Expressive arts therapy: Powerful medicine for wholeness and healing

This thesis utilizes a heuristic and case study methodology for research with expressive arts therapy as a separate field of professional practice that originated in the 1970s. The expressive arts profession today emphasizes the importance of engaging with art in a multimodal manner, as opposed to separating or compartmentalizing the arts, in order to intensify healing and transformation. The literature review explores the history of art and psychotherapy. It considers the depth perspective of Carl G. Jung and his work with active imagination. First-hand and clinical accounts of expressive arts therapists and practitioners are presented. Included is an autobiographical case study of the author's own extensive work with expressive arts and reports of her work with clients. The author looks within herself and her own lived experience to discover the validity of the findings of professionals in the field of expressive arts therapy and suggests how therapists might incorporate expressive arts into their practice. The electronic copy of this thesis is on a single disc containing a single PDF file which can be opened with Adobe Acrobat Reader.