Angela Fox - MA Art Therapy

Members of The Collett staff awarded MA on a basis of dissertations that draw on the school’s practice

Angela Fox - MA Art Therapy

Angela engaged in therapeutic work within the setting to acquire skills in art therapy that deliver positive change in pupils’ emotional wellbeing. Her critical analysis of the passage from this extract explains some of the ideas that underpin her practice.

King-West, E. and Hass-Cohen, N. (2008) 'Art Therapy, Neuroscience and Complex PTSD'. In Hass-Cohen N. and Carr R. - Art Therapy and Clinical Neuroscience. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

This critical analysis examines the empathic relationship between Art Therapist and client, over a two-page extract from a case study (chapter thirteen p. 246-247) involving a client with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD). It looks at the various intricate nuances and qualities of the empathic response in a therapeutic setting. This section is titled The Empathic Art Therapist, from the book Art Therapy and Clinical Neuroscience. I have chosen this passage because Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and how Art Therapy might deliver positive change to clients suffering from PTSD, is relevant to the professional direction I hope take as a future Art Therapist.

In a brief outline of the passage, King-West and Hass-Cohen, discuss the empathic quality and attributes, especially of the therapist, necessary for an effective and constructive client/therapist experience. The authors, King-West and Hass-Cohen, lean heavily on the works of others’, in the field of neuroscience, to rationalize the workings of the brain in relation to the empathetic response. Value is placed on how the client and therapist learn from empathic attunement - the manner in which the client might gain from the therapeutic relationship through the therapist who is supported by clinical supervision.

King-West and Hass-Cohen effectively draw the reader’s attention to how empathy might sound like a simple and unconscious human reaction, but for it to be an effective tool in a therapeutic setting it needs to be a response that is understood and valued for its potential effectiveness. They open this section with the idea that “suffering together” would traditionally be used as a way to describe empathy. However, this simple knee-jerk sounding reaction to emotional pain or distress would not be sufficient enough for a client to gain effectively from the therapeutic relationship. The writers state that there are various factors that contribute to the quality of empathy. The empathically attuned therapist would be aware of how to efficiently distinguish between their own feelings and the client’s feelings; to maintain therapeutic focus on the client. Further suggestion by King-West and Hass-Cohen explore the notion that the therapist needs to be able to endure experiencing difficult or ‘painful autobiographical material’ allowing themselves to be used, by the client, as a container for emotional pain or distress. These two concepts may seem to be contradictory, but the writers successfully illustrate how both reactions, from the therapist, should be in harmony or balance with one another. They do this by using the case study to provide the reader with a point of reference that generates a stronger understanding of these seemingly opposing ideas.

In their evaluation of how neuroscience begins to explain empathetic responses, King-West and Hass-Cohen lean on a rich source of current academic literature to support their arguments. They describe the stimulation of mirror neuron systems as the root of purposeful empathy. The writers assert that by the therapist seeing and feeling what the client says and makes, through mirror neuron activation, that the therapist gains insights into the client’s internal mental landscape. This insight, as pointed out, gains potency when it’s utilized as a tool with which to steer the client’s therapeutic direction. Additionally, the clients own mirroring allows for new and more positive emotional messages, from the therapist, to be registered by the client in a cognitive sense. King-West and Hass-Cohen clarify that the empathic responses of client and therapist challenge both individuals to consciously incorporate parts of themselves that would have typically remained unconscious and therefore unexplored and unresolved.

Clinical supervision is seen, by the writers, as the therapist’s metaphorical sentinel in maintaining a healthy subjective experience of the therapeutic interaction between therapist and client. King-West and Hass-Cohen state that the same neurological processes that are responsible for empathy, may indeed, make it difficult for the therapist to separate his or her own feelings and emotions from that of the clients. Consequently, by consulting with a therapist outside of the ‘shared neuro-circuitry mirror neurons system’, the therapist is better able to preserve the empathic response to a standard that is beneficial to the long term well-being of client and therapist alike. The authors make further mention that, over a period of time, empathic Art Therapy is conducive to a secure and progressively functioning relationship between client and therapist. This secure empathic relationship facilitates positive change in the client’s life.

In summation of this critical analysis, it is clear that the authors’ statements and ideas have been based on a broad range of complex academic literature and on a thoroughly researched and highly detailed case study of a client suffering from C-PTSD. Their arguments have been generally well structured, however, due to the complexities of presenting work that discusses neuroscience and mental processing, the authors could have made the reading, and therefore the understanding, of the passage simpler to comprehend. Some of the links within the ideas on mirror-neuron systems seem almost fragile without a vast amount of experience in academic reading. If King-West and Hass-Cohen had presented these ideas in a slightly less fragmented way, then less of its significance would be lost on readers that are new to such research. Although, it could be argued that the writers may be in a position to assume that such literature would generally be read by those with some experience and understanding of neuroscience and its known theories. The concepts and ideas on empathic attunement presented by King-West and Hass-Cohen are upheld by the fascinating content of the case study and how it relates to current knowledge on neuroscience.

Alex Chaplin – MA in Education

The title of Alex’s dissertation was The Potential of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS): Supporting the Development of Writing in Non-Verbal Children and was the culmination of a Masters’ degree undertaken alongside full-time work at the Collett School.

One of the greatest challenges facing children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is a deficit in communication skills that can result in, as Alex observed during his teaching practice, a lack of understanding of language structure. By combining case study with action research in a mixed methodology, his study describes how a writing intervention aims to support the development of independent writing in four non-verbal children that use PECS as their primary form of expressive communication in a special educational needs setting.

In his research project Alex endeavours to answer the question of how the more complex structure of language can be taught so that non-verbal children can communicate more effectively and independently through written language. He concludes that the use of a PECS-based intervention in conjunction with elements of Shape Coding means that children can successfully breakdown the more complex writing process and structure sentences effectively.

The conclusions and strategies of the research were disseminated to colleagues in school to support the development of writing at lower levels across the school thus improving pupils’ progress.