Graduate school to become an art therapy clinic is almost always unlike any other education the student has encountered before. Applying this philosophy should be the primary goal of art therapy education as the student strives to become.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
If this is the face of the next generations in the field, the future of art therapy looks bright. Grief, Memory, and Life Itself, Essays by an Art Therapist The Modern History of Art Therapy in the United States.
BECOMING AN ART THERAPIST
INTRODUCTION
The faculty are considered the keys to the realm of the art therapy profession. -degrees increase the art therapy student's uncertainty and confusion and create difficulties in developing an art therapist identity.
She was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and lived the first ten years of her life in the Southwest, primarily in Denver. A History of Art Therapy in the United States, Mundelein, Illinois: The American Art Therapy Association.
For me, the therapist helped me change my life patterns through a consistently caring five-year relationship in which I was able to practice new ways of being. The images I created became more important over time, becoming a mirror in which I could validate my existence and construct my own idiosyncratic narrative.
A SHORT HISTORY OF ART THERAPY EDUCATION 1
Internationally, art therapy education has existed for many years in the UK. The American Art Therapy Association (AATA) created curriculum standards and guidelines for art therapy programs in 1973.
A GOOD BOOK IS A MENTOR
A Radiant Condition, Irvin Yalom's The Gift of Therapy, and Mary Pipher's Letters to a Young Therapist. Malchiodi's book took me deep into the processes and guidelines unique to art therapy and invited me to follow the guidelines and experience the power of art therapy.
Paul Fink called the art image “the X-ray of the soul” (personal communication, Myra Levick, 2014). In this crucial relationship, the art image is an essential part of the three-point healing potential.
STUDENT INTERNSHIP JOURNAL
Professors from the mental health side of the Psychology Department were at times unfamiliar with art therapy and even rejected it. The stress of asserting an art therapy approach in new and stressful professional environments can lead me to an avoidance of extra stress. I want her to like me and even now I am aware that I want to be a part of establishing art therapy at this site.
I know that I am gaining an ally and that I am entering an art therapy world that she has created and maintained – a tradition that I want to invest in.
Has she not achieved it?” Yet there seems to be something else she's measuring success against, as if this dream is secondary to another goal she's seeking. My client with domestic abuse issues has been in the same situation for months. My supervisor warns, "She's attached to you." Although I don't consider myself particularly maternal—at 55, I have no children of my own—still, he insists, "you're a mother figure to her."
I really believe in this art thing,” she reports: “I didn't know it was so powerful.” In the session, she paints a layered heart.
I keep a stack of magazines by my bedside table!” I ask "When was the last time you made a collage?" "Five years ago," she replied. I notice that no spaces are left between the pasted images, but I don't comment, and she says "I don't like leaving white spaces." She smiles as she shares her life while making her collage. Eventually she finds three collage pictures she likes, a pocket watch, two children in a dark room with their faces lit from below ("ghost stories" kept going through my mind, she says), and an astronaut who float away from behind. into black space.
She shares her music, digital images, and songs with me—she's bursting with creativity; her words are few, she doesn't discuss her feelings yet, and she brushes off my questions.
She has found her freedom in the United States, married a man who has since divorced, and is now raising her young son. The figure in her drawing has no face; maybe she's lost her face and still can't see who she is. In another recent drawing, she has filled a mandala with a symmetrical tree shape firmly rooted at the bottom of the circle.
Our sessions are now less about her "ex" and she has started imagining her future.
Summer is over and my college casual consulting class meets for the last time. These meetings were like a sanctuary where theory finally infiltrated our personal cases and we faced real pain and trauma and the realization of what we had really gotten ourselves into. These were our early days as art therapists and we were witnessing each other's dreams come true.
I will carry with me the memories of our tears of frustration as well as joy and deep empathy, the laughter at our attempts and mistakes, and especially the generosity of presence we had for each other.
ART THERAPY STUDENT STORIES
WHAT WE ARE THINKING AND WHAT WE ARE FEELING
Some of the best experiences I had were at the end of my third and final practicum. One of the worst experiences in my graduate school experience was the first few weeks of my first practicum. The idea of the "worst experience" is difficult to grasp because in the three years of my graduate program, I viewed almost every experience as a chance for growth and information gathering in my journey.
Since being in the program, I have been inspired by how actively involved she is in so many aspects of the program.
A MENTOR
But the process stretched me and I became increasingly able to hold more and more classes and in sessions I could implement art therapy with more and more courage, skill and knowledge. It also seems important that art therapy programs continue to help novice art therapists become established in the field after graduation. With so many challenges in establishing art therapy in mental health settings and its relative infancy in psychology, graduate programs ensure their own future as they enable the professional success of their alumni.
I believe that a group like this, especially in a dual degree program, can provide what is needed to keep the lone art therapist practicing art therapy.
In the intensive one-on-one mentoring, the focus not only remains squarely on me, but before long my mentor became internalized, and she sat on my shoulder in every client session. At some point, Kim and I formally developed into a quasi-supervisory relationship as well as the mentorship and I believe that is what she is writing about here. KN). In these times of increased demands on university professors and fewer resources for students, I suggest that an art therapy graduate program assemble a cadre of experienced clinicians from the geographic area surrounding the program who are willing to serve as mentors.
An email address can be linked to the names on the list and given to students who would like a mentor.
In my graduate program, I alternated between the art therapy department and the counseling program. I am especially fortunate to be in an internship position advocating for the art therapy department. Without this level of learning to think about what they are doing, there may be future burnout or abandonment of art therapy.
The art therapy internship student will likely find an overwhelming number of clients in his or her caseload.
If an art therapy student is encouraged to work at this level, these stereotypes are reinforced. Art therapy internship students must be taught how to think about the relationship of the client, the therapist, and the art. Being an art therapist has the responsibility to educate others about the power of art therapy.
It could be so easy to lose the art amid the pressures of practice when faced with ignorance of what art therapy is.
LETTERS TO A YOUNG ART THERAPIST
Kaplan was editor-in-chief of Art Therapy, Journal of the American Art Therapy Association. She is a founding member of the American Art Therapy Association (AATA) and its first president. She is an honorary member of the American Art Therapy Association and has received Kennedy Center Honors for her international work in art therapy.
Rubin, Ph.D., ATR-BC, HLM is past president and honorary life member of the American Art Therapy Association.
LETTERS
Art therapy emerged from psychoanalytic theory in the middle of the last century. One challenge results from the trend in art therapy education to intersect the field of art therapy with the profession of counseling. Letters to a Young Art Therapist 135 beyond the idea that art therapists only write for art therapy publications.
In what ways can art therapy students enhance the respectability of the art therapy profession (both during and after graduate school).
SUGGEST TO ANYONE THINKING OF ART THERAPY
If you feel tired or "burned out", make sure you find ways to play and recover. Telling others about what you do requires you to think about it in a different way than when you're just thinking in your head. This does not mean that it will be easy. rather, that it is consistent with who you are.
Remember that when you are in your internship; in many cases you are the art therapy expert – if the institution does not have a professional art therapist supervising you.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 1
An introduction to art therapy: studies on "free" artistic expression of children with behavioral problems as a means of diagnosis and therapy. She was a clinical art therapist apprentice with Helen Landgarten, began teaching art therapy at Immaculate Heart College in 1974, and was a faculty member and chair of the art therapy department at Loyola Marymount University until 2001. She recently received degrees in Art Therapy and Men's - Soil Health Counseling from Antioch University in Seattle.
CHARLES C THOMAS • PUBLISHER, LTD
