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Podcast

Melissa Solorzano, the creator or the Creative Therapy Sessions podcast, was kind enough to ask me to co-host the most recent episode (#6) with her. We reviewed the happenings at the AATA conference that just passed.

Its up on iTunes under podcasts, or you can click here to listen to the episode.

Please excuse the exorbitant number of “um”s and “you know”s that I say through out the interview. I hope its not too distracting to listeners.

Also, thank you so much Melissa for taking the time to talk and edit our review of the AATA conference. You do a great service to the art therapy world!

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Next year in Dallas

So…I’m back from the AATA conference in Cleveland, and I was thoroughly impressed with the excellent key note speaker we had, Dr. Bruce Perry. He was so inspiring and very much in tune with what us art therapists are up to- to the point that he’s even developed his own way of charting and evaluating for the developmental level of an individual (something that Art Therapists can do through assessing the artwork of a client). I also picked up his book The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog. I’m only about 50 pages into it, but I can tell that its a great read for those of us who work with (or are interested in working with) traumatized individuals. It also very much parallels his key note address, so if you missed the conference, you can get the gist of what was discussed.

I also took some fabulous workshops that were full of excellent ideas and theory. One of my favorites was the day long workshop I took with Lucille Proulx, who worked for many years at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and was the president of the Quebec Association of Art Therapists. She specializes in attachment issues between parents and children, and helps to facilitate normal attachment through art therapy group work with moms, dads and their kids. I haven’t checked out the book yet, but its supposed to incorporate the theory and directives she discussed throughout her workshop. It should be an excellent resource. Although I don’t work with families, many of the directives that she’s created have the potential to work well the with the population I do work with- Adults who are developmentally disabled and who have an Axis I diagnosis as well.

I also very much enjoyed the seminar on Contemporary Issues in Art Therapy, Psychoanalysis and Children. Some of who I would consider masters of the profession (i.e., Judith Rubin) participated in a case presentation that had the air of supervision. They said that this is a regular seminar that they’ve been hosting for the past 5 years, and hopefully they’ll do it again in Dallas.

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Microsoft Surface

A few weeks ago, I tagged along with my husband, who’s in the tech industry, and went to the CODE conference in the south bay area. While I was there I got to see and play around with the Microsoft Surface.

I checked out some of the music applications that have been developed so far, which were pretty cool. The music program featured an interactive piano, where you could touch the screen and push down on the keys to create sound. There was a DJ program, as well, allowing scratching and mixing. What was missing, of course was haptic feedback- actually having the sensation of touching the keys or record and pushing them down or from side to side.

A paint program was also demonstrated. They had something that looked like an artist’s palette, that when dropped down on the surface the circles that were cut out (representing where the paint would go) turned different colors- for example, one red, one pink, one blue and one yellow. They also had regular paint brushes, which were “dipped” into the virtual paint inside the palette, and then you could apply color anywhere on the screen. It made me so excited! There’s lots more to be done to make this a useful tool for art making- for example, being able to mix colors together, and having gradients of color (similar to Art Rage). However, a product like this makes the idea of Cyber-Art Therapy come alive in my mind.

Here’s a demo video I found that demonstrates some of what I described above.

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Cybertherapy Conference

For those of you who are interested in CyberTherapy:

The Interactive Media Institute, APA approved for offering continuing education for psychologists, is currently organizing the 14th annual CyberTherapy and CyberPsychology Conference in 2009. They are currently taking submissions for posters, oral presentions and symposiums. The conference will take place on June 21-23, 2009, at VILLA CARAMORA, an historical dwelling located on the Lago Maggiore, Verbania-Intra, Italy.

Here’s an excerpt from their Themes and Topics page:

The 14th Annual CyberTherapy and CyberPsychology Conference
brings together researchers, clinicians, funders and policy makers to share and discuss the growing disciplines of CyberTherapy and CyberPsychology.

The conference will seek input from a wider segment of the scientific community, and is interested in attracting experts in clinical therapy and rehabilitation, cognitive sciences, social sciences, and computer sciences interested in the meeting’s core topics: emerging applications of new media, design of new media and effects of new media.

Conference attendees have the opportunity to play a role in designing the future of cyberpsychology and health care.

This sounds like it could be an amazing opportunity to learn, or perhaps even present. If you check this page out further, you’ll notice the wide range of topics they are interested in addressing during this conference. I’d love to go….and its in Italy!

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Brain Science!

