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.