Sinthia Cousineau
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          • Lesson: Stenciling Street Art
          • Lesson: Plaster Figures (grade 7-9)
          • Photoshop Lesson
          • Lesson: Value Scales
          • Lesson Plan: Video Art
          • Lesson Plan: Sound Art
          • Lesson: Landscape
          • Lesson: GIF Project
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      • Lesson: Scanner Self-Portrait
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    • Art Education & Seniors >
      • Lesson: Mandalas
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      • Lesson: Analogous Still Lives
      • Lesson: Eco Collage
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      • Other Lesson Ideas
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        • Introductory Lesson
        • Symmetrical Name Creatures
        • Tim Burton Portraits
        • Drawing from Autumn Still-lives
        • Aurora Borealis (Acrylic/ soft pastels)
        • Grid Drawing Technique
        • Lesson: Alliteration Drawing
        • Leaf Drawing Collage
        • Collaborative Doodle
        • Drawing: 3D Hands
        • Oil Pastel Dinosaur Landscape
        • Oil Pastel Night Sky
        • Scratch Art Drawing
        • Ancient Egypt Art
        • Lesson Unit: Fables & Stories
        • Lesson: Optical Illusions
        • Lesson Plan: Renaissance Invention Scroll
        • Lesson: La Bande Dessinée
        • Types of Art >
          • Eco Art
          • Symmetrical Name Creatures
          • Kinetic Art
          • Street Art
        • Drawing : Word Art
        • Lesson: Northwest Aboriginal Art
        • Lesson: Paper Puppets
        • Drawing: Hidden Emotions Behind the Mask
      • Painting Activities with Kids >
        • Acrylic Pouring
        • Australian Dot Painting
        • Blow Paint Technique
        • Bubble Wrap Painting: Bee
        • Coffee Art
        • Pointillism Painting
        • Monochromatic Painting
        • Lesson: The Color Wheel
        • Painting: Birch Tree
        • Pumpkin Painting
        • Painting: Rock Painting
        • Squeegee Painting Technique
        • Origami Inspired Painting
        • Watercolor Activities >
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    • Approaches to Art Therapy >
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        • Spontaneous Expression: Scribble Drawing
    • Symbols in Art Therapy >
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      • Emotions Wheel
      • Heart Map
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        • Structural Family Therapy
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Art Therapy

What is it?

  • A therapeutic technique that involves the use of creativity.
  • Focuses on the creative art-making process itself and the analysis of expression through the patient-therapist interaction. 
  • Originally it adopted a  psychoanalytic approach to which the therapist attempts to interpret the client's symbolic self-expression as communicated through art.
Modern Art Therapy also employs other approaches such as:
  • Person-Centered
  • Cognitive
  • Behavior
  • Gestalt
  • Narrative
  • Family

What is the Goal of Art Therapy?

  • Using humanism and creativity to solve emotional conflicts, foster self-awareness and develop personal growth.
Picture

My Experience with Art Therapy:

​September 2021-Present- Art Educator at Art Neuf & Art Therapist
  • Teaching drawing and painting to children aged 5- 12 years old in a Community Center.
  • Giving virtual art therapy sessions to francophone adults with special needs
  • Collaborating with the S.O.S organization to conduct art therapy workshops.
January 2021-August 2022: Facilitator at the Concordia Art Hives and Engageliving Lab Project                                          Research Assistant
  • Facilitating Online Art Hives on Zoom and in-person on the University Campus Studio.
  • Working with older adults by engaging them in art making.
October 2020-April 2021: Art Therapy Intern at the Centre for Arts and Human Development
  • Virtual Art Therapy Groups and Individuals via Zoom
  • Working with adults with developmental disabilities, mostly ASD
September 2019-March 2020, 2022-present: Art Therapist at Saint Margaret’s Day Centre
  • Conducting group and individual art therapy with the senior clients
  • Preparing and cleaning the art therapy room
  • Greeting the seniors in the residence and assisting them
  • Working with seniors with dementia and loss of mobility
Picture

