The Arts Therapies

A Revolution in Healthcare

Phil Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781134993185
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

The separate arts therapies – drama, art, music and dance – are becoming available to increasing numbers of clients as mental health professionals discover their potential to reach and help people. But what are the arts therapies, and what do they offer clients? This fully updated new edition of The Arts Therapies provides, in one volume, a guide to the different disciplines and their current practice and thinking in different parts of the world.

Each chapter draws on a variety of perspectives and accounts to develop understandings of the relations between theory, research and practice, offering perspectives on areas such as the client-therapist-art form relationship or on outcomes and efficacy to help articulate and understand what the arts therapies can offer specific client groups. This new edition features 'Focus on Research' highlights from music therapy, art therapy, dramatherapy and dance movement therapy, which offer interviews with researchers in China, Africa, South America, Australia, Europe and North America, exploring significant pieces of enquiry undertaken within recent years.

This comprehensive overview will be an essential text for students and practitioners of the arts therapies. It is international in scope, fully up-to-date with innovations in the field and will be relevant to new practitioners and those looking to deepen their understanding.

PART I
INTRODUCTIONS

As in Ecchoes by reflection . .. where we know the thing we see is in one place; the appearance in another. And though at some certain distance the real, the very object seems invested with the very fancy it begets in us; yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another.

T. Hobbes in Leviathan (1651: 86)

ONE
An introduction to The Arts Therapies: ten snapshots from the book

This chapter introduces the territory covered by The Arts Therapies, and looks at the main topics and themes within each of the different parts of the book.

Introduction to Part II

Chapters 2 to 7

From one perspective, the arts therapies are a continuation, a development of ideas and ways of working which have had different forms and manifestations over centuries. Looked at in another way, though, the arts therapies have emerged in many parts of the world as a contemporary innovation in the way the arts and healthcare can be seen and experienced. This book will analyse that emergence and will provide insight into the ways it is occurring in a variety of contexts.

There are different kinds of histories concerning connections between the arts and health. this book provides insight into ways of engaging with the past and present: from arguments that assert the arts are part of ancient traditions of healing which are still extant, to others which review how the arts therapies have emerged as distinct, coherent disciplines and professions within living memory. In a number of countries, art, music, drama and dance movement therapy (DMT) have become recognised as formal disciplines and professions within existing health and care provision.

SNAPSHOT FROM CHAPTER 2

Definitions in time and place

A definition in the arts therapies shouldn’t be something set in stone, that is immovable. The arts therapies naturally need to evolve and change. As disciplines in the early years of their establishment within contemporary health services, we are still discovering much about what they can do and how, or why, they are effective. So, any definitions must be still in process – they are developing maps that show where the disciplines have been, where they are now, and where the arts therapies are going. That is why the following sections answer the question: ‘What are the arts therapies?’ by taking definitions and asking what they show us about different contexts, ways of working and developments, rather than simply reporting what they say.

The past century has witnessed a massive shift from a situation where there were very few arts therapists, with no professional identity, specific theory or established ways of practising, to one where there is a contemporary flourishing of practice, training, published research and theory with developing recognition by state medical providers in a number of countries. One of the very first academic, professional trainings, for example, was established in music therapy, at the University of Kansas, USA, in 1946. The National Association of Music Therapy in the United states followed in 1950. By the end of the twentieth century there were almost seventy degree courses approved by the National Association and its partner organisation the American Association of Music Therapy (Bunt, 1997: 250). By the second decade of the twenty-first century there were over 3,940 members of the Association involved in music therapy in the USA, working with over a quarter of a million clients (AMTA, 2017) and conferences, such as that held in Seoul, South Korea, bringing in music therapists and delegates from 46 countries (Dimitriadis, 2011). This is an example of the advance of the arts therapies from their comparatively recent beginnings. Part II, ‘The arts therapies: definitions and developments’, describes the different arts therapies and their aims. It looks at organisations and associations that oversee training and practice in many parts of the world, referring to arts therapists from the USA to Taiwan, from south Africa to the UK. Chapter 2 gives an overview of the process of definition, and each subsequent chapter deals with one of the main modalities: art; music; drama; and dance movement. specific definitions of each discipline are given in Chapters 3 to 6, though examples of how the arts therapies are practised are also contained throughout the text. This book focuses on art, music, drama and dance movement therapy, as they are the main professional frameworks which have emerged. Other areas such as the expressive arts therapies, where all art forms are brought together, are referred to, however.

SNAPSHOT FROM CHAPTER 7

The Lima Declaration, Peru

In the ‘first international Latin American arts and health forum’ which took place in Peru . .. partners developed a ‘visionary statement’ entitled The Lima Declaration on Arts as a Bridge to Health and Social Development (Pan-American Health Organisation, 2009: 1). Parkinson and White describe it as embracing the ‘whole Latin American continent’ and as fuelled by a ‘vision of the arts as a powerful force for social change, addressing health and economic inequalities’ (2013: 183). They also cite work in Finland as an exemplar of arts and health work with a vision of how ‘health and well-being can be promoted by means of art and culture’: arguing that art and culture ‘can enhance inclusion at the individual, community and societal levels; and everybody should have the right to participate in, and enjoy, the cultural life of the community’ (2013: 185).

The commonalities and differences between art, music, drama and dance movement therapies are described and looked at in terms of what they can offer to clients. Whilst chapters 3 to 6 describe each discipline, Chapter 7 looks at the relationship between the different arts therapies, as well as that between the arts therapies and the arts-in-health movement.

