Posted by Mark Wheeler
on 10/10/2010, 11:56 pm, in reply to "Are any of those creative interventions tangible, like my visualization?"
89.242.168.123
Ah!
I wonder if this has parallels in the question often asked among Art Therapists, "If nothing physical was made in a session, is it really art therapy?" (and variants like "What if the client throws all the work in the bin?"). In the public health setting where I work with families, only very rarely has an image of a photographic origin been made as part of the intervention in the session. The intervention is usually centered around an image produced outside the session (commonly with a smart-phone these days) which serves as the catalyst for process, or was created between sessions, content often arising from the earlier session,
However, the recordings we often make of sessions sometimes become the focus (groan) of conversations where they too become the catalysts for a shift in narrative (perhaps in the 'domain of production', without hint of irony).
I have often thought about your work when doing something similar in the analogue domain (arranging photographs on the therapy room floor), as I think I understand you achieve in the digital domain. Sadly public health budgets limit my scope, but for my clients this is better than nothing.
Prescriptive arts had a brief flowering in certain parts of the UK before the recent election but is unlikely to survive the current savage cuts we face to bail out banking incompetence. My own work began over 25 years ago from creating physical studio sets of dreamscapes and photographing them in large format B&W, so I have first hand experience of their transformative power.
There is rarely a new physical object created in sessions with families with whom I work, but such an object would be fantastic. Better yet, one in a digital photo frame where the family could alter the image as their changing narrative progresses in therapy.
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