History of Art Therapy

       Art Therapy mixing the field of arts and psychology. Mixing the two fields has been around since human society itself; however the development of the profession of art therapy is heavily influence by the intellectual and social trends of the 20th century.
       Making art is an innate human tendency, and separates our species from others. Art therapy has long been used in hospitals. Psychiatry in the western world is often a close ally of art therapy. Art therapists often work with patients being treated for AIDS, asthma, burns, cancer, trauma, and rehabilitation needs. The understanding of the interplay between biochemistry, mental status, and creativity continue to evolve. Art therapy continues to have a role in exploring connections between the body and the mind.
       Mental illness used to be regarded with fear and misunderstanding viewed as a manifestation of divine or demonic forces. It was as of the late 18th century that the “moral treatment” movement started recognizing the individual humanity of “the insane”. It began with the notion of creating a more humane environment for patients. It was around the time of Sigmund Freud that the notion of the productions of fantasy revealed significant information about the unique inner world of their makers. With time art was viewed as a creative product that had the potential to become a tool within treatment.
       The phrase “art therapy” is credited to the British pioneer Arian Hill, in 1942. Now the term is used to describe a form of psychotherapy that uses art interventions alongside talk as the central modality of treatment.
                                                                                  Art Therapy vs. Psychology

       Art therapy and psychology differ in their approaches to assessment. The major difference is that art therapy interprets the making and viewing of art to have inherent therapeutic potential to the client, a view not normally held by psychologists. Art therapy tends to use more varied and expressive materials and stresses the role of the client as the interpreter of their own works. Art therapists are also more likely to improvise on the protocol of standardized assessments to suit a particular clinical purpose.

Classical Period (1940s-1970s):
        In the mid-20th century the term art therapy started to be used. The four leading pioneers in literature on art therapy for this time are Margaret Naumburg, Edith Kramer, Hanna Kwiatkowska, and Elinor Ulman. These remarkable women are considered the early pioneers of the field of art therapy.

Naumburg is referred to as the “Mother of art therapy”. Her early work was based on the Walden School, which she founded with her sister Florence Cane. She later started writing about her ideas in the 1940s as what would become art therapy. Inspired by Freud’s and Jungs writings, she conceived the “dynamically orientated art therapy”, which viewed the client’s art productions as symbolic communication of unconscious material in a direct, uncensored, and concrete form that would aid in the resolution of the transference.

Kramer adapted concepts from Freud’s personality theory to explain the art therapy process. Her art therapy approach emphasizes the intrinsic therapeutic potential in the art-making process and the central role that the defense mechanism of sublimation plays in this experience.

Ulman is best known for founding The Bulletin of Art Therapy in 1961. She published the first book of collective essays on art therapy, which was among the few texts in that field in those years.

Kwiatkowska contributed mostly to the areas of research and family art therapy. Inspired her influences in various psychiatric settings she wrote a book that became the foundation for working with families through art.

Middle Years: 1770s-1980s:
Art Psychotherapy Journal (1973) and the Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association (1983). The American Art Therapy Association was founded in 1969, which evolved the professional identity of the art therapists, credentials, and the role of the art therapist.

Contemporary Art Therapy Theories (Mid-1980s to Present)


