A clients experience in art therapy
Date
1991
Authors
Quail, Judith Margery
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to gain understanding of a client's experience in art therapy and to demonstrate a research approach that could be useful in gaining knowledge about art therapy phenomena.
A phenomenological study was designed and implemented. A purposive sample of one client was selected who fit the criteria of: having participated in art therapy and experienced it as being therapeutic, being able to articulate her experience, and having completed her art therapy program.
Descriptive data were generated using an unstructured, in-depth interview approach which consisted of the client viewing and discussing individual artworks she had created in an art therapy group over time. The interviews were audiotaped and then transcribed. The focus for the interview was on the client's retrospective accounts of her experience in art therapy including her experience of: the art therapist and group members, the making, the looking at and discussing the art object, and how she experienced art therapy in her day-today life. Following an exhaustive description in the presence of each painting the client was also asked to describe her present experience of the artwork. The researcher strove to attain an attitude of openness, and set aside assumptions as they arose throughout the phases of the data generation and analysis. A phenomenological analysis of the data was conducted that included methods adapted from Giorgi, Wertz, and Colaizzi. An elemental structure was imposed on the data and the findings presented both in a unified structural form and as thematic and descriptive constituents of what the client experienced and how the experience occurred for each element of a client's experience in art therapy. The findings are as follows:
1. Through the art therapist visually and verbally guiding the client out to the art object and repeatedly demonstrating acceptance, respect and care (for her art object as well); the client experienced the discovery of a new point of view and a location within herself from which she could interrelate.
2. In making the art object through intentionally and physically engaging in contacting and expressing her inner experience, making a transition between inner and outer, opening to other objects through an analogal process, and through forming meaning; the client experienced temporality, spatiality, connection, contact, being visible and vulnerable, being motivated to act, dynamic energy and increasing awareness.
3. In looking at and discussing the art object through separating from the art object, discussing it with others, looking at the art object in various ways, and forming meaning; the client experienced a sense of self and other, discovering and receiving awareness, an ordering and integrating of experience with a possible change in world view, and having an inner and outer connection.
4. In looking in the present the client's previous experience with the artwork gave her a starting point from which she could vary her point of view or locate her experience. She experienced relationship between (relationship or lack of relationship), increasing awareness and understanding, an evolving sense of self, becoming visible and wanting to be seen.
5. In her day-to-day living in the world through using some of the processes that she used in art therapy the client experienced a heightened awareness, a flow and connection to her experiencing, being intentional , being located (having presence of mind, being physically embodied), having visibility and being visible. The findings were discussed and interpreted in the context of psychodynamic and humanistic art therapy theory and the significance of the research approach. The results of this study have implications for art therapy theory, research and practice, and for counsellors who use art in a therapeutic context. The findings validate and illuminate various art therapy theoretical viewpoints, refine or more accurately describe art therapy phenomena, and allow new understandings to emerge. The study contributes to understanding of a client's experience in an therapy and demonstrates the usefulness of a phenomenological research method in exploring this experience.