Experiential and Theoretical Investigation into the Creative Process, 2011-2012

Katherine Williams, PhD
3rd Tuesday of every month from 7:30-9:30pm

Learning Objectives

1. Explain how the experience of increased awareness of the body can enhance dancers' and patients' access to their emotions and help promote the sense of a cohesive self. Describe the philosophy behind the creation of a dance studio for adult learners and explicate parallels between this and the therapist's role in creating an environment in which the patient's self can emerge.
2. Describe the effect of creativity in the quality of life of an artist with depression as seen in a play based on Rothko's life. Relate these understandings to clinical examples presented by the study group.
3. Dissanyake believes that "the close interactions between infants and their caretakers are prototypes for what will become our later experience of love [and] art." Apply these theories of the bodily origins of the creative experience to the various domains in which we have studied creativity in order to expand the clinician's capacity to discern the creative process at work in the unfolding attachment between therapist and patient.
4. Compare and contrast the creativity and innovation in scientific research with that in artistic endeavors in order to enhance the clinician's competence in discovering creativity and capacity for attachment in patients whose vocabularies and foci may not initially appear to be relationally centered.
5. Hagman believes that "looking at ugliness can help us understand the relationship between the conscious organization of experience and unconscious fantasy." Apply Hagman's discussion of the aesthetic and psychological aspects of the concept of ugliness to the paintings of Francis Bacon as well as to the clinical experience of working with patients with eating disorders and depression.
6. Compare the creative process in which the poet is involved in writing and reading a poem before an audience to the audience's experience when reading or listening to poetry being read. Apply these experiences to the creative process that takes place relationally and individually within the therapeutic hour.
7. Describe aspects of the artistic process learned through reading an autobiography of Patti Smith (singer-songwriter, poet, visual artist) as well as through viewing a film about photographer Robert Maplethorpe. Apply Hagman's and Kohut's theories of creativity (that the act of creating is an attempt to create self-cohesion; that the rhythm of aesthetic resonance and its subsequent failure motivates continuing engagement in the creative experience) to the function of art in the psychological organization of Smith and Maplethorpe as well as in the psychic economy of particular patients.
8. Apply attachment theory (especially the impact that trauma and cross-cultural issues may have on attachment) to characters portrayed in a movie. Use this theory to articulate the therapist's understanding of the effects of trauma, generational, and societal pressures on the attachment bond within a multigenerational family.
9. Critique an art exhibit in light of David Miller's article in JAPA in which he discusses the way an artist with limited palette and simple forms may evoke vivid responses in the viewer. Apply this to analytic listening where one learns to listen for multilayered meanings beneath a supposedly simple surface.
10. Explain the relationships among movement, music, self, and spirituality discussed in the interview with Bobby McFerrin in On Being, the NPR radio program. Apply these insights to therapeutic approaches discussed by writers such as Rothchild, Kohut, and Siegel.