References

Malchiodi, C. (2012). Handbook of Art Therapy (2nd. Ed.) New York: The Guilford Press.
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  • Sinthia Cousineau
    • My Resume
    • Biographie, philosophy et methods
    • My Philosophy of Education
    • Artists that Inspire Me >
      • Claude Monet
      • Leonardo da Vinci
      • Pierre-Auguste Renoir
      • Georgia O’Keeffe
      • Vincent van Gogh
      • Michelangelo
      • Sandro Botticelli
      • Antoni Gaudí
  • Drawings
    • Illustrations >
      • Roman Ruins
    • Ships
    • Self-Portraits
    • Animal Drawings
    • Drawing from Observation
    • Cross Drawings
    • Skulls & Skeleton
    • Fictional Characters
    • Flowers
  • Ceramic Art
    • Functional Ceramics >
      • Bowls
      • Boxes
      • Mugs
      • Vases
      • Containers
    • Molds
    • Animals
    • Figures
    • Decals
    • Violins
    • Abstract & other
  • Paintings
    • Self-Portraits
    • Models
    • Imaginative Worlds
    • Saint-Joseph's Oratory
    • Still Lives & Nature
    • Ruins & Architecture
    • Painters that Inspire Me
  • Photography
    • Cyanotypes
    • Photograms
    • Pin-Hole Photography >
      • Collage & other art Activities >
        • Origami Collage Drawing
        • Lesson: Warm & Cold Motion Figures
        • Lesson: Roman Mosaics >
          • Roman Mosaics
        • Art & Adolescence >
          • Mural Project >
            • Door Mural Project
          • Ceramic Mosaic
          • Videos
          • Lesson: Eco Art
          • Lesson: Decorating Fabric
          • Lesson: Zentangles & Patterns
          • Lesson: Social Media, consumerism & war
          • Lesson: Bag Sculptures & Positive Body Image
          • Lesson: Caricatures & political activism
          • Lesson: Canadian Landscapes & Group of Seven
          • Tattoo Art & Meaningful Images
          • Lesson: Stenciling Street Art
          • Lesson: Plaster Figures (grade 7-9)
          • Photoshop Lesson
          • Lesson: Value Scales
          • Lesson Plan: Video Art
          • Lesson Plan: Sound Art
          • Lesson: Landscape
          • Lesson: GIF Project
          • Lesson: Mashup Videos
        • Lesson: Reconstructing Scenery
        • Holiday Art
        • Lesson: Shibori
        • Reptile Zentangle Drawing
        • Lesson: Drawing Lines
        • Other Lesson Ideas
    • Photoshop >
      • Photoshop Lesson: Recreation of Famous Artwork
      • Lesson: Double Exposure
    • Digital Photography >
      • Butterflies
      • Architecture & Cities
      • Ruins
      • Flowers >
        • Dandelion
        • Roses
        • Water Lily
      • Nature
      • Churches & Sanctuaries
      • Objects, Patterns, and other
      • Travel
    • Other Light-based Media Stuff >
      • Lesson: Scanner Self-Portrait
  • Art Education
    • Art Education & Seniors >
      • Lesson: Mandalas
      • Lesson Plan: Zentangle Cards
      • Lesson: Analogous Still Lives
      • Lesson: Eco Collage
      • Lesson: Clay Decorations
      • Other Lesson Ideas
    • Art & Children >
      • Drawing Activities with Kids >
        • Introductory Lesson
        • Symmetrical Name Creatures
        • Tim Burton Portraits
        • Drawing from Autumn Still-lives
        • Aurora Borealis (Acrylic/ soft pastels)
        • Grid Drawing Technique
        • Lesson: Alliteration Drawing
        • Leaf Drawing Collage
        • Collaborative Doodle
        • Drawing: 3D Hands
        • Oil Pastel Dinosaur Landscape
        • Oil Pastel Night Sky
        • Scratch Art Drawing
        • Ancient Egypt Art
        • Lesson Unit: Fables & Stories
        • Lesson: Optical Illusions
        • Lesson Plan: Renaissance Invention Scroll
        • Lesson: La Bande Dessinée
        • Types of Art >
          • Eco Art
          • Symmetrical Name Creatures
          • Kinetic Art
          • Street Art
        • Drawing : Word Art
        • Lesson: Northwest Aboriginal Art
        • Lesson: Paper Puppets
        • Drawing: Hidden Emotions Behind the Mask
      • Painting Activities with Kids >
        • Acrylic Pouring
        • Australian Dot Painting
        • Blow Paint Technique
        • Bubble Wrap Painting: Bee
        • Coffee Art
        • Pointillism Painting
        • Monochromatic Painting
        • Lesson: The Color Wheel
        • Painting: Birch Tree
        • Pumpkin Painting
        • Painting: Rock Painting
        • Squeegee Painting Technique
        • Origami Inspired Painting
        • Watercolor Activities >
          • Watercolor Snowflake
          • Illustrated Watercolor Cards
          • Watercolour Winter Tree Cards
    • History Lessons
  • 3D Art & other mediums
    • Dolls
    • Animation & GIFS
    • Kids: Coloring Printables
    • Activist Art
    • Fibers >
      • Embroidery Projects
      • Weaving
      • Crochet Projects
  • Travel
  • Art Therapy
    • Approaches to Art Therapy >
      • Psychodynamic Approach >
        • Spontaneous Expression: Scribble Drawing
    • Symbols in Art Therapy >
      • Art Response
    • Art Therapy Interventions >
      • Emotions Wheel
      • Heart Map
      • Group Art Therapy >
        • Structural Family Therapy
    • Art & Social Anxiety >
      • Art Therapy & Anxiety Disorders
    • Art Therapy and Aging
    • Art & Prisons
    • Art & Leukemia
    • Art & Bullying
    • Art & Disabilities
    • Art Therapy Activities
    • Emotional Expression
  • COVID-19 Art Response
  • Contact Me
    • Blog