reading this chapter you will learn about
The nature of creativity and how the arts have been used historically in helping professions
The rationale for using the arts in mental health
The strengths and limitations of using the creative arts in counseling today
As you read, consider
What your favorite artistic expression is
How your favorite art has helped you be more mentally healthy
How you think you might be able to help someone using your favorite art or theirs
Counseling is a profession that focuses on making human experience constructive, meaningful, and enjoyable both on a preventive and on a remedial level. It is like art in its emphasis on expressiveness, structure, and uniqueness. It is also creative in its originality and its outcomes. Both are novel, practical, and significant.
This book is on the uses of the creative arts in counseling. The creative arts are frequently referred to as the expressive arts (E. Levine & Levine, 2017). They are defined here as art forms that range from those that are primarily auditory or written (e.g., music, drama, and literature) to those that are predominantly visual (e.g., painting, mime, dance, and movement). Many overlaps exist between these broad categories. In most cases, two or more art forms are combined in a counseling context, such as literature and drama or dance and music. These combinations work because “music, art, dance/movement, drama therapy, psychodrama, and poetry therapy have a strong common bond” (Summer, 1997, p. 80).
As a group, the creative arts enhance and enliven the lives of everyone they touch (Neilsen et al., 2016). Cultivation of the arts outside of counseling settings is enriching for people in all walks of life because it sensitizes them to beauty, helps heal them physically and mentally, and creates within them a greater awareness of possibilities. The arts help patients and clients by increasing self-esteem, improving motor coordination and body control, providing relaxation, teaching coping skills, decreasing acting-out behaviors, and developing awareness of emotions or underlying issues (H. Kennedy et al., 2014). “It can be said that . . . creative endeavors offer multidisciplinary ways to give voice to the human internal experience and to act as catalysts for learning about the self and the world at large” (Bradley et al., 2008, p. 44).
In counseling, the creative arts help to make clients more sensitive to themselves and often encourage them to invest in therapeutic processes that can help them grow and develop even further (A. Kennedy, 2008). As such actions occur, participants may give more form to their thoughts, behaviors, and feelings and become empowered. Aside from formal counseling sessions, “acts of artistic expression, in and of themselves, carry their own healing” (MacKay, 1989, p. 300). Involvement with the arts helps individuals recover from traumatic experiences and the stress of daily living. Thus, individuals who are involved with the creative arts inside or outside of counseling usually benefit in multiple ways.
The possibilities for using specific creative arts in counseling, singularly and together, are covered in various ways in this book. Mental health professionals can use established arts, such as books and drama, or art making, such as writing and role playing, to improve and enhance the physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being of individuals of all ages. The processes and outcomes of using the arts in a therapeutic manner are addressed here as they relate to specific client populations. Just as becoming a painter takes talent, sensitivity, courage, and years of devotion, a similar process is at work in counseling: The actual practice differs from knowledge of theory. Csikszentmihalyi (1996) hypothesized that it takes at least 10 years of being in a field before a person is able to master it. Thus, the 10-year rule for bringing talent to fruition seems to apply to artists, counselors, or anyone who is refining their talent. Therefore, although the ingredients necessary to enrich counseling through using the arts are emphasized here, effective implementation of these skills and processes will only come with practice on the part of the counselor—you!
The Nature of Creativity
When examining the creative arts in counseling as an entity, it is crucial to first explore the nature of creativity. This examination is prudent for two reasons. First, by knowing something about the nature of creativity, counselors may understand and better appreciate creative processes. Second, counseling, as mentioned previously, is by its nature a creative endeavor (McCarthy, 2018). Although the arts have much potential to help counselors in assisting clients, they are limited in what they can do unless counselors know how to use them creatively.
Creativity is an overused word that is sometimes talked about without being defined. It is a lot like kissing in that it is so “intrinsically interesting and satisfying that few bother to critically examine it” (Thoresen, 1969, p. 264). A central feature of creativity is divergent thinking, which is thinking in a broad, flexible, exploratory, tentative, inductive, and non-data-based way that is oriented toward the development of possibilities. Divergent thinking includes fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration in thought as well (Carson, 1999). Creativity and divergent thinking are associated with coping abilities, good mental health, resiliency, and couple/family functionality and happiness (Cohen, 2000; Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Pink, 2006). According to Sternberg and Lubart (1996, p. 677), as an overall process, creativity involves “the ability to produce work that is both novel (i.e., original or unexpected) and appropriate (i.e., useful or meets task constraints).” It is positively related to spontaneity and negatively related to impulsivity (Kipper et al., 2010).
Creative Reflection
Many people find ideas coming to them at specific times of the day, such as early morning, or when they are engaged in certain activities, such as taking a shower. Think of when ideas are most likely to come to you. Keep a daily chart for a week of new ideas and the times in which they come. What does this activity tell you about yourself and what you need to be most mindful of in finding time to be creative?
McCarthy (2018) argued that the counseling profession and its theories are creative endeavors and that counselors are creative role models for clients and students. McCarthy went on to point out that creative problem-solving “mirrors the counseling process” of often redefining problems and coming up with innovative responses that are formulated and acted on. In this process, “creativity is at the forefront of wellness” because individuals are helped to move on with their lives and avoid getting stuck with unresolved difficulties. He further asserted that “creativity spans cultures as well as the lifespan; and counselors are question experts.” One of the most salient points in his argument for creativity as an essential part of counseling is that “creativity may be a bonus to professional identity” (p. 307).
In counseling and other helping professions, combining creativity with the arts frequently results in (a) the production of a tangible product that gives a client insight, such as a piece of writing or a painting; or (b) a process that the clinician formulates, such as a new way of conducting counseling that leads to client change, such as animal-assisted therapy or therapeutic horticulture. Creativity is a worldwide phenomenon that knows no bounds with regard to ethnicity, culture, gender, age, or other real or imagined barriers that separate people from one another (Koestler, 1964; Lubart, 1999). In addition, creativity can be preventive as well as remedial. Duffey (2015), a major advocate for the use of creativity in counseling, a term she devised, stated, “Creativity is as fundamental to counseling practice as the therapeutic relationship. In the best sense, the therapeutic relationship ignites creative problem solving, understanding, flexibility, and adaptability. In turn, this shared creativity deepens the counseling relationship.”
Overall, creativity is a nonsequential
