Art-making in Clinical Training for Conceptualization, Integration, and Self-awareness

Leonardo, Vol. 16, No.3, pp. 241-242, 1983 Printed in Great Britain 0024-094X/83$3.00+0.00 Pergamon Press Ltd. ART-MAKING IN CLINICAL TRAINING FOR CONCEPTUALIZATION, INTEGRATION AN[) SELFAWARENESS ' Harriet Wadeson* and Pat Allen** 1. Introduction The work of psychotherapy is often more of an art than a science. The psychotherapist combines the scientific and the artistic, the rational and the intuitive, to create new syntheses. Thes~ same principles can be applied to clinical training as a creative endeavour in itself. Our clinical training programme places ~mphasis o~ creativity in learning in an effort to develop therapists who will make the therapeutic engagement into a creative encounter on the part of both therapist and client. To this end we assign specific projects involving the complex process of art-making to aid the student-therapist in cognition. integration. self-awareness and creativity. The personal attachment to creative work enables the student to become involved in learning on a deeper level, and the autonomy and sense of achievement enhances the confidence and self-esteem important to the beginning therapist. 2. Modes of Learning Educators have begun to recognize that different people learn most productively in different ways: auditorially, kinaesthetically , visually, etc. Educators are also beginning to realize that ~aterial with an emotional impact is often more thoroughly integrated and longer retained than learning that is apprehended at an intellectual level only. As a result of both these considerations, traditional didactic teaching is not always the most effective approach. In our training programme, the use of art-making is based upon the importance we accord visual thinking. Arnheim has written a great deal to convince us that thinking is visual. He notes that even in ancient times Aristotle said: "the soul never thinks without an image", thus "Image-making serves to make sense of the world" [1]. Arnheim believes that the arts are the most valuable means of strengthening the perceptual component without which productive thinking is impossible in any field of endeavour. In order to make an idea visible Arnheim says that its essential traits must be grasped. "The efforts to visualize and thereby define means more than rendering observations on paper. It means to work out the problem making it portrayable" [2]. Therefore, the art assignment gives us as instructors an accurate picture of whether the material has been grasped cognitively. 3. Cognition Teachers must understand how students think in order to design tasks that will facilitate true learning. Arnheim believes that the arts are the most valuable means of strengthening the perceptual component without which productive thinking is impossible. The art project shows more clearly areas of *Psycho!ogist, School of Art and Design, Post Office Box 4348, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60680, U.S.A. U Assistant professor. weakness or confusion as well as areas of successful understanding. Problem areas can be addressed through the art product to ~urther student understanding. But more than simply demonstrating a grasp of conceptual formulations, the actual making of the product deepens and broadens the student's comprehension. When theoretical material is translated into pictures or obj~cts the theory is made visible. One example is the assignment to portray Freud's famous personality theory with its component parts of id, ego and superego. If the student has grasped the interrelation of these component parts, the model created to represent them will have a structural integrity. To accomplish the goal a student must make use of creative metaphorical thinking, and struggle with art materials to make his/her model. In this struggle and its solution learning and integration take place. Discrepancies in the model become evident to the student and indicate a need to master aspects of theory, unlike in writing a paper where a restatement of theory may mean verbal facility rather than learning. To demonstrate their understanding of the major psychiatric syndromes, students are assigned to create art objects representing each of the following: depression, mania, schizophrenia, anxiety-disorder, substance abuse, and childhood emotional disturbance. Each syndrome is to be recognizable. The results of this assignment have brought students much closer to an integrated, empathic understanding of mental illnesses than more traditional approaches. 4...