Description
Focusing provides an effective way of listening to the innate wisdom of the body, while art therapy harnesses and activates creative intelligence. Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy: Accessing the Body’s Wisdom and Creative Intelligence is a ground-breaking book integrating renowned psychologist Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing with art therapy. This new, Focusing-based approach to art therapy helps clients to befriend their inner experience, access healing imagery from the body’s felt sense to express in art, and carry forward implicit steps that lead toward change.
Written for readers to be able to learn the application of this innovative approach, the book provides in-depth examples and descriptions of how to adapt Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy to a wide variety of clinical populations including individuals and groups with severe psychiatric illness, trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and more, as well as applications to private practice, illness and wellness, spirituality, and self-care.
Integrating theory, clinical practice, and numerous guided exercises, this accessible book will enhance clinical sensitivity and skill, while adding resources for bringing creativity into practice. It will be of interest to art therapists, Focusing therapists, psychologists, counselors and social workers, as well as trainers and students.
This book provides a good description or both art therapy, focussing, and how to integrate them. The book is easy to read. As an art therapist who is learning focussing, it’s great to have a resource that will help to integrate both of these modalities.
Can’t wait to read this book on the following chapters for my education
This book combines the focusing oriented therapeutic approach with art therapy. It is an excellent resource that allows clients to engage mindfully and compassionately with memory contained within their bodies in whatever form that manifests. This approach allows the sensory based traumatic memories to be released from the body, and clears the space for the cognitive narrative processing of trauma. It contains scripted focusing processes that models how to use the approach effectively. The author provides a broad range of therapeutic situations this can be used in (. For dissociative clients, this method provides a means to gain control over the dissociative response and the intrusive sensory somatic and intrusive memories experienced. Combined with an understanding of structural dissociation, this book becomes an even more useful resource for therapists working survivor symptoms.
The book was in excellent shape and was delivered quickly. What more does one need? I was a little bit disappointed that the art images in the book where in black and white. Since the meaning of the art is of utmost importance in this book a choice for colour pictures would have been more appropriate, but overall I’m very happy.
Required for an art therapy Helping Relatjonships class. Book content is good, something I’ve come back to for group work during internship well after the class was over.