Introduction to Part III

Chapters 8 to 10

Part III offers insights into different understandings and accounts of how the relationships between arts and therapy has developed.

SNAPSHOT FROM CHAPTER 8

Different histories: interview with Aluede

JONES: . . . How do you see the relationships between the different histories – the USA tradition and the Nigerian? What are the positive elements of this relationship and what are the challenges for music therapists?

ALUEDE: . . . The history of music therapy in America is relatively recent compared to that of Africa: in terms of nature, scope and competence, it is currently slim. Important, too, is the fact that the current practice of music therapy is restricted in general hospitals, schools, prisons, health centres, training institutions, psychiatric facilities, private practices and universities, whereas it is boundless in Africa. Obviously, there is a general consensus that music is therapeutic. And that people across different climes have musical practices geared towards healing. Beyond healing, music has been acclaimed to have many more attributes. For example, Levitin (2010: 50–1) claims that in Africa, music is not an art form as much as it is a means of communication. Singing together releases oxytocin, a neurochemical now known to be involved in establishing bonds of trust between people.

In chapter 8 Aluede offers an account of the development and presence of the interconnections between healing and music in Nigeria, and the work of Li introduces practices in Shaanxi province, China, such as Yin Kang Shi Dancing, described by Lü in 239 BC, where it was a ‘method’ to stimulate blood circulation and enhance immunity. An influential strand of the way history is understood, the emergence of the arts as therapy in Europe and North America, is also encountered in this chapter: through analysis of developments in art, theatre, dance and music at the end of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century. These movements are widespread and vary enormously. They include the Surrealists, the revolt in theatre in the Soviet Union and Germany, from Diaghilev’s and Nijinsky’s productions such as the Rite of Spring through to developments in jazz. Part III, ‘Backgrounds, histories and encounters: from the first happening to the shadow of logic’, describes and analyses initiatives from this period. It focuses on two specific examples, as a way of sampling many other similar occurrences. Chapter 8 looks at Black Mountain College in the USA, a place of experimentation and interdisciplinary discovery. Chapter 9 looks at one of the early meetings between those involved in the arts therapies, on 30 April 1960 in London.

The movements and experiments referred to above resulted in particular ways of viewing creativity, the imagination, the roles of the artist and of the art form. These arts movements examined areas of expression and experience which had hitherto been seen to be outside the range of what was considered ‘suitable’ for artistic attention. Lyotard presents this as the central tenet of modern representation: ‘To make visible that there is something which can be conceived and which can neither be seen nor made visible’ (Lyotard, 1983: 16). The movements often included an interest in artistic products of people with mental health problems, for example, and the use of techniques devised to free the imagination and to increase spontaneity. the first performance in 1896 of Albert Jarry’s play Ubu Roi is an example of such work, reflecting these concerns in its conception and realisation. It was met by an audience uproar – almost bringing the production to a halt. The audience was in such a state of disruption that violence nearly erupted (Innes, 1993). Riotous arguments in the audience almost drowned out the players. This performance has been described as a seminal moment in modern culture, a formative influence on the twentieth-century avant-garde. What was so disturbing? What caused people to revolt? A key to this lies in both the content and form of the performance. The plays in this cycle can be seen to be in line with Jarry’s ‘Pataphysics’, which he defined as a system devoted to unreason, ‘a science of imaginary solutions’ (Jarry, cited in Innes, 1993: 26). On a theatre stage in Paris he was trying to break down the relationship between everyday perception and hallucination:

You will see doors open onto snow-covered plains under blue skies, mantelpieces with clocks on them swinging open to turn into doorways, and palm trees flourishing at the foot of beds so that little elephants perching on book shelves can graze on them.

(Jarry, 1965: 77)

This concern was echoed within other experimental art forms of the time. These involved attempts to reach beyond surface reality, to explore through the arts what was thought of as ‘inner’ nature: dreams, the subliminal, the unconscious. The stage or gallery becomes a place for dreams to become concrete, for the mind to reveal previously hidden thoughts and experiences, for the concerns of the unconscious, rather than the rational, to be played out. Taylor could have been referring to Jarry’s work when he draws parallels between the avant-garde in twentieth-century art and the kind of work produced in the arts therapies, ‘During this period avant garde artists became able to do through the activity of painting what therapists today do with their patients – namely explore aspects of feeling that are often not accessible by other means’ (Taylor, 1998: 21).

As this book will demonstrate, the arts therapies are much more than such a process of exploration. However, Taylor’s reference indicates one of the connections that created the context for the arts therapies to emerge: that of the fascination of the experimental arts with emerging ideas of the unconscious and extreme states of mind. As we will see later in this book, the work of groups such as the Surrealists, or the experiments at places such as Black Mountain college, described in Chapter 8, ‘The first happening’, were all part of this upheaval or experimentation. Such challenging of boundaries between different disciplines, such as psychology and the arts, would enable the arts therapies to emerge. Arts therapist McNiff has said that Surrealism may be the clearest link between the arts and arts therapy: ‘During the surrealist era many of the values that currently guide art as medicine began to take shape’ (McNiff, 1992: 44).

The development of arts practices with children in schools and the emer gence of arts work from behind asylum walls in many continents, from Asia to Europe, Africa to South America, have also been credited with helping to challenge and widen the notion of what can be described as the ‘arts’. Chapter 9 tr...