Example Of Family Art Therapy Research Paper

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Family Art Therapy is a celebration of family art therapy theories and their wedding to art therapy; it is the incorporation of a family into therapy treatment (Kerr, 2008). Family art therapy focuses on individual treatment as well as nuclear family treatment. Family art therapy brings together classic and postmodern family therapy techniques and theories. It is important to incorporate art into family therapy treatment because of the variety of benefits available. First, the art process offers a variety of significant experiences for families in treatment. Family problems are often are enclosed in unseen structures making them resistive to change. The art process can bypass defenses that stand as obstacles to family members’ interpersonal understanding of each other. The art process allows the possibility for family members to articulate thoughts and emotions through visual means, which allow individual expression to become permanent through the art product.
Second, art-making process is combined with verbal treatment. Art directive may enable a family therapist to have an opportunity to analyze communications patterns by providing a visual record of family’s boundaries, subsystems, and structures. Third, art-making processes provide energy for families that appear deadlocked in hopelessness and anger. The process of making art is creative and an energizing activity, art making process provides needed energy for families and allow families to experience a bit of accomplishment as the involve themselves in art making. Therefore, the creative art making process is liberating. The final benefit is an increase in relationship building for family members (Kerr, 2008).
Family art therapy began with writings and work of Hanna Yaxa Kwiatkowska, who was a former art therapist at National Institute of Mental Health (NIHM) from 1958 to 1972 (Rubin, 2012). Kwiatkowska worked in collaboration with Lyman Wynne. The two therapists developed Family Art Evaluation (FAE), a modification diagnostic assessment for individuals.
Kwiatkowska came up with models for art therapy as a treatment for families. Kwiatkowska trained several art therapists at the National Institute of Mental Health and at the George Washington University. Following the development of Kwiatkowska, several other art assessments were developed for whole families, for couples and families with young children. Family art therapy received recognition from the American Art Therapy Association (Rubin, 2012).
Family art therapy is applicable through different approaches. This paper will discuss two of the approaches to use when dealing with family art therapy. Systematic approach is one of the approaches of family art therapy. In systematic approach, the subject for therapy can be a child and mother, a nuclear family, an extended family, or a society (Rubin, 2012). In systematic approaches, family art therapy will begin when workers come to view a patient’s problems less as internal psychological processes of the individual and more as interpersonal. Open and closed groups’ art studios have been in existence since the early days of art therapy (Rubin, 2012).
Structured gestalt approach with a client is the second approach that is applicable in the family art therapy. Structured gestalt approach with a client is a way of working through verbal/visual perceptions, and is significant in illustrating visual thinking in action. Structured gestalt approach with a client is useful in demonstrating how thinking with the senses may be part of a therapeutic process. In this approach, a client creates images, which correspond to their behavioral patterns. Therefore, the dynamics of perceived images in drawings may be changed into recognition of behavioral patterns. Later on, perceived images in drawings may be changed to an expansion of clients’ awareness of how they can bring changes in their existence (Rubin, 2012). Structured gestalt approach with a client asks clients to come up with sequential drawings that are representing their responses to a series of words naming emotionally laden experiences.
The complete series is a Gestalt that is a configuration created by the clients. Each drawing is part of the sequence. When discussing the drawings, arrange the drawings so that they are seen at once, making it possible to pick any drawing for selective study. When observing the drawings focus is on form and structure as a content. In observing the drawings, scanning is done on all the drawings together so as to look for visual patterning that make sense in terms of client’s real behaviors. Structure gestalt approach with a client gets resources and perceptions in order to foster the client’s healthy growth and integration (Rubin, 2012).
Family art therapy has four core concepts, which describe a key aspect of family life. These four concepts can be useful to an art therapist in organizing understanding of a family. Life cycle is the first concept. Different families have different natural developmental life cycle with predictable and identifiable phases and crisis points. Events and changes of preceding generations influence how a family handles critical transition points in its development. A family that is currently comfortable with one phase of the life cycle may not necessarily be comfortable in a subsequent phase or phases. The second core concept is communication or behavior. All forms of behavior in family therapy are regarded as communication. Within the family therapy, communication unfolds in a circular manner instead of in a linear or cause-and-effect manner.
Families respond to unacceptable deviations from their habitual circular patterns of behavior by initiating interactions that pull the deviant members back into the familiar ways of relating (Rubin, 2012). A crisis is most likely to occur when a family’s automatic responses fails correct the deviant behavior. The third core concept of family art therapy is structure. Every family has a perceptible structure, this means that every family has a set of rules that govern emotional relationships between the family members. For example, physical and emotional boundaries within a family are part of that family structure, and they determine interactions or behaviors which are acceptable and which are not acceptable to the family’s unwritten norms or rules.
A family therapist may invite a family to come and interact as they would interact at home in order to observe family structure (Rubin). The fourth core concept of family art therapy is unconscious life of the family. Every family has an unconscious subjective life of thoughts, representations, attachments and emotions of self and others that are experienced internally in each of its members (Rubin, 2012).The unconscious activities affect a family. Unconscious activities determine how emotions are expressed, how certain structure evolve within a family, and how relationships are experienced. The nature of expectations, wishes, and internal projections can help bind a family together in healthy or unhealthy ways. Therapists who use this principle are interpretive and exploratory in their work with families with the intention of bringing unconscious features of family process into awareness for reflection or contemplation (Rubin, 2012).
In twenty-first-century family art therapy, family art therapists use graphic expression to promote psychological healing and growth with an obligation to thinking systematically. Understanding a client’s symptoms as inseparably related to current ongoing dynamics in his/her personal environment, the family art therapist involves some or all of a client’s family in art-making with the goal of creating change throughout the family system. Art therapy may be adapted to support any number of theoretical approaches to family therapy (Rubin, 2012).
During family art therapy, family art therapist uses family art representations to educate their clients. Family Art therapists use the family art representations to help their clients make effective associative references to the art and to educate them. Examining historical family images is relevant to the work of family art therapists because archival images explain those human associations and values applicable to evolving family theme (Kerr, 2008).

References

Kerr, C. (2008). Family art therapy. New York: Routledge.
Rubin, J. (2012). Approaches to art therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel.