The Role of Art Therapy in the Development of Child Communication - Essay Example

The Role of Art Therapy in the Development of Child's Communication Art therapy has for long been a of close research as it is now known to be one of the main means of developing communicative skills in children, especially those who have suffered psychological trauma. In this work I am going to analyze how art therapy influences children, and especially drawing. I will point out what creativity is, and how it should be used for mentally or physically ill children. This work is devoted to the display of positive consequences of the drawing therapy. As an example there have been taken cases with sexually abused children and those who have eye witnessed Twin Towers crash. The work shows direct link between creativity and cognitive development of children. Drawing makes children more open and activates psychological mechanisms of the organism. It is known that language development starts from the very beginning of the child's life. Even newly born babies hear the sounds around them. They listen to the speech when they hear it somewhere nearby, and they can even be startled at some loud noise. At the same time they already know how to make sounds which let people know if they experience pleasure or pain. By the time the child is 6 years old he speaks fluently and is able to answer simple questions about them. But it is not always so good with all children. Those who have some physical diseases or have suffered a psychological trauma experience difficulties with expressing their thoughts and wishes. That's why art therapy and the use of creativity becomes crucial in teaching these children fluent language and free exchange of thoughts and ideas. Being creative is seeing the same thing as everybody else but thinking of something different. (Ganim, 1999). The National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (1999) describes creativity as 'imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value'. (NACCE, 1999) In order to define creativity in more simple way it should be said that probably creativity is combining the things which previously could not been combined. Creativity always has two so called dimensions, that is the medium through which a child expresses his thoughts and ideas, in our particular case it is drawing, and the second dimension is the content, which is carried by the medium. Creativity can be of two different types - spontaneous and multistage. The first one comes out of a sudden, the second one needs much time for generating ideas and putting them into reality. Thus, any general definition of creativity must account for the process of recognition or discovery of novel ideas and solutions. (Prentice, 2000) Examples of personal traits of individuals, who are considered to be creative, were described by Rhyammar (1999) - openness to experience, independence, and self-confidence. But there is no one single definition of creativity with which everyone could agree. Any definition must note that creativity is a process of discovery and development of new ideas. Early psychological studies of children's drawings strived to find some connection between them and the development of children's cognition. Some workers consider that there could be found some parallels between the development of child's drawing and the evolution of art through the history. On the one hand Zierer (1976) states, that there is a clear connection between the evolution of children's cognitive abilities and the evolution of art and the historical development of art was followed by the cognitive development of children. On the other hand Neboschik (1975) does not see such connection and confirms that the changes in art are the consequence of the child's which to follow the culture by which he is surrounded. One thing remains without any change: children have a very good possibility to express their feelings and thoughts through such a simple meaning as drawing. Children therapists often use such kind of art therapy in order to help children to put their thoughts into words. There are many stages through which children develop, starting from scribbling at 2-4 years, to almost realism at the age of 11-13, when children are more critical to themselves and start making their own decisions. And drawings help the art therapist to understand the problems which a child can't express verbally. He pays attention to the topic of the drawing, its size, its colors and its content. Drawing is a complex synthetic activity in which the forming child's personality can be seen. For the long time there has been discussed the interrelation between kids' drawing and their cognitive development. On the one hand, there are direct analogies between the development of children' drawing, that is drawing is a special means of speech. On the other hand, there is opposite connection - the development of the drawing abilities can foster the development of the higher psychic functions of the child. But there are such peculiar children, who are very difficult to be taught drawing. And it is known that early at 6 years the child starts to express himself through drawing, and only in case he is taught it since he is 3. The process of drawing is the powerful means of psychological correction of children. The kid's drawing goes through several stages. The first stage is when the child gets acquainted with the means of drawing - pencils, paints, brushes, etc. this stage is not in fact drawing, but what can be called 'scribbling'. On this stage it is important to give the child the possibility to dream. A little bit later one can see some deliberate lines among this scribbling. With time the child will learn to control his hand's movement. In this time children are not really able to draw anything, but they understand that the pencil and paper are in some way connected, and they display keen interest to what other children draw. Now it is important to let the child understand that pencils or paint leave some traces on paper. The next stage is when the child is able to draw lines. It is now important to let the child be free in his expression on paper, and not to make him draw only lines. With time the child tries to draw the circle, which is rather difficult for him. At this stage of cognitive development the child is trying to control and teach his hand to move the way he wants it to (the age of 4-5) and the