Art Therapy

[Delta40]

Here we all sit at therapy spot marked X
scrawled names stuck on our foreheads
as the ice breaker process begins.
Hi I'm Anthony and I've got some real problems...
I'm Mary and, yeah, that's all.
I'm here because my doctor threatened to admit me.
Surrounded by art and materials
as if boxes of coloured pencils
glue and used magazines
will ever quell the anxiety,
the rage
the self-pity.
Yet before me is a template
on how to fold a comfort box
This is the goddam challenge I must face
with this whacko group?
Origami. Origami. Say it three times and
realize plainess can be transformed
into beauty through application.
Is that me wanting to change or just token comfort?
The teacher smiles maternally at each of us
as if we were her own babies.
Choose the paper wisely people. It's very important.
Jesus! more decisions? This is too hard for me
Shut up Mary, nobody actually cares about you anyway.
I'm the one with the genuine pain here.
The meditation music annoys me into thinking
that I should be doing something meaningful
Somebody rescue me from whalespeak and dolphintalk!
Fold as per the instructions remembering
always to breathe in through the nose,
out through the mouth.
I'm glad my children can't see me like this.
Playing kindergarten with burnt out
useless people whose knuckles are as white as mine.
We are all hanging on for dear life.
Her powdered face and floral scent gives her
an authority to ask me as I tear the patterned piece,
Is everything alright?
Would you like me to help you understand the instructions?
I don't need to be here.
Screw the paper and screw her arty farty therapy group.
I flee in search for the sun.

[YesNo]

I liked Mary's excuse that she was there because her doctor threatened to admit her if she didn't attend. That's the only thing that would get me to go to one of these. Nice descriptions and funny.

[Helga]

oh I have tried these and they are no joy! I really like this poem Delta!

[Hawkman]

As I understand it, the statistical likelyhood that the narrator is a direct bloodline descendant of Ghengis Khan is quite high... The group described herin is almost as ghastly as those little team building exercises conducted by middle management types in big companies. Everyone with a little piece of folded paper in front of them bearing their name in felt tip, before the ritual, "Hi, I'm so and so, and I blah, blah, blah..." Then everyone has to make a tall tower with large, flimsy sheets of paper and some sticky tape, before the stability and resilliance of their construction is tested with a fan.

In such situations, the rational mind conceives visions of axes, and the ear is filled with the drumming of thundering hooves and the blood-lust rises until you find yourself lying on top of the middle management type with your hands at his throat while feeble minded fellow delegates try to pull you off.

Art therapy? Humbug! let the blood run free - lol. The truth is it's not the art therapy which is obnoxious, it's the patronising condescention and being treated like a three year old by some smug git, which totally undermines any cathartic emotional release which art might grant for an enraged victim of psychotherapy.

Great poem, Delta.

Live and be well - H

[ftil]

I was smiling reading this tread as it reminds me how I was sarcastic about art therapy. But I tried anyway to make up my mind. Unexpectedly, I feel in love with it. :brow:
I am glad to hear critical voices. It is necessary and crucial as theories are changing like weather and may cause more harm than good. In fact, B. Rothschild admitted in her book The Body Remembers that she kept her client retraumatized for a year. Nothing is black or white. According to repeated research YAVIS patterns - Young, Attractive, