Re: Photo therapy and its effectiveness as a healing aid

Posted by Judy Weiser on 4/24/2004, 11:36 am, in reply to "Photo therapy and its effectiveness as a healing aid"
Message modified by board administrator 6/3/2008, 8:46 am

Karina, Thank you for your posting to this message board; hopefully, other people will also reply to you this way! I know you have promised to answer me "back-channel" re: our specific correspondence, but in the meantime I would like to ask you to clarify one thing here in this discussion "thread": I believe that what you are doing is more under the category of "Therapeutic Photography" rather than "PhotoTherapy" -- but maybe I'm wrong(?) I mention this only because you have stated that you are "currently working on a research assessment focusing on the use of photo therapy" -- and yet you say also that "we're attempting to give them some new inspiration through; photography (this is what I am working on with them)", which signals to me that you are using photography AS healing, rather than using it WITHIN a therapy process (i.e., a counsellor or therapist, doing counselling in which taking, making, viewing, or interacting with photos is used as a tool for the larger therapy context that is the process going on... In your message directly to me, you stated " I am currently studying a Bachelor of Arts in Communication, majoring in Theatre and Media" -- and so I figure that you are not studying psychology, counselling, or similar mental health profession, right? so what you are doing might well be "therapeutic" in terms of its helpful/healing results, yes -- but it is not therapy in the formal sense... and so perhaps your question to this Group might instead be: "I was wondering if there was anyone who had taken part in *therapeutic photography* themselves and would like to share their story?" because if you are asking people about their phototherapy process, you are asking them to discuss in public, a private emotional counselling process while in the midst of therapy work... I'd still be delighted to have people share their information with you (& us all, via this Group), but I think you'd get more responses if not asking people for such private & intimate process information... so I think you'd get more answers if you asked instead: "is there anyone who is willing to share with the Group, their experiences using photography as healing? photography itself for its naturally therapeutic benefits, even if not in therapy themselves"??? Now, if you had the time to post your message here, perhaps you could also wrestle your brother for the additional 15 minutes it would take to respond to my message back-channel also?? Because the things I asked you in THAT message, and suggestions I made for you to read my website's pages (especially the one called "Compared with Other Fields"), would have hopefully achieved the same clarification as I have now had to take the time above, to clarify *for* you... please also clarify for us all, how you intend to "assess" such a process ("how effective the participants find the process to be") as well as WHAT that "process" is, that you are talking about here! most researchers find that "objective assessment" tools such as "outside-observer" ratings turn out to be fairly useless since each human being is so uniquely different in their photo-perceptions/interactions and that instead, "participant-observer", self-feedback kinds of models (such as a naturalistic, heuristic, phenomenological-based approaches), will usually turn out to be more useful than one using more traditional kinds of research tools... how will you be structuring the participants' reporting re: the effectiveness? and what is the process they will be going through, that you will be evaluating?? please see these comments as a way to help you focus, and not as a challenge or criticism; i.e., I have absolutely no doubt that "finding new inspiration through photography and giving them new skills, both physical and emotional, to deal with the difficulties of everyday life" will be successful. I have spent about thirty years counselling youth such as you describe; however, it's sometimes more difficult to produce a structured research study *about* these successes, than it is to actually DO them at the time. So, please let us know what you come up with! (because if you are asking for us to share with you, we hope that you will then accept the responsibility of sharing back with us, in return for our efforts!!) thanks, Judy

Re: Photo therapy and its effectiveness as a healing aid

Posted by Jennifer on 5/7/2004, 7:45 pm, in reply to "Photo therapy and its effectiveness as a healing aid"

Greetings, My name is Jennifer and I have worked with "therapeutic Photography", and have found it to be beneficial. It was hard to see photographs that represented the reality of myself. I continued to photograph my emotions, especially when I was "in" them. I found this to be a powerful outlet. It made me think about how I felt, and how it made me who I am. As a result, the process of photographing myself allowed me to step outside of the emotion, and evaluate it with a level head. It was a beneficial kind of Therapy that I encourage others to try. If you would like to see the work, please visit my web site at www.jenniferloshaw.com and click on the "thesis" link. All the best, Jennifer