Description
The Solution Focused Art Therapy manual opens with a summary and follows with an explanation of the interventions utilized throughout the document.
The manual is than divided into three sections:
1) adults
2) adolescents
3) children
Each section consists of seven weekly 11/2 hour sessions. The first two sessions establish a therapeutic relationship between the therapist and client.
Stories from the client about the artwork are encouraged by the therapist using the phenomenological approach of questioning to learn about the client, to make the client feel heard, to help the client relax, to develop a therapeutic alliance, and to guide the client to problem and solution exploration.
The therapist explores what problems the client wants to work on, then guides the client in exploring for exceptions.
The therapist, through questioning and interacting with the client and from the artwork, discovers strengths, resilience, and current resources that the client has that can be employed to build solutions and some basic starting goals while exploring exceptions.
Small changes that the client has already made and that are discovered through client-therapist interactions within a working alliance, initiate and motivate the client to become actively involved in the therapy through both ideas and emotions.
The therapist continually works on maintaining the working alliance through out the sessions in order to continue the therapeutic connection.
The next 4 sessions employ art and verbal processing techniques to involve the client in the process with critical engagement, initial reactions, relational attributes and change opportunities.
The last session is an ending session.