KIMNEWALL
M
y theoretical approach is specifically transpersonal. When I am sitting with another person, I am opening to a wisdom that directs the ses- sion as collaborator with me and my client. When I feel this occurring, I especially trust the work we are doing. With each client I offer art materi- als and guidance as I lead them into their own inner landscape populated with symbols waiting to convey a customized medicine.(MBJ) At midlife, Kim came to her art therapy graduate program with a specific and evolved theoretical approach. This orientation is reflected in her internship journal. But beyond a particular theory base or ap proaches, it is our expectation that students will find many of their own feelings, issues and questions emerging in this journal. Kim’s internship journal covers
September 2013–September 2014.
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Beginning
As I prepare to begin my internship, I invite the agency’s art therapist to coffee. She is much shorter than I assumed from her webpage photo.
Her virtual image prevents me from seeing the “real” her and at first we miss each other. Finally, we notice one another and she sits down with her coffee. She is a graduate of the program I am enrolled in and has estab-
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44 Becoming an Art Therapist
lished art therapy at the agency by dedicating a room with shelves filled with supplies and a large check-in canvas for clients to make a preliminary mark at the beginning of their sessions. As I intend to be, she is a licensed
Figure 1. “Anticipation.”
Student Internship Journal 45
mental health counselor/art therapist. She says she “likes talk therapy,”
too, and lets the clients decide whether making art is for them. I am new, but I am already aware of the challenge of asserting image making in the therapeutic process. Fortunately, I have an art therapy mentor who insists
Figure 2. “Entering.”
46 Becoming an Art Therapist
on client participation in art and offers ways to present art making that normalizes it as a part of the therapy process.
I am in a state of nervous anticipation not knowing what to expect with so many new clients. Before, I had just a single client in the university clin- ic and only peer practice sessions during school courses. I feel the pressure to assert my budding art therapist identity so as not to fall into the easy way out of avoiding art in the session. As a student in a dual-degree pro- gram, I have had the mixed experience of being trained to bring art mak- ing into each session, and at the same time being discouraged from adding art to the counseling process. Professors from the mental health side of the Psychology Department have at times been unfamiliar with art therapy and even dismissive of it. The tension of asserting an art therapy approach in new and stressful professional settings can tip me into an avoidance of added stress.
I am grateful she has established art therapy as a department within the agency. I am aware I want her mentorship in designing directives and her feedback on the results of my interventions. I want her to like me and even now I am aware I want to be part of establishing art therapy at this site. She seems excited to collaborate yet I sense a fatigue in her.
After our talk, I feel more grounded in what to expect. I know I will have an ally and that I am stepping into an art therapy world she has cre- ated and maintained—a tradition I want to invest in. I am filled with spe- cific directives matched to various theoretical approaches and populations, along with “book knowledge.” Now I finally move into internship to apply what I have learned, having no idea what that will look like as I take on counseling children, teens, adults, couples, families, and groups in an out- patient setting.
But the art therapist and I barely pass on the one day we are both at the agency. I attempt to grab her after the staff/intern consult meeting each week to get ideas for clients. I can see I may not have the connection I am hoping for and I am disappointed. Last week, we managed to have lunch during an agency training. I realize I want more collaboration with her, more ideas, more camaraderie, but I am left to find my way alone—mainly through case consult class at school and with Maxine in our monthly men- torship meetings. My agency supervisor says outright that he finds art ther- apy to be “silly; why not just make art?” he asks. He was a professional artist as I am, but unlike me, has never set out to explicitly incorporate the arts into his practice. I want to take the challenge to embody the power of art and healing through my work with clients, but at this moment I feel dis-
Student Internship Journal 47 missed as I do at times in school. I am in need of overt encouragement, excitement about the possibilities, and examples around me of art with clients. Will I find that here?
Between a heavy caseload and the overwhelming paperwork demands, I am beginning to see that the challenge of just keeping up ex cludes a depth of reflection I was hoping to have. Reading Annie Rogers’1account of her internship experience primed me to expect to have the space to reflect on each encounter as she did. Instead, I calculate my hours to com- plete my internship within the year working three days a week. This means maintaining 12–15 weekly appointments and staying late to complete case notes and treatment plans as well as fitting in collateral contact hours with teachers, school counselors, parents, social service agencies, etc.
Only over the weekend do I have time to reflect on the images and words my clients share. At home, I create small images of our sessions on index cards with notes so I can embed their stories into my psychic field for retrieval later. My supervisor advises me to “leave” the clients at the clinic, and another intern suggests I consciously leave my caseload behind me as I commute home. I feel caught between the need for distance and self-care and the sense that without time to reflect, I may miss the deeper messages contained in my client’s words and images. “We are not detec- tives!” my supervisor insists, yet the signifiers, as Annie Rogers calls them, peering out from my client’s images, could reveal clues and inspire inter- ventions lost without the time to investigate. I believe we are detectives.
I seem to have no choice about thinking about this case. Could it be I have already thrown everything out the window I thought I knew about boundaries? The man says he is not long for this world, that if he doesn’t get a break soon he’ll “pull the plug” (I have a suicidal client in one of my first cases!). I carry the clinic handbook that is supposed to tell me what to do around with me in the three ring binder which has come to look as dis- organized as I feel. I need to put section dividers in it, but that requires a moment of calm reflection I have yet to grab hold of. The section on sui- cidality has two parts: the protocol and the mini-assessment questions. My client has his own timeline for checking out but, to my relief, apparently it is a few weeks away. He misses his appointments and rarely picks up his phone when I call. Last night, however, he left a long message in despair over his bad luck and worthless life. I reached him the next day and set a
1. Rogers’ The Shining Affliction.
48 Becoming an Art Therapist
time to talk on the phone, but he didn’t answer. Maxine urged me to get a second phone line for clients and now I clearly see the benefit of it. To see my client’s initials appear on the screen captures me, makes me anxious, and the decision to call and when to call, all consume my attention.
My agency supervisor goes on to give me information about the many years my client has come to the agency. “He isn’t who he wants to be” my supervisor says simply, as though that explains anything. And I know how he feels. So does my supervisor. We both aspired to be known visual artists;
in fact, we filled our last consult hour together sharing the heartbreak of shriv eled dreams even in the midst (for me) of new art therapy dreams under construction.
My client says he is contemplating suicide, not today, but soon. He reports he has had no food, no money, car, or heat. Art making seems far away.
Am I becoming a small town counselor without boundaries? The line