Abstract

Self-Healing Through Visual and Verbal Art Therapy explores the therapeutic properties of visual and verbal creativity and its capacity to act as a natural means of self-healing.

Drawing on Freud's and Winnicott's work on psychoanalysis and play, R.M. Simon illustrates the healing power of art-making with the drawings and stories of seven-year-old Joe, who succeeds in overcoming the trauma of family break-up by expressing his emotional turmoil outside the formal therapeutic process. The progress from symbolising unconscious distress to verbalising and becoming conscious of (and able to deal with) such distress is clearly demonstrated in the author's discussion of Joe's drawings and stories.

This book offers a clear and concise examination of the theory and application of art as therapy and will be useful for art therapists, psychotherapists and students in these fields wanting to develop an understanding of self-healing methods.

Joe is seven years old, and his family is breaking up. Calling on Freud's and Winnicott's on psychoanalysis and play, Simon, a master practitioner and one of the founders of art therapy, describes how Joe uses his drawings and stories to progress from unconscious distress to the conscious level, where he can begin to heal. Simon gives a brief history of the methods and then devotes her discussion to Joe's art, his stories about it, and the paths she and Joe took to resolve his fears.
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R.M. Simon is an eminent retired art therapist and lecturer. She has worked for 55 years as an art therapist in private practice, hospitals and day centres of the National Health Service and Social Services.