role of adults now is to help him to learn how to draw these figures. But in all stages it is important to give children freedom of expression so that they should love drawing, which may possibly help them in future with solving their psychological problems. Drawing art therapy has several advantages: - drawing is pleasure for children, it is an important means of communication with children with apparent verbal disabilities; - drawing reaches child's internal experience better than it can be done by words only; - communication through drawing is less threatening and more objective and understandable, and understating is vitally important between the child and the therapist; - drawing helps children to use both left and right hemispheres of their brain, as they use their right hemisphere for drawing itself, and their left hemisphere for explaining what they tried to express through the drawing; - it is possible for the child to get rid of aggressiveness and anger, and drawing is the easy and no-injury way. As most children are familiar with drawing it is easy for them to use it as a means of expressing what they can't say in words. Art therapy does not require any special skills in drawing. Those children which had problems with speech and communication or acted out of control, after some lessons appear to be more settled and quiet, being at the same time more open and calm. All children draw sometimes, and they do this spontaneously, it is as natural, as making sounds or movements. Sometimes they will use the means which are not really appropriate for drawing - for example, they can draw on food using their finger. This instinct says children have something to express. This problem started to be systematized early in the 19th century. It was displayed through the attempt to make art a part of elementary education. The first systematic research of the art of children was accomplished in France in 1913, when Luquet tried to understand what children try to say when they draw. But this was just an attempt to compare child's art as a means of achieving adult's realism, and not looking for the way of understanding child's thoughts. (Luquet 1930) During the next decades there was an attempt to systematize and make up some general principles according to which children draw. And by the end of the 1960's it was thought that the problem was solved, and the idea was that 'the child draws what he knows rather than what he sees'. (Kramer, 1973). During the 1970's there was a growing interest towards the children whose drawing abilities were rather advanced, and at the same time these children were handicapped or disabled in some way. Scientists and therapists tried to prove that ability for drawing was a sign of inner maturity of a child. The study of the child art was represented by four main schools. One of them was supporting the idea that children learn to draw not because they in some way percept outer world, but because they see how to draw and start to understand the laws of draw-making. This point of view separates the child draw-making from its cognitive development, which now is supposed to be wrong. So, how creativity and drawing can help children with some disabilities or traumas It is terrible when one speaks about sexually abused children, at the age of 5-6 years such children can't express verbally what they had gone through. Even for adults this is not a verbal experience. And art therapy is an initial stage of understanding and healing such type of trauma. Anyone can have problems with expressing experience in words. 6-year-old children simply don't know the words to explain sexual acts they have suffered and they were involved into. And in most of times they were forced not to tell anyone about what had happened. So in such cases drawing is one of the few ways to let the child express what he has got in his mind and his soul and thus make his further life easier. Art is something that can help the child to express what is too painful to be said in words. Often victims of sexual abuse are threatened, lied to, by the adults or their abusers whom they used to trust. This is one of the major reasons that many therapists have found that art therapy is actually preferable to verbal therapy in many cases. (Naumberg, 1973) A bright example is a case with a 6-year-old girl which we will call Naomi. During the first sessions of art therapy the child was almost non-verbal, having been raped by the 13-year-old friend of her brother. She was constantly drawing her house, and the situation was always the same: the bed was partially scribbled out, and after some lessons she was finally able to say that this was the place where everything happened. The child was drawing unconsciously, until she was able to remember and understand the reason of such behaviour and thus opening way to healing herself. In early investigations of the use of art therapy with sexually abused children, Kelley noted that drawing pictures of the event may provide information relating to the actual incident and allow repressed feelings to resurface where they can be addressed effectively (Kelley, 1984). Among the sexually abused children art therapy is important for different mental encoding processes, as it is supposed that there two levels of memory encoding processes. The first one is primitive, based on child's vision and which records the event in exact details. The second one is some kind of the coding experience that is child's memory simply reconstructs an event from common elements. Research suggests that at times child's organism is in terror, his memory is not able to process the received impressions and feelings, as it is in usual calm state, it just receives the photographic form of the incident, leaving it unintegrated with other memory links. So in such cases child's cognition is in some way bypassed. So the art therapy can gain access these hidden unprocessed memories through drawing, so that these events come into consciousness. In fact, different research reports state that there were often used drawings to obtain this hidden information. Psychic trauma occurs when an influx of external stimuli breaks the stimulus barrier of the psyche (Freud, 1955). The psychic trauma of childhood sexual abuse can be described as follows. There is no possibility of preventing the mental apparatus from being flooded with large amounts of stimulus. Another problem arises instead-the problem of mastering the amounts of stimuli that have broken in and binding them, in the psychical sense, so that they can be disposed of (Miller & Boe, 1990). It is very important to use flexible means of work with children. Art therapy gives a child a possibility to replay, experience and to realize some problem or conflict situation through the most convenient means for child's psyche. Art therapy methods allow the child to be plunged into the problem to the extent for which the child is ready. According to the recent CBS reports, many of New York children continue to experience the feelings and emotions about the day when the Twin Towers crashed. Recent surveys display that 93 percent of New York children under 14 were in fact witnesses of the crash or watched it on TV. And about half of these children still have emotional problems connected with this event. Some children lost one or both parents in that tragedy and their path towards the realizing of the fact was very long. And sharing through Art helped most of the children to cope with their problem. And child psychologist Dr. Robin Goodman has even made an exhibition of the child's works of art. "What the kids do in this art is personalize the experience', - Dr. Goodman says, - 'There are the kids that used to be fine before but now they have problems related to the events of September, 11. (CBS News, 2004) Drawing is an act of creativeness which allows the kid to feel and understand himself, easily express his thoughts and feelings, to get rid of conflicts and strong emotions and to express his dreams and hopes. It's not only reflecting in children's cognition of the surrounding and social reality, but also its modeling and expressing attitudes towards it. Some scientists consider drawing to be one of the ways of the organism' improvement. Drawing develops feelings and movement coordination. Its main advantage is that it demands participation of all psychical functions in it. So drawing serves the means of understanding of child's capabilities, and of the surrounding reality, the means of relationship' modeling and expressing different emotions, both negative and positive. It is necessary to note that the drawing material is the means of psychological protection for the child, which he uses in difficult situations. It is connected with the child's ability to keep his emotions inside, not letting them to go out. They also posses the mechanism of 'distancing' bad emotions (projection). That's why the drawing image can play the role of 'container' in which complex emotions of the child can be kept until he is ready to experience and realize them. The protective function of drawing lies in the possible regressing of psyche, thus making it more open for psychological correction. Regressing and the reflection of the regressive images in drawing lead towards interaction with this material and its understanding and re-integration. Despite the fact that there are different kinds of art therapy, one should take into account one peculiarity, which all children possess. It is difficulty for them to verbally express their emotions and feelings. Non-verbal expression is more natural for them. And their feelings are displayed more spontaneously in drawings, omitting the 'censure' of their consciousness. That's why their emotions fixed in drawings are more appropriate for comprehending. The field of expressive arts therapy has some things in common with narrative therapy. While the theories behind these approaches may differ, the "expression" of problems in art form is inherently akin to the practice of externalization. The very process of drawing, sculpting, or dramatizing the relationship with a problem naturally evokes a visceral sense of the problem as located for reflection outside of the self. The act of expression, in this sense, is often reported as beneficial in itself--it can be a relief for children to literally "express" the externalized problem in a symbolic yet physically experienced way. This allows them to "see" the problem and ponder it more easily. Just as they do when left alone to play, children often like to work and rework stories in oblique forms, such as puppet theater, rather than talking about things directly. (Waller, 1993) Art therapy influences children in a very good way. The main thing is that children are not yet taught to think in stereotypes. And it is necessary to use the art therapy with the following types of children: - those who are not really verbal, or shy by character, or whose native language differs from the one they have to speak now; - children for whom drawing is the preferred means of expression; - those who already went through some discomfort connected with verbal expression, which could have been caused by some abuse, and for whom thus 'word therapy' is not appropriate; - where there some differences in families, when parents expect their children to communicate in a certain way. One does not have to be a professional artist in order to participate in the art therapy. These are direct ways to help children to express themselves. Children are simply to be suggested that they should show their problems in graphic form, and the adults will only have to grasp the meanings children try to express. Drawing is helps children to show their problems in some beneficiary way - like when they play puppet theater, they avoid speaking about the problem directly, rather showing it in some oblique form. For example, children who have been sexually abused, add more information to the therapist through drawing, the information which could not be received in other ways. And as the sexual trauma is mainly psychological, art therapy may become the means of getting the most repressed traumas into the surface and balancing them with the outer world. Art allows to resurface hidden problems and influence them in the due way. Art therapy is the most appropriate way to find an access to the hidden problems and traumas. But it also plays a huge role in processing of the received information. It is really amazing what drawings can say and show! For example, children with asthma drew pictures of themselves with weights on their chests. The exact nature of child's perceptions can only be studied by guesses. Opinions about how children percept the world differ greatly and there is no one single answer to the question of how children go through psychological traumas. The two main questions are to what extent children's inner world consists of unconscious perceptions and how they differ under the influence of growth and the outer world. But in fact art therapists who work with children sometimes have similar views as for the child's inner world. Young children at the age of 5-6 years are more easy to work with, as their inner and outer world is less restricted by stereotypes. But at the same time, the thing which makes them different from adults, is that they don't think about their problem as a disease, and thus they don't want to go through any analysis and to be cured. Art work of the children is the easiest way to make the child's consciousness and unconsciousness 'speak' and interact. But it should be pointed out that at times, the possibility of using child's drawings as the evidence in court concerning sexual abuse puts the therapist into some kind of moral dilemma. The main aim of the doctor is to make the child feel secure. And the information in the drawing is combined - real information is combined with fantasy. And often the information derived from the images does not have one single meaning. In such cases the role of the art therapist is to find what the child wanted to say through his drawing thus enabling to find the further ways of healing the child's psyche. So, let's make some conclusions. First of all, drawing has always been connected with people's cognitive functions and their development. Starting from the time of the cavemen people used to make drawings and scribbles on the walls of their caves. These drawing were becoming more complex with time, and now it is easy for the scientists to depict the way of life of ancient people through reading their pictures. This means that drawing always carries some inner content. Drawing for children is a saviour, for children are often not able to verbally express what they need and what they are afraid of. So the art therapy - is curing through drawing, music or dancing. In this work I spoke of drawing only. The child goes through several stages of drawing in his life, and at times drawing becomes the only means to help him to get rid of his psychological problems. Drawing makes the child more open. It involves all functions of organism into work. Both hemispheres of the child's brain work together and at the same time the child is taught to control his movements. Art therapy is widely used for helping sexually abused children, children with cancer and other physical disabilities, and those who have experienced the Twin Towers crash as well. Today this kind of therapy is considered to be very successful, and show almost now negative sides, as drawing is one of the natural human processes, for which a person doesn't need any special abilities. Creativity in psyche plays a crucial role today, letting children to get free of conflicts accumulated in their unconsciousness. I suppose this is one of the few ways today to help children with minimum injury. Drawing enacts the processes of psyche regressing and gives children possibility to lead the normal life, forgetting bad moments of their childhood. And this is possible only through ultimate comprehending of the conflict situation and letting it come out. The softest way to reach this is the art therapy, which is more and more widely spread today. Works cited (1) Bateson, G. (1973). Steps to an ecology of mind. London: Paludin. (2) Freud, S. (1955). Beyond the pleasure principle. In the standard edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. (Vol. XVII). London: Hogarth. (3) Ganim, B. (1999) Art and healing: Using expressive art to heal your body, mind and spirit. New York: Three Rivers Press. (4) Greenburg, M., & van der Kolk, B. (1987). Retrieval and integration of traumatic memories with the painting cure. Psychological Trauma. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press. (5) Johnson, D. (1987). The role of the creative arts therapies in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological trauma. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 14, 7-13. (6) Kelley, S. J. (1984). The use of art therapy with the sexually abused child. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 22,, (12), 12-18. (7) Kramer, E. (1973). Arts as therapy with children. London: Elek. (8) Levick, M., Safran, D., & Levine, A. (1990). Art therapists as expert witnesses: A judge delivers a precedent-setting decision. Arts in Psychotherapy, 17, 49-53. (9) Miller, C., & Boe, J. (1960) Tears into diamonds: Transformation of child psychic trauma through sandplay and storytelling. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 17, 247-259. (10) NACCE (1999). All our futures: Creativity, culture and education. Sudbury, National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education: DfEE and DCMS. (11) Naumberg, M. (1973). Introduction to art therapy. New York: Teacher's College Press. (12) Neboschik, M. (1975). A treatment of the psychopathology of depression through inducement of appropriate mood changes by a combination of music and comparable colours with complementary counseling. Dissertation Abstracts International, 35, (10B). (13) Penfield, W., & Perot, P. (1963). The brain's record of auditory and visual experience. Brain, 86, 595-696. (14) Powell, L. & Faherty, S. (1990). Treating sexually abused latency age girls. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 17, 35-17. (15) Prentice, R. (2000). Creativity: a reaffirmation of its place in early childhood education. The Curriculum Journal, 11 (2), 145-156. (16) Rhyammar, L. & Brolin, C. (1999). Creativity research: historical considerations and main lines of development. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 43 (3), 259-273. (17) Schimek, J. (1975). A critical re-examination of Freud's concept of unconscious mental representation. International Review of Psychoanalysis, 2, 171-180 (18) Waller, C.S. (1992). Art therapy with adult female incest survivors. Art therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 9. (3), 135-138. (19) Waller, D. (1993). Group interactive art therapy: Its use in training and treatment. London: (20) Luquet, G. H. (1930). The Art and Religion of Fossil Man (Russell, J. T., Trans.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press Tavistock/Routledge. (21) Zierer, E. (1976). Creative analysis: A non-verbal and verbal psychotherapy technique. Art Psychotherapy, 3, 29-41. Read More