درباره عمل درمانی هنردرمانی خلاق: مدل روان پریشی

Diverse theoretical models have been proposed to explain the therapeutic action of the creative arts therapies. The psychodynamic model, derived from psychoanalytic theory, development psychology, and object relations theory, proposes that inner states are externalized or projected into the arts media, transformed in health-promoting ways and then re-internalized by the client. A thorough reading of creative arts therapy theory, across all modalities, reveals wide use of this model, even among nonpsychodynamic practitioners. This model contrasts with a behavioral model, which posits therapeutic effects from the client’s accessing and then practicing new behaviors (e.g., assertive, relational) through the arts media, expanding their personal repertoire of imagery, movement or roles. The psychodynamic model is also distinct from other creative arts therapy models, including humanistic, spiritual, narrative and aesthetic approaches ( Blatner 1991). If an integrated psychodynamic theory of the creative arts therapies is possible, then clear articulation of its model of therapeutic action will be essential. This article will attempt to explicate this psychodynamic model by identifying its basic assumptions, critiquing its inconsistencies and proposing clarifications that hopefully strengthen its explanatory power. This theoretical discourse will suffer from the limitations inherent in the reductive process of model-building, and in the boundaries set by psychodynamic theory.

A psychodynamic model of therapeutic action in the creative arts therapies is presented, critiqued and clarified. The therapeutic arts/playspace is brought to bear when painful life experience is unable to be transformed through normal processes of recovery such as mourning and reparation, and instead, emerges as repetition compulsion, symptomatic expression and interpersonal strain. The creative arts therapies act through overlapping, at times simultaneous, Movements of entering the arts/playspace, transforming self- and other-representations, and resuming the processes of mourning and reparation. Each movement reflects an essential component of the free flow of consciousness during the therapeutic process, creating journeys filled with entrances and exits, reversals and repairs. This model of therapeutic action of the creative arts therapies is fundamentally a model of internalization, re-collection and moral constraint, and as such, serves as a powerful antidote to processes of externalization and acting out. What is learned in the arts/playspace hopefully may serve as a model for mature thinking and feeling in general: being the capacity to experience and remember without the compulsion to re-enact the original harm. The therapeutic playspace serves as a moral imperative to do no harm, though one has been harmed. The psychodynamic model offers a path toward truth and personal responsibility—rather than Mastery—through which suffering can be transformed into resilience.