TOUCH IN ART THERAPY IS "OVER" LOOKED
I recently stumbled across an interesting book titled ‘Touching
Space, Placing Touch’ by Dr Mark Paterson which was written in 2012. Dr
Paterson is visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. His PhD in 2003 was in Human Geography
exploring the relationship between space and touch using a phenomenological
framework. In 2006 he was on research
leave in Sydney Australia writing a book titled ‘The senses of touch.’ This
current book was published in 2012
In a series of edited chapters Dr Amanda Bingley has a
chapter titled “Touching Space in Hurt and Healing: Exploring Experiences of
Illness and Recovery through Tactile Art.”
Imagine my excitement. I devour her article. Amanda is not an art
therapist but she could be. I google her
to see what has led her to this paper. She is a lecturer in health research at the
University of Lancaster in the faculty of health and medicine. She has come from the world of cultural geography
and her PhD in 2002 explored
the influence of gender identity and very early infant and childhood sensory
experience on the adult sensory perception of landscape. She has an interest in homeopathy and
evaluating art therapy methodologies.
Suddenly I do not feel so alone in my research interests.
She identifies herself as an outsider by emphasizing and
defining a term that is integral to our language - artmaking. There is art and artmaking in art therapy
probably to delineate the process and object.
Amanda discusses the importance of artmaking – the sense of touch at the
connection between skin surface and tactile art medium. She sees this as the link between the inner
self and outer world. She quotes
Lusebrink (2004) who suggests that using the tactile/haptic senses activates
emotional experiences for the artist. Amanda
goes on explain that this knowledge is not really new. Other therapists such as Klein, Winnicott and
Jung recognised the power of tactile exploration through three dimensional therapies such as
sandplay (Kalff, 1980; Lowenfeld, 1979) and play therapy (Axline, 1969). All of a sudden I want to know a lot more
about Amanda Bingley. How is it that she
can not only see but sense what the field of art therapy does not?
I continue to read her chapter and I come across this quote,
“An important aspect of artmaking as a therapeutic activity lies in the nature
and function of touch in the physical process of exploring and expressing
embodied experience through the medium of art materials. Tactile stimulation in therapeutic art making
is, however, overlooked and a gap remains in theoretical and empiricial
knowledge, about its role, despite an increase in interdisciplinary literature,
for example in the sociology of health and illness, social anthropology,
geography and art therapy.......”(pg 72).
I sit with this for a little while and a light globe moment
occurs. The profession of art therapy is like a dynasty that has bought two
families together through marriage. The
art families and the therapy families. A
vast majority of art therapists are visual artists and because of this we
‘know’ the strength of art to express emotions and heal ourselves. However as art therapists we OVERLOOK the
tactile. Of course we ‘over’ look – we
are seduced by the visual. As artists we
cannot help but be infatuated by the completed art piece or the observation of
the artist creating. We are visual
creatures. Our ability to see visual possibilities
is what sets us apart from other professions.
We use this to drive our creativity and our therapeutic work. Our hands and tactile senses interpret our
visual fantasies.
I did not come from the art side of the family. I have always had a passion for the arts and
created art throughout my life. However coming from a working class family, I
was encouraged to use my skills to get a ‘decent’ job. I therefore gravitated to the therapy side of
the family where a ‘decent’ income was possible. Throughout my twenties and
thirties I grieved a missed opportunity to express myself through art. It was only as an adult, as my children were
growing up and I was approaching midlife that I decided I had an inner artist
that required release. After a respectable
career in health (using art) with rural
communities, I decided to do what had always attracted me – art therapy. I was inviting my artist self into my adult
world. I could still earn an income but
could also justify my need to create.
I have long recognised the power of artmaking in my personal
development. I have strong childhood
memories of creating sculptures from household objects and using clay to sculpt
very expressive figures. My art was
always disturbing to friends and families.
No one ever said they liked it.
Without encouragement, I decided that I was not an artist. Consequently I did not go to ‘art
school’. In some ways my lack of
training allows me to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ artmaking somewhat differently.
My lack of training in art seeing and looking means that I
perhaps do not ‘over’ look the tactile. I
use my visual and body senses to see and feel the effects of art. I never thought my deficits in the art world
would ever lead me down an exciting path of researching the touch basis of
artmaking. Amanda is perplexed by how
little discussion there is about the sensory processes - especially touch – in the arena of
therapeutic artmaking. She
acknowledges a well established
literature base that focuses on examining and applying psychoanalytic theories
and measuring its effectiveness with various populations of clients. (Perhaps the art side of the family is
wanting to try and impress the therapy side of the family?) She suggests that there is growing interest
in the creative arts and neuroscience and specifically the cognitive
behavioural therapeutic movement. But
specifically touch in tactile arts therapies remains unexplored. She quotes Dr Paterson and believes that the
art therapy world mirrors a cultural hierarchy of senses that places sight
before touch.
And that my friends is the topic of another blog....
Paterson, M & Dodge, M., 2012. Touching Space and Placing Touch. Ashgate Publishing, Surrey.
Chapter 3: Touching space in hurt and healing: Exploring
experiences of illness and recovery through tactile art. Amanda Bingley
Axline, V.M. 1969. Play Therapy. New York: Balantine.
Kalff, D.M. 1980. Sandplay. Boston, MA: Sigo Press.
Lowenfeld,
M. 1979. The World Technique. London: Allen & Unwin.