This year’s American Art Therapy Association conference (coming up next week!) places a heavy emphasis on neurological understanding. Each year there is so much new research, information and discoveries, making it hard to keep up with current understanding on this topic. If you’d like to brush up on your understanding of neurological development, mechanisms, anatomy, as well as the impact of new research on philosophical questions, check out this podcast by Ginger Campbell MD.

The podcast is impressively clear- especially if you start from the beginning and continue in consecutive order, since explanations are always provided in the current or previous episodes, preparing the listener for more advanced topics. It does help to have some basic knowledge of the brain before you begin, although I’m sure if you’re willing to look certain things up (ie: a picture of a neuron and its parts) it will make the information easier to understand.

Here are some topics I enjoyed listening to so far (I haven’t gotten through them all): #4- The Great Brain Debate- Nature vs. Nurture, #11- Emotions, #12 Memory, and #13 Unconscious Decisions.

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Creative Pier

Here’s another workshop offered by Creative Pier in NYC.

Wednesday November 19th
6:30 PM- 9:00PM
with Routa Segal
Creative Pier-833 Broadway, 3rd Floor New York,NY

Express your thanks for all the good things in life and create a hand-made gift that comes from your heart. Celebrate every person and every thing that brings abundance and joy. Draw, write, paint or collage and create an artwork that expresses your gratitude–a thank you card, a jewelry box, a bracelet, a picture frame or any other item that you would like to create for yourself or someone else.

Space is limited to 16 people, please rsvp by November 18th. $25, all art materials are included. rsvp@creativepier.com

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Web Therapy

In relation to a previous post I made about tele-therapy, I happened to hear about Lisa Kudrow’s internet tv series, web therapy, that spoofs therapy over the internet. So…I searched on google to check it out (it is pretty funny, btw), but the first link that google pulled up was webtherapy.com. Curious, I searched around the site, where it discussed the benefits of using the webtherapy service. Here’s an example from the site:

Webtherapy is a unique, affordable, confidential online counseling service which provides an ongoing relationship with your own personal licensed psychotherapist.

Webtherapy allows you to communicate to your therapist as often as you like (daily, or more than once a day, if you wish), by leaving private messages on a secure, personal site. Up to five days a week, once each day, your therapist will provide helpful responses and therapeutic interventions.

Webtherapy provides you maximum security in an encrypted environment to ensure the absolute confidentiality of your interactions with your therapist. You can capture your thoughts and feelings on the spot, rather than waiting up to a week for your next therapy session in an office. And you can feel confident that no one–not even your family–needs to know about your webtherapy.

As I understand it, when you sign up you get to contact your therapist as much as you want when you want through leaving messages on a secure part of the web therapy website that is only used by you and your therapist. This is interesting to me, and perhaps the way this is used is similar to asking a client to write down their thoughts between therapeutic sessions, encouraging the tech savy client to use a secure website rather than a pen and paper. However, the information above states that as a client you have your own personal therapist at your disposal once a day and your therapist can respond back to you up to 5 times a week. Would that make the contact between client and therapist closer to traditional psychoanalysis (3-5x per week), or does it blur the temporal boundaries of the therapeutic relationship since the client does not seem to make and keep an appointment but rather logs in when he/she feels like it?

The website also states that they have a large staff membership of highly qualified professionals who specialize in many different populations. They do not disclose the pricing or how payments work, nor do they give out the names and credentials of their therapists. The site does, however, offer many reassurances of confidentiality, ethical standards and states that all the therapists are indeed “licensed professional psychologists, licensed clinical social workers or licensed mental health counselors”. I thought that maybe if I clicked on the “sign up” link on the website, I may get a better idea of cost and more information on the different types of web therapists, however, the message that I got when trying to sign up stated that they were no longer accepting new registrations. This was surprising to me, as it seems to imply that they had so many clients that the practices of the numerous web therapists were full at this time.

I am left with many questions about webtherapy and tele-therapy, so much so that I am still trying to tease out what my questions and concerns really are…just another reason why its so important to be thinking about this new frontier of therapy.

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Creative Pier

This month’s workshop at Creative Pier in NYC is Giving Art: Magic Seed.

Here’s a quote from Martha about this workshop:

In this workshop we will create art by visualizing what may grow out of a ‘magic seed’ by drawing, painting or collaging the many of life-affirming possibilities.

Come anytime during the workshop and create as much as you like. The artworks will be sent to patients diagnosed with cancer, whose hopes for healing will be supported by your good will.

$35, Art Materials are included and 15% of the proceeds will be donated to Gilda’s Club, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.