•their experience of pain
•what they label as a symptom
•how they communicate about their pain or symptoms
•their beliefs about its cause
•their attitudes towards the helpers (doctors and therapists)
•the treatment they desire or expect.
Lastly, it is important not to rely on the false assumption that art is a “universal language” (Moon, 2000). Symbols and metaphor may be the language of the soul and the unconscious, but their shape and meaning are influenced by our cultural contexts. And it is the art therapist’s ethical responsibility to deepen their understanding of their own cultural prejudices and assumptions.
Art therapy and community
Collective mourning: Grief as motivating connection
COLLECTIVE MOURNING
In the “Culture and grief” subsection above, I referenced a conversation I had with a friend and Jewish Israeli veteran. He went on to publish his own article regarding his experience of collective mourning, which he refers to as “parallel mourning.” I have included a quote from his article here, as an introduction into this topic:
Americans, as a nation, don’t mourn their soldiers. While military families might mourn the loved ones they lost, there is no national camaraderie, no shared language of loss, no parallel mourning. But then I experienced the anniversary of 9/11. It was a somber day. The air felt different outside. There was a weight to people’s movement. American flags were hanging outside stores and apartments. There was a memorial service on almost every channel. Every name of every victim was read out loud. Why did Americans seem to mourn the victims of 9/11, but not the soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan in the resulting war? Was it the proximity of the attack? Was it the realization that any American could be killed in a terror attack in the United States? The questions loomed large as I experienced the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the day that—as a nation—America mourns. (Bezalel, 2014)
The answers to the questions Bezalel raises may be varied, but I would argue that the posing of the questions is of greatest significance. When you have an individual asking questions about collective norms is when you begin to see healing transformations in those norms.
Art therapy, in particular, is an effective intervention when healing from communal trauma and grief. For example, Fitzpatrick (2002) studied a group of female Bosnian refugees living in Australia who were struggling with significant attachment ruptures:
To find home—a feeling of belonging in a known social and geographic space—is fundamental to our sense of who we are. For refugees, many of whom have experienced war, oppression, and poverty, the need to seek an experience of home is a primary yearning. (p.151)
Whether or not these women had faced problems with their earliest attachments, their sense of security in the world was undoubtedly shaken by the war in Bosnia. Together they had lived through a horrific experience that involved rape, imprisonment, destruction, and death—all of which were carried out in the “efforts to create an ethnically pure state” (p.151). After their attachments with their homeland were suddenly severed, they were left trying to recreate some sort of stability in an alien land. Fitzpatrick explained how art enabled those who were touched by the trauma to approach themselves, each other, and the world with fresh eyes:
Art offers the maker as well as the viewer an opportunity to look at and experience the world in a new way, and to be challenged, moved, stimulated, and soothed. Ultimately, art explores what it is to be human. (Fitzpatrick, 2002, p.152)
Furthermore, Fitzpatrick also found that the art gave the participants of her study a safe distance from their pain—a “veil of denial” that let them face memories in tolerable ways without being overly flooded with feeling (Howard cited by Fitzpatrick 2002, p.153). In guiding these women on a creative journey back through their war-torn pasts, Fitzpatrick observed how art therapy empowered them not only to revisit but also reconstruct their individual traumatic experiences.
GRIEF AS MOTIVATING CONNECTION
Art’s healing potential reaches far beyond the personal. Research has shown that offering art therapy interventions not just to individual clients but also to broader communities can lead to social action and transformation (Kapitan, Litell and Torres, 2011). Kapitan et al. assert that “community” can be interpreted in various ways but always involves looking beyond a single life and seeking to influence a broader system:
“Community” in art therapy usually refers to the surrounding social environment of the individuals and groups with whom art therapists practice. For some social activist art therapists, however, the community itself is the “client” by being the primary focus of intervention. Art therapy on the macro level of practice may be defined as the purposeful design of therapeutic or transformative arts interventions directed toward community and organizational needs. A characteristic approach is to form collaborative partnerships with community organizations that have a social advocacy mission. (2011, p.65)
More interest in using art to effect widespread change has led to the development of participatory action research (PAR), a methodology that calls upon community members to co-design and co-conduct research studies so that they closely fit the community’s needs and goals. Instead of an outside researcher assuming he or she knows what will benefit the community, the community participates in assessing itself and devising a plan to progress towards its goals.
Kapitan et al. (2011) witnessed how a PAR intervention significantly strengthened a Nicaraguan community’s sense of empowerment, capacity, and equity in sustainable ways. Reflecting on the outcomes of their project, they encouraged art therapists across the world to broaden our vision and see both the therapeutic and transformational potential of our work:
[This] cross-cultural collaboration conceptualizes creative art therapy as an emancipatory process for strengthening the development of the whole person—psychoeducational, spiritual, relational, and political—that exerts a positive transformational impact on a person’s family, community, and oppressive societal structures. (Kapitan et al., 2011, p.71)
One particular example of community building was the World Trade Center Children’s Mural Project (WTCCMP), an extensive endeavor facilitated by art therapist Marygrace Berberian that included 3100 children’s self-portraits. In the days following 9/11, Berberian sensed that children across the city were expressing a deep need “to symbolically rebuild the Twin Towers, to rebuild what was destroyed” (Levy et al., 2002, p.107). Driven to respond, she developed an art directive with concrete guidelines so that schoolteachers could present it to hurting children without doing harm. The project was embraced by young people throughout New York City, as well as those living in 14 other states and 22 countries. As the collaborative art piece developed, Berberian witnessed firsthand how art making infused a time of mourning with hope and strength:
The capacity to express oneself through line, color, and form is a rebirth process. Art is a recreation of past representations significant to the artist in the moment. Creativity allows for describing, building, and reconfiguring an injured object so mourning can begin. People need to keep alive what is lost and destroyed so they can begin to let it go on their own terms. (Levy et al., 2002, p.107)
When offered a safe space, simple instructions, and basic art materials, children who felt powerless were given the opportunity to join together and creatively channel healing to both themselves and their city. Each child’s unique self-portrait added strength to the mural’s visual declaration of resilience and peace—a declaration that was stirring in the hearts of minds of people across the world.
Overall, while art undoubtedly