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Tue, 11 Mar 2008
Art Activity to Try
Topic: Self Help
ART ACTIVITY TO TRY From the Art Therapy Studio by Lisa Mitchell #1 Problem solving Drawing is an excellent tool for discovering solutions to problems or initiating positive behavior change. All you need are a couple of sheets of blank paper and crayons or markers. Here are a few simple steps to follow. - Choose a situation that you'd like to change. Visualize it. Draw the situation as you see it. Make your drawing real and honest. Don't worry about how realistic your drawing looks it's the expression that counts.
- Imagine how you want this situation changed. Imagine what it would look like to have your present reality be different. On another sheet of paper, draw this imagined future.
- Putting the changed situation last and the present situation first, place five sheets of paper in between. In five steps, illustrate how you can get from the present to the imagined, improved situation. Don't worry about finding the “right” way. There is no right way. Simply draw and see what you discover.
- Look closely at your five in-between drawings. Make sure that each step flows naturally into the other. You may find that there is a big leap between one drawing and the next. For example, if you are looking for a path in one drawing, and all of the sudden you find it in the next. Or, if you are caged in one drawing and then you break free. Ask yourself how that leap occurred and add another drawing that depicts the answer to your question.
- Tell the story of your drawings to yourself or someone you trust. This story may have important clues that will illuminate the solution to your current problem.
Here is one person's example: The situation that Bobbi wanted to change was her current work situation. She didn't know how to get from the rigid structure of her current job to a more creative and personal endeavor. As her drawings go from present to imagined, she becomes happier and the colors become lighter. When asked, “How did that happen? That was quite a leap!” she could pinpoint a change that happened between drawing #1 and #2. She had drawn herself looking away from the rigid structure of her current job and looking toward her desired outcome. She was elated to find that she had been focusing so closely on her current job atmosphere that she had been holding herself back from making any changes. When she saw that her first step was to turn toward her new endeavor she became more open to opportunities. She was excited to find that there were opportunities already presenting themselves that she hadn't even noticed.
Posted by a.r.t
at 22:25 EDT
Updated: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:32 EDT
Fri, 22 Feb 2008
Art Interactive~online
Topic: Self Help
Making art is about creating something that represents an idea or vision that is all your own. It involves making choices about materials, shapes, composition, color, texture, and even scale. This art interactive will show you a few different types of sculpture in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and encourage you to explore your own artistic expression by making a piece of art online.
Posted by a.r.t
at 07:27 EST
Tue, 19 Feb 2008
Reclaiming the inner artist to heal the soul
Topic: Self Help
The Self-help Healing Arts Journal believes that the healing arts (all art) has the ability to help heal emotional wounds. This site provides a safe place to help you reclaim your inner artist, improve your self esteem and reach your dreams. Do you remember when you were a child and how much you loved coloring, cutting and pasting? Was your tongue sticking out the side of your mouth in total concentration? Don't you miss that? The Self-help Healing Arts Journal is here to help you reclaim that innner child artist. Art healing is not about being an artist, its about re-awakening the inner child who loved to color, cut, paste, and use her imagination in wonderous ways. Don't worry if you think you can't draw, paint, or write. This place is for your creative art healing, no one needs to see your artwork except you.  I am not an art therapist, counselor, or psychologist. I am an artist who has intuitively used art since childhood to heal my soul, improve my self esteem, reach my goals, deal with death, and become a happier, healthier person.
In the Self-help Healing Arts Journal you will find healing art projects, creative writing prompts, collage, and journaling projects using motivational and inspirational quotes, lyrics and poems. There will also be clip art to print and use in your art projects, examples of my personal healing art work, and techniques to create song bits to retrain your brain. I'll also review self-help books, cds and tapes; and books on journaling, art journaling and collage. There are also articles and information on art healing (and art therapy), the healing power of artwork and music, self-esteem tests and questionaires for self-analysis. As well as many other topics related to how art can be used as a healing process by everyone. And for those who would like to share your healing art work, there will be an online art gallery for Self Help Healing Arts Journal community members in the upcoming future. The Self-help Healing Arts Journal believes that there is no right or wrong way in self-help art healing; there is only experimentation and exploration, learning and laughing, coloring and crying, pasting and humming..."
