Re-Enchanting Art Therapy: Transformational Practices for Restoring Creative Vitality

Re-Enchanting Art Therapy is written for art therapists, supervisors, students, and colleagues in related fields who seek to approach their work as a living, artistic practice but struggle to do so in the often toxic work environments where art therapy is most needed. Asking "What kills creative vitality?" research uncovered core images that art therapists associate with toxic work and the elements of re-enchantment. Author Lynn Kapitan relates, in stories and images of art therapists, how re-enchantment is a cycling process that requires an unambivalent relationship with creative power. Chapter One uses the myth of the dragon to tell stories of art therapists awakening creative energy in a constantly changing, postmodern world. Chapter Two explores transformation in the symbol of the begging bowl held out to accept whatever is placed within as the materials for creative renewal. Using the research method of "collaborative witness," Chapter Three offers transformative stories of several disenchanted art therapists who discover their disconnection from the primordial source of their creativity in the imagery of water. A community intervention in Chapter Four, the "Reflective Circle of Peers," presents issues and methods that art therapists use to transform their practices. In Chapter Five, Lynn Kapitan addresses fears and yearning in the toxic work environment, where such practices as playing with wolves and painting in the crossroads teach her the values of the threshold space and the fierce hearted embrace of her creativity. Re-Enchanting Art Therapy challenges art therapists to transform the practice of art therapy with creative vitality. Book jacket.Lynn Kapitan is the author of 'Re-Enchanting Art Therapy: Transformational Practices for Restoring Creative Vitality' with ISBN 9780398073718 and ISBN 0398073716.