes overlooked aspect of counseling that can promote the best within the helping arena (Neilsen et al., 2016). By their very nature, the arts foster different ways of experiencing the world. They are enriching, stimulating, and therapeutic in their own right. When used in clinical situations, the creative arts can help counselors and clients gain unique and universal perspectives on problems and possibilities.

In this sixth edition of The Creative Arts in Counseling, I concentrate on how the creative arts can be used independently and complementarily to enhance the counseling process on primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Specifically, the following creative arts are examined:

 Music

 Dance and movement

 Imagery

 Visual arts

 Literature and writing

 Drama and psychodrama

 Humor

 Play

 Animal-assisted therapy

 Horticultural, nature, and wilderness therapies

These arts and artistic ways of knowing the world share much in common. They are all process oriented, emotionally sensitive, socially directed, awareness focused, and applicable in numerous forms for working with clients over the life span. In addition, they enable people from diverse cultural backgrounds to develop in ways that are enjoyable as well as personally and socially enhancing.

Mental health providers such as counselors, social workers, psychologists, creative arts therapists, marriage and family therapists, psychiatric nurses, pastoral care specialists, and psychiatrists will find the content in these pages useful because of both the research and the pragmatic nature of the material covered. The information presented here comes from a variety of educational and treatment-focused work settings. Chapters 2 through 11 may be especially helpful because of the systematic format they follow in presenting a great deal of information in a uniform manner. These chapters are structured in a parallel way:

1 Introductory background about the specific art form

2 The premise behind using the art form

3 The general practice of using the art in counseling settings

4 Use of the specific art with special populations, such as children, adolescents, adults, older adults, groups, families, and cultural minorities

5 A summary

6 Art-related exercises

Chapter 1 provides information on the history, rationale for, and benefits of using artistic methods in general; Chapter 12 highlights current trends in the use of the arts in counseling and includes additional resources. Together, these chapters are bookends for those in between, enabling you to obtain a global view of the field, how it developed, and where it is going. Chapter 13 contains creative exercises in the different artistic domains covered in Chapters 2 through 11.

Creative Reflection boxes are distributed throughout Chapters 1 through 12 to give you an opportunity to reflect on your own creativity and how you can use the creative arts in counseling. There are eight boxes in each of Chapters 1 through 12, for a total of 96 in all. I hope that these boxes prompt you to further explore your thoughts and feelings as well as generate ideas you can use.

Overall, practitioners will find this book user friendly. Most of the ideas discussed here have been extensively field tested by experienced clinicians. By carefully reading this book, you will become better informed as a professional and will be able to enhance your skills and effectiveness. The creative arts have much to offer the healing and helping professions and the clients who use these services.

New to This Edition

An old maxim states that a new book should never be written when an old book will suffice. That goes for revisions too. I could not agree more, which explains the 5-year time span between this edition and the previous edition. I would love to say that the fifth edition of this work is still up to date, but it is not. First, the sixth edition includes more than 150 new references, most more recent than 2015. They are mixed liberally with more classic texts and articles so the best scholarship in the field of using the creative arts in counseling has been maintained and expanded.

Second, as mentioned previously, this sixth edition contains eight Creative Reflections in each chapter. The uniformity of reflections makes reading the chapters smoother. The 19 new Creative Reflections in this edition of the book give you more opportunities to slow down and think about how the material you are reading applies to your life personally and professionally.

Third, the former chapter “Animal-Assisted Therapy in Counseling, Therapeutic Horticulture, and Wilderness/Nature Therapy” has now been split into two chapters: “Animal-Assisted Therapy in Counseling” (Chapter 10) and “Horticultural, Nature, and Wilderness Therapies” (Chapter 11). There is expanded coverage on each of these approaches.

Fourth, the former chapter “Play and Humor in Counseling” has been split into two chapters also. “Humor in Counseling” (Chapter 8) and “Play in Counseling” (Chapter 9) provide expanded information on each area and give each subject more focus with up-to-date references.

Fifth, at the beginning of each chapter is a two-part overview informing you of some of the highlights of the chapter. The first part emphasizes topics to be covered in the chapter, whereas the second part suggests some personal and professional issues to consider in regard to the material.

Sixth, all websites and links for creative arts therapy associations have been double checked and updated where needed. New ones have been added as well. Thus, you can easily access the latest research and conference information related to creative arts therapies. A list of “General Creative Arts and Art Therapies Websites” is found in the newly added appendix to this book.

Seventh, a new section on telebehavioral health counseling with the creative arts has been added to Chapter 12. This section has been added in recognition of the fact that crises, such as the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, occasionally make in-person counseling impossible. Knowing how to change the modality of delivery is crucial in such circumstances.

Finally, a dozen new creative arts projects and exercises have been added to Chapter 13. The creative arts are truly global and culturally relevant to counselors from multiple settings and backgrounds.

All of these changes have made this sixth edition of The Creative Arts in Counseling a richer and more relevant text. Yet this book continues to be user friendly in a pragmatic and well-organized way, punctuated with examples and activities. It is engaging while maintaining a scholarly base.

Enjoy!

—Samuel T. Gladding