Art, Angst, and Trauma: Right Brain Interventions With Developmental Issues

This important new text demonstrates how art therapy can make a major contribution to the treatment of children who are seriously ill, in foster care, physically and emotionally traumatized, as well as deviant and addicted adolescents, young adults, and with the aftermath of a spouse's suicide. The first three chapters of this book set the framework providing established developmental structure, holistic interactions of mind/body and attachment essentials for human beings. In the following chapters authors that are experts in facilitating art as healing with people of different ages and in different settings share their insights, images, and stories about treating developmental issues of angst and trauma. Of special interest are the two chapters on brain development and function, indicating that art therapy can make a major contribution to the healing of trauma because creative activity literally changes the traumatized typography of the brain. Information about the importance of bilateral integration as seen in both Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) and art therapy contributing to healing trauma is discussed. There is a special segment on art therapy and a new approach to the treatment of trauma with a sequence of chapters devoted to the ways art therapy facilitates healing of issues throughout the life span. The Instinctual Trauma Response (ITR) is examined, which resolves the client's trauma without abreaction or re-experiencing the event and without the use of medication. In addition, there is clinical documentation of the successful resolution of different kinds of trauma with a variety of clients at various stages of development. These cases include the trauma of multiple surgeries, family violence, and witness to death. The book concludes with a discussion of how art therapy has helped the elderly and their caretakers deal with issues of Alzheimer's and death. This is a book that contains significant 'new' material that is a major contribution to the art therapy field.