Posted by a.r.t
at 17:54 EST
Updated: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:58 EST
Mon, 18 Feb 2008
The Pablo Picasso Alzheimer's Therapy
Topic: Neuroscience
By RANDY KENNEDY The New York TimesPublished: October 30, 2005 SITTING the other day in front of Picasso's rapturous "Girl Before a Mirror" at the Museum of Modern Art, Rueben Rosen wore the dyspeptic look of a man with little love for modern art. But the reason he gave for disliking the painting was not one you might expect to hear from an 88-year-old former real estate broker. "It's like he's trying to tell a story using words that don't exist," Mr. Rosen said finally of Picasso, fixing the painter's work with a critic's stare. "He knows what he means, but we don't." This chasm of understanding is one that Mr. Rosen himself stares into every day. He has midstage Alzheimer's disease, as did the rest of the men and women who were sitting alongside him in a small semicircle at the museum, all of them staring up at the Picasso. It was a Tuesday, and the museum was closed, but if it had been open other visitors could have easily mistaken the group for any guided tour. Mr. Rosen and his friends did not wear the anxious, confused looks they had worn when they first arrived at the museum. They did not quarrel in the way that those suffering from Alzheimer's sometimes do. And when they talked about the paintings, they did not repeat themselves or lose the thread of the discussion, as they often do at the long-term care home where most of them live in Palisades, N.Y. At one point, a member of the tour, Sheila Barnes, 82, a quick-witted former newspaper editor who suffers from acute short-term memory loss, was even uncharacteristically aware of the limitations of her memory. "If I've told this story before, then somebody just say, 'Cool it, Sheila,' " she announced, laughing. She was a test subject, in a sense, in a growing effort to use art as a therapeutic tool for those in the grip of Alzheimer's. Art therapy, both appreciating art and making it, has been used for decades as a nonmedical way to help a wide variety of people - abused children, prisoners and cancer and Alzheimer's patients. But much of this work has taken place in nursing homes and hospitals. Now museums like the Modern and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, are trying to bring it into their galleries, using their collections as powerful ways to engage minds damaged by dementia. It seems to be working, though no one knows exactly how. While extensive research has been conducted on the effects of music and performing arts on brain function - the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function in the Bronx has been studying the phenomenon for a decade now - there has been comparatively little work done in the visual arts. What exists mostly is a stockpile of anecdotal evidence, encouraging but murky. Why did Willem de Kooning become more productive, almost maniacally so, as he descended into Alzheimer's? Why does frontotemporal dementia, a relatively rare form of non-Alzheimer's brain disease, cause some people who had no previous interest or aptitude for art to develop remarkable artistic talent and drive? "Certainly it's not just a visual experience - it's an emotional one," said Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and writer. "In an informal way I have often seen quite demented patients recognize and respond vividly to paintings and delight in painting at a time when they are scarcely responsive to words and disoriented and out of it. I think that recognition of visual art can be very deep." The Museum of Modern Art began to experiment with short, focused tours a year ago, working with an Alzheimer's care company called Hearthstone, based in Lexington, Mass. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, began to reach out to Alzheimer's patients more than five years ago, offering tours alongside those for other disabled groups. And the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science in Greenwich, Conn., also offers tours, in addition to conducting a program in which it sends educators to Alzheimer's care facilities to help with art therapy. At the Modern, which plans to expand the Alzheimer's program next year to families and other care providers, the effects of the tours are often striking and seem to speak - in a world of reproduction - to the power of the original. (For now, the tours focus on representational art, on the theory that it's an easier touchstone for narratives and memories. There are no Pollocks, for example.) Besides improving patients' moods for hours and even days, the tours seem to demonstrate that the disease, while diminishing sufferers' abilities in so many ways, can also sometimes spark interpretive and expressive powers that had previously lay hidden. Mr. Rosen, for instance, who had little interest in art when he was younger, talked with ease and inventiveness about the composition of Rousseau's "Sleeping Gypsy." "If you met these people back where they lived on an ordinary day, you simply would not see them being this articulate and this assured," said John Zeisel, the president of Hearthstone, who conceived the program with Francesca Rosenberg, the Modern's director of community and access programs. On that Tuesday, as the group of two men and three women and a volunteer museum educator wound their way slowly through the empty galleries, Kerry Mills, who runs the residence in Palisades, pointed out one elderly man in particular, Frank Ertola, a former New York City police detective who was making his third visit to the museum. Mr. Ertola, 86, burly with a thick sweep of white hair, had been living in the residence for almost three years and had recently begun to struggle with his emotions. "The smallest things in the world irritate him, and it's become very hard to get him engaged," Ms. Mills said. But as he sat on a folding stool in front of Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World," he smiled, listened and at one point - after abandoning a wheelchair he had requested when he arrived - stood and speculated on why there was an ellipse of mown grass surrounding the haunting farmhouse in the painting's upper right corner. "It's to let you know that someone lives there," he said. Later, in front of Matisse's "Dance," he was asked to provide a title for the painting, and on a notecard wrote "Dance of the Beauties." He smiled rakishly when asked to explain. "I see a naked woman?" he said, shrugging. "I think it's beautiful." Ms. Mills was surprised to see him so talkative. "He was like he was last year," she said later. "He's such a fun person and such a gentleman, and all those things come out when he's at the museum." More than four million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease, and the number is expected to rise as the nation's overall population ages. With no cure on the horizon, caregivers are increasingly exploring art as a way to help manage the disease, and they take encouragement from the results with music. Dr. Sacks noted that exposure to music can even result in lowered dosages for patients being medicated for cognitive and emotional disorders. One avenue of thinking about both music and art, he said, is that it engages parts of the brain that remain intact long after the onset of dementia and that have to do with procedural memory - the kind that governs routine activities like walking, eating, shaving. One musician whom Dr. Sacks has observed has almost entirely lost his memory, but his musical memory is intact. "Nietzsche used to say that we listened to music with our muscles," he said. The question is whether a similar mechanism is at work in making and looking at art. The National Institute on Aging held a conference in Alexandria, Va., last year to allow researchers to compare notes on Alzheimer's and artistic activity. One speaker, Bruce L. Miller, clinical director of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, said he believed that even sitting and looking at art is much more active than most people assume, and such activity could have positive effects on damaged brains. "There's a lot of general excitement in this area, but not much known about it," he said later in an interview. "I think there is, tucked in there, a research question that really hasn't been answered yet, which is: by looking at or making art, is there a way to improve the brains of those with Alzheimer's?" Museum and Alzheimer's care officials say that at the very least, they see temporary but palpable, and moving, improvement in the small group of people who have participated in the tours. Hannah Goodwin, the manager of accessibility at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, recounted watching an elderly man react to a Stuart Davis painting. "Very spontaneously, he just starting talking about the painting and about the time period in New York," she said. "He was talking about jazz and improvisation and everything. It was very beautiful and unexpected. There was this absolute clarity and connection that I think was really sparked by the painting." Irene Copeland Brenton, 73, one of the visitors to the Modern on that Tuesday, suffers from a kind of Alzheimer's that has made it very difficult for her to read and to find the right words to say. But in front of the Wyeth and later the Rousseau, she was almost loquacious. Her husband, Myron, said that while specific memories of the museum might evaporate, she seemed to retain a kind of emotional memory long after the visit ended. When he reminded her that she had visited the museum and that Ms. Mills had written an account of it, he said, "her face lit up." "She really wanted to hear about the whole thing," he said. "It seemed the experience relived itself when I prompted her." That day at the museum, looking longingly at the figure lying in a field at the bottom of the Wyeth painting, she seemed to identify deeply with the thin young woman in the dress, her left hand reaching out toward the farmhouse. "You can't see her face," Ms. Brenton said, "but looking at her you get the feeling she's happy." She was asked why. "Because you know she's going to get to the house," she said, adding: "I'd like to go into that house, too."
Posted by a.r.t
at 21:20 EST
Updated: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:29 EST
Sun, 17 Feb 2008
Art Therapy and Clinical Neuroscience in Action
Topic: Neuroscience
Art Therapy and Clinical Neuroscience in Action
By Noah Hass-Cohen, M.A., A.T.R.-B.C., L.M.F.T.
(Los Angeles, 2006)
Art therapy is a visual-expressive approach to relational therapies in which non-verbal expressions are made easier by creating simple forms, colors or cut-outs. Three decades of clinical experience have shown me how the approach can provide clients with sensory integrated experiences that facilitate change and safely counterbalance traumatic environmental influences. The art therapy processes involved in these experiences help regulate and recruit stress and fear-based subcortical right hemisphere quick stress-survival responses necessary for therapeutic outcomes (Bigsiach & Berti, 1990; Leusbrink, 2004; Langhinrichsen & Tucker, 1990; Ledoux, 1996, 2002; Springer & Deutsch, 1989; Martindale, 1990, Schore 2003). Verbal discussion of clients’ art products can further help enlist explicit memory and consolidate verbal autobiographies by bringing the left hemisphere, and the hippocampus online (Cozolino, 2002; Siegel, 1999). Unique to these art-therapy conversations is that they capitulate on right hemispheric language (Kane, 2004).
Art therapists encourage clients to take action by putting the image forward in a tangible, sensory and visible art expression. This is a concrete, sensory-oriented activity (Ogden & Minton, 2000) within a therapeutic relationship that results in an art product (Achterberg, 1999; Camic, 1999; Naparstek, 1994). The art can uniquely assist necessary therapist-client interpersonal alliance and attachment processes (Main, 2002) as art-making and art products act as a regulatory mechanism that mimics the reiterative dynamics of approach and avoidance observed in mother-child play (Mead, 2001). Art therapists can use this modified therapeutic alliance to safely mediate vivid imagery that is congruent with internalized change imagery that the person already has working for his/herself (Anderson,, 1997; Naprastek, 1994). Then the art therapist can provide specific feedback in the form of art therapy directives and interpretation (Hass-Cohen, 2003; Riley, 1994).
The art therapist facilitates simple but novel art activities that are easily experienced by the amygdala as interpersonally safer, as well as help generate more active coping responses (Phelps, Delgado, Nearing & Ledoux, 2004). This benign sub-cortical perception of the art product can stimulate an inwardly attuned, alert state that supports hippocampal processing of new information. Safe symbolic sensory experiences within a therapeutic relationship can bring online a heightened sense of perceived control and well being (Malchiodi, 1999). The sensory-laden vivid artwork created in session can be experienced as real affective experiences accessible to the relational brain. When attention is sufficiently focused, it is as if the mind does not seem to qualitatively distinguish between a real image and an imagined image (Cappas, Andres-Hyman, & Davidson,, 2005; Tart, 1990). This makes sense, as the processing of internal and external imagery processing share mostly equivalent neurological processes (Faw, 1997; Martindale 1990). It is during these states that art-imagery symbolism also seems to have the unexplained ability to provide symbolic clues about immune system function (Ferencik, Novak, Rovensky, 1998; Ferencik, & Stvrtinova,, 1997). These clues can assist in medical arts therapies practices (Achterberg et al., 1994; Brigham, 1994; Dantzer, 1997; Hiramoto et al., 1999; Glaser & Kiecolt–Glaser, 1998; 1999; Malchiodi, 1993, 1999; Naparstek 1994; Spiegel, et al., 1989; Vick & Sexton-Radek, 2005).
To summarize, it is likely that art therapy can help provide distraction and relief from stress (Sapolski 1998, Cozolino, 2002), update memory systems (Ledoux 1998; Dadds, Cutmore, Bovbjerg, Redd, 1997), mediate a compromised immune system (Pennebaker, 1997) and facilitate coherent autobiographical narratives. Foundational to future discussions is the consideration of visual, perceptual, and attentional processes with a tie-in to survival-based responses (Buck, 1992), meaning-making (Siegel,1999) and forward-functioning executive systems (Faw, 2003). Through relational verbal experiences and concretized art making memory, emotion and cognition are called into bodily action.
Noah Hass-Cohen, M.A. is the founder and director of the art therapy program at Phillips Graduate Institute, a 60 units masters degree in psychology. The program focus is on the integration of art therapy with clinical neuroscience and marriage family therapy theories. Noah is in the process of completing a clinical doctorate degree in psychology where she is pursuing her interest in neuropsychological and psychodiagnostic assessment. In her article, she outlines in an isomorphic nutshell the clinical neuroscience areas pertinent to art therapy. She wishes to emphasize that she is looking forward to a time where neuroimaging and other clinical advances will be able to provide empirical support for the ideas and hypotheses presented in her brief article. In her private practice in Encino Noah provides psychotherapy and consultation. She can be reached at noah@pgi.edu or 818.386.5611.
References
Achterberg, J. (1999). Imagery, ceremony, and healing rituals: Interview by Bonnie Horrigan. Alternative Therapies Journal, 5(5), 77- 82
Achterberg, J., Dossy, L., Gordon, J. S., Hegedus, C., Herrmann, M.W., & Nelson, R. (1994). Mind-body interventions: Panel report to the National Institutes of Health on Alternative Medical Systems and practices in the United States. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Anderson, H. (1997). Conversation, language and possibilities. New York: Basic Books.
Bigsiach, E., & Berti, A. (1990). Chapter 3: Waking images and neural activity. In Kunzendorf, R.G. & Sheikh A.A. (Eds.) The psychophysiology of mental imagery: Theory, research and application. New York: Baywoood Publishing Company, Inc.
Brigham D.D. (1994). Imagery for getting well. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Buck, R. (1999). The biological affects: A typology. Psychological Review, 106(2), 301-336
Cappas, N. M., Andres-Hyman, R., & Davidson, L. (2005). What psychotherapists can begin to learn from neuroscience: Seven principles of a brain based psychotherapy. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 42(3), 374-383.
Camic, P. M. (1999). Chapter 2: Expanding treatment possibilities for chronic pain through the expressive arts. In C. Malchiodi (ed) Medical arts therapy with adults. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Cozolino, L. (2002). The neuroscience of psychotherapy. New York, London: Norton.
Dadds, M.R., Cutmore, T.R.H, Bovbjerg, D.H., & Redd, W.H. (1997). Imagery in human classical conditioning. Psychological Bulletin, 122(1), 89 –103
Faw, B. (2003). Pre-frontal executive committee for perception, working memory, attention, long-term memory, motor control, and thinking: A tutorial review. Consciousness and Cognition, 12(2003), 83-139.
Faw, B. (1997). Outlining a brain model of mental imaging abilities. Neuroscience and Biobehavorial Reviews, 21(3), 283-288.
Ferencik, M., Novak, M., & Rovensky, J. (1998). Relations and interactions between the immune and neuroendocrine systems. Bratislavske Lekaraske Listy (Bratislava Medical Journal), 99(8-9), 454-64.
Ferencik, M., & Stvrtinova, V. (1997). Is the immune system our sixth sense? Relation between the immune and neuroendocrine systems. Bratislavske Lekarske Listy (Bratislava Medical Journal), 98(4), 187.
Glaser, R., & Kiecolt –Glaser, J. K. (1998). Stress-associated immune modulation: Relevance to viral infection and chronic fatigue syndrome. The American Journal of Medicine, 105(3A:35S-42S)
Hass-Cohen, N. (2003). Art therapy mind body approaches. Progress: Family Systems Research and Therapy, 12, 24-38.
Hiramoto, R. N., Solvason, H. B., Hsuch, C.M., Rogers, C.F., Pemissie, S., Hiramoto, N.S., Gauthier, D.K., Lorden, J.F., & Ghanta, V. K. (1999). Psychoneuroendocrine immunology perception of stress can alter body temperature and natural killer cell activity. International Journal of Neuroscience, 98(1-2), 950-1.
Kane, J. (2004). Poetry as right-hemispheric language. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11(5-6), 21-59.
Klorer, G., (2005). Expressive therapy with severely maltreated children: neuroscience contributions. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 22(4), 213-220
Kiecolt–Glaser, J.K., & Glaser, R. (1999). Psychonueroimmunology and cancer: Fact or fiction? The European Journal of Cancer. 35(11), 1603-7.
Langhinrichsen, J. & Tucker, D.M. (1990). Chapter 8: Neuropsychological concepts of mood, imagery and performance. In Kunzendorf, R.G., & Sheikh, A.A. (ed.) The psychophysiology of mental imagery : Theory, research and application. New York: Baywoood Publishing Company, Inc.
LeDoux, J. (2002). The synaptic self. New York, NY: Viking Penguin
LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Lusebrink, V.B. (1990). Imagery and visual expression in therapy. New York & London: Plenum Press.
Lusebrink, V. B. (2004). Art therapy and the brain: An attempt to understand the underlying processes of art expression in therapy. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 21(3): 125-135.
Malchiodi, C.A. (ed.1999). Medical art therapy with adults. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Malchiodi, C.A. (1993). Editorial: Introduction to special issue: Art and medicine. Journal of the American Art Therapy Association. 10(2), 66-69
Main, M. (2002). Coherence vs. incoherence in behavior and discourse: Overview and new directions. In Attachment: From early childhood through the lifespan. Los Angeles: UCLA Conference, March 2002.
Martindale, C. (1990). Chapter 4: Creative imagination and neural activity. In Kunzendorf, R.G. & Sheikh, A.A. (Eds.). The psychophysiology of mental imagery: Theory, research and application. New York: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc.
Mead, M. (2001). Growing up in New Guinea: A comparative study of primitive education (1st Perennial Classics ed.) New York: Harper Perennial.
Naparstek, B. (1994). Staying well with guided imagery. USA: Warner Books.
Ogden, P., & Minton K., (2000). Sensorimotor psychotherapy: One method for processing traumatic memory. Traumatology, VI (3)
Pennebaker, J.W. (1997). Opening up: The healing power of expressing emotions. New York: Guilford Press.
Phelps, E. A., Delgado, M. R., Nearing, K. I. & LeDoux, J. E. (2004). Extinction learning in humans: Role of the amygdale and vmPFC. Neuron, 43, 897-905.
Riley, S. (1999). Chapter 9: External stress: The impact of illness on the family structure: In Malchiodi, C. (Ed). Medical arts therapy with adults. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Riley, S., & Malchiodi, C.A. (1994). Integrative approaches to family art therapy. Chicago, IL: Magnolia Street Publishers.
Sapolsky, R. (1998). Why zebras don’t get ulcers. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.
Schore, A.N. (2003). The right hemisphere is dominant in clinical work: Implications of recent neuroscience for psychotherapists. In New developments in attachment theory: Applications to clinical practice. Los Angeles: UCLA Conference, March 2003.
Siegel, D.J. (1999). The developing mind: Towards a neurobiology of interpersonal experience. New York, London: The Guilford Press.
Spiegel, D., Bloom, J.R., Kraemer, H.C., & Gottheil, E. (1989). Effect of psychosocial treatment on survival of patients with metastic breast cancer. Lancet, 2(8668): 888-891.
Springer, S., & Deutsch, G. (1989). Left brain, right brain (3rd ed.). New York: W.H. Freeman & Company
Tart, C.T. (1990). Chapter 2: PSI mediated emergent interactionism and the nature of consciousness. In Kunzendorf, R.G., & Sheikh, A.A. (eds.). The psychophysiology of mental imagery: Theory, research and application. New York: Baywoood Publishing Company, Inc.
Vick M. R., & Sexton-Radek K. (2005). Art and migraine: Researching the relationship between artmaking and pain experience. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 22(4),193-204.
Posted by a.r.t
at 19:13 EST
Sat, 16 Feb 2008
Art Therapy in Neurology
Topic: Neuroscience
 Art Therapy in Neurology was established in order to promote an understanding of the particular issues associated with working with clients who have neurological problems. The human brain is fascinating and it can seem a huge challenge to understand how it functions 'normally' let alone after damage, and how psychotherapy can best be applied. Although the number of art therapists working in this field is growing, art therapy is still working towards becoming one of the core services alongside physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and neuropsychology. Our group has been meeting since October 2000 and we were granted British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT) Special Interest Group status in October 2002. At present we have a membership of 14 people but we are keen to support and learn from other colleagues working in this context and hope to grow in number. We would like to reach people working in isolation and to open up channels of communication. There are probably many art therapists who have worked as a one-off with clients who have had a brain injury and who might like to reflect on the process. Our client base is wide and varied ranging from people who have congenital disorders such as cerebral palsy, through those with degenerative conditions like multiple sclerosis, to people whose lives have suddenly changed following an acquired brain injury perhaps after an RTA or stroke. Some of our members work in hospital rehab units, others in resource centres in the community whilst others make domiciliary visits to clients in their own homes. The group meets 3 times a year at different venues, although we are looking to find a permanent base somewhere midway between Edinburgh and London. Our meetings combine networking, support, learning and discussion. We have had guest speakers - Professor Frank Besag, Consultant Neuropsychiatrist gave us a talk on Epilepsy; Dr. Shona Mackintosh, Clinical Psychologist lead a discussion about Systems and how they impact on the work we do; and this January Dr. Colin Murray-Parkes OBE spoke about Bereavement and Psycho-Social Transition Theory. One of our members, Iris von Sass Hyde, presented her MA dissertation 'The Janus Response' at the 3rd World Congress on Neuro Rehabilitation in Venice, April 2002 which was well-received - a great step for art therapy. Some topics for discussion at our meetings have included other ways of working - psychodynamic vs cognitive; the Personal Incident Recall Exercise; countertransference issues; the Arts in Health Initiative; and the Aesthetic Object. We always come away very full. Art therapy in neurology is a rich area of work which has great potential for research. We will soon be completing this website which will include a literature list and a calendar of events. We also plan to build a stock of study resources with a view to training and development, including CPD. We would like to forge links with other professions working in neurology and welcome MDT teaching input. Future topics for study include vicarious traumatisation and how to deal with the cumulative effects of tragedy, plus disinhibition and dealing with violence. An article for the Headway Newsletter is in the pipeline. Headway is an organisation which supports people with brain injuries and their carers/families. They specifically requested an article about art therapy and brain injury because of the growing interest in this work. A £5000 'Awards for All' lottery grant for local groups has been given to White Lodge Centre, Chertsey, Surrey in order to launch an Outreach Art Therapy Service for people with physical disabilities. It will provide much needed follow-on therapy for people discharged from hospital as well as offering group work in residential homes or day centres. Further grants will be applied for in order to keep the work going and to expand the service. As this report is being prepared there are 3 new posts being advertised for art therapists in neurology. It is an exciting time.
Posted by a.r.t
at 08:25 EST
Fri, 15 Feb 2008
Neurology of the Arts: Painting, Music, Literature
Topic: Neuroscience
edited by F Clifford Rose (London Neurological Centre, UK)
This book is the first attempt to provide a basis for the interaction of the brain and nervous system with painting, music and literature. The introduction deals with the problems of creativity and which parts of the brain are involved. Then an overview of art presents the multiple facets, such as anatomy, and the myths appearing in ancient descriptions of conditions such as polio and migraine. The neurological basis of painters like Goya and van Gogh is analysed. Other chapters in the section on art cover da Vinci's mechanics and the portrayal of epilepsy. The section on music concerns the parts of the brain linked to perception and memory, as well as people who cannot appreciate music, and the effect of music on intelligence and learning (the Mozart effect). The section on literature relates to Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Conan Doyle, James Joyce and the poetry of one of England's most famous neurologists, Henry Head. Contents: Introduction: - The Cerebral Localization of Creativity (G K York)
- Neural Concept Formation and Art: Dante, Michelangelo, Wagner (S Zeki)
- Art:
- The Neurology of Art: An Overview (F Clifford Rose)
- Galen and the Artful Symmetry of the Brain (J Rocca)
- Leonardo da Vinci's Mechanical Art and the Origin of Modern Neurology (D Steinberg)
- The Art of Sir Charles Bell (C Gardner-Thorpe)
- Normal and Pathological Gait as Inspiration for the Artist (G Aubert)
- Epilepsy in Pictorial Art (B A Engelsen)
- Music:
- Brain Mapping in Musicians (M E Charness & G Schlaug)
- The Cerebral Localisation of Musical Perception and Musical Memory (H Platel et al.)
- Musical Instruments as Metaphors in Brain Science: From René Descartes to John Hughlings Jackson (C U M Smith)
- The Music of Madness: Franklin's Armonica and the Vulnerable Nervous System (S Finger & D A Gallo)
- The Mozart Effect (J R Hughes & J J Fino)
- The Amusias (J Warren)
- Music and the Brain: A Musicologist's Viewpoint (P Robertson)
- The Convulsionary Samuel Johnson and the Miaowing of Mozart (M Keynes)
- Literature:
- The Influence of Shakespeare on Charcot's Neurological Teaching (C G Goetz)
- Epilepsy in Literature: Writers' Experiences and Their Reflections in Literary Works (P Wolf)
- The Aetiology of Dostoyevsky's Epilepsy (H Kierulf)
- Neurology and Sherlock Holmes (E W Massey)
- James Joyce in a Clinical Context (J B Lyons)
- Neurology in the Nordic Sagas (R Stien)
- The Poetry of Henry Head (C Gardner-Thorpe)
- Silas Marner, George Eliot and Catalepsy (F Clifford Rose)
Readership: Laypeople interested in painting, music and literature; doctors and neurologists.
“This is an unusual and often amusing book … This volume not only is less ephemeral but also provides some lasting tibits of information on the interrelation between the neurosciences and the arts.”
“... the chapter by Semir Zeki truly is a thoughtful and provocative analysis of the relationship between art and neurology.”
“Besides the giddying questions just discussed about the basis of creativity and the aesthetic response, these connections include the neurological disorders of artists, representations of these disorders in art, the inspiration of medical work by artistic example and vice versa. All these and more are touched upon in this entertaining collection of essays.”
| 452pp | Pub. date: Apr 2004 | | ISBN 978-1-86094-368-3 |
Posted by a.r.t
at 08:27 EST
Thu, 14 Feb 2008
Carolus Horn -When the Images in the Brain Decay
Topic: Neuroscience
Maurer K, Prvulovic D Bogousslavsky J, Boller F (eds): Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists. Front Neurol Neurosci. Basel, Karger, 2005, vol 19, pp 101-111 (DOI: 10.1159/000085608)Abstract:Here we analyze the artwork of Carolus Horn, a famous German artist. Despite developing Alzheimer’s dementia (AD), he continued to produce drawings and paintings until he died. There are impressive changes in spatial relations, in the preference of colors, in the size of objects and other aspects of his paintings. The most prominent change is the loss of 3-dimensionality, followed by a continuous simplification and finally a decay of all objects and structures. We point to the relation between these changes in his artwork and the course of neuropsychological and neuropathological processes in AD.
Posted by a.r.t
at 09:56 EST
Wed, 13 Feb 2008
Understanding Van Gogh's Night: Bipolar Disorder1
Topic: Neuroscience
Carota A, Iaria G, Berney A, Bogousslavsky J Bogousslavsky J, Boller F (eds): Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists. Front Neurol Neurosci. Basel, Karger, 2005, vol 19, pp 121-131 (DOI: 10.1159/000085627)Abstract:Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) imparted in his art a deep essence of life, and in such a unique way that many would say it is possible to experience it vicariously by looking at his paintings even once. In 10 years, while exerting mental and physical efforts that may well have contributed to his premature death, he produced an impressive number of masterpieces. However, the specific neurological disorder Van Gogh suffered and how this may have influenced his art is still not clear. The combination of his eccentric personality, irascible temper, unstable moods and prolific creativity, makes the understanding of his illness a very complex endeavor and therefore poses a great challenge to those who investigate the relationships between the ‘artistic mind’, the brain and illness. In fact, most of the diagnoses (nearly 30) proposed for Van Gogh, during the last century, are not based on medical evidence but are ascertainable from analyses of his paintings and biographical data. Although no definitive diagnosis can be made based on such evidence, we conclude that according to DSM-IV criteria and findings extrapolated from his letters, Van Gogh is most likely to have suffered a bipolar disorder, affective or schizoaffective, which caused his death by suicide.
Posted by a.r.t
at 01:04 EST
Updated: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:55 EST
Tue, 12 Feb 2008
Major Depression and Stroke in Caspar David Friedrich
Topic: Neuroscience
Dahlenburg B, Spitzer C Bogousslavsky J, Boller F (eds): Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists. Front Neurol Neurosci. Basel, Karger, 2005, vol 19, pp 112-120 (DOI: 10.1159/000085609)Abstract:Caspar David Friedrich, nowadays recognized as the most important German Romantic painter, stands out against his contemporary artists by the radical dramaturgy and the ‘disturbing spiritualism’ of his paintings. Being a loner, he embodies melancholy not only in his works, but also as an artist. Art scientists have related to losses in early childhood and depressive conditions for the interpretation of his work without examining in depths the specific features of his disease and their impact on the artistic performance and works. Having applied diagnostic criteria for psychiatric disorders to his letters and publications, to statements of his contemporaries and to his art we propose that he had suffered from a recurrent major depression before he was struck by a stroke when he was 61 years of age. Depressive episodes occurred in 1799, between 1803 and 1805, around 1813/14, again 1816 and between 1824 and 1826. They were associated with diminished or altered creative powers as can be derived by the chosen techniques and motives. In 1835, a subcortical infarction led to a right-sided paralysis causing severe difficulties for the painting in oils. As a consequence, Friedrich only produced one large-scale oil painting which has been characterized as his ‘artistic testament’. Rather, he returned to the less strenuous and demanding sepias and water colors. Most probably, he also suffered a poststroke depression as reported by contemporaries. This is also illustrated by an accumulation of death symbols in his late work, which has been neglected by the Friedrich research.
Posted by a.r.t
at 08:49 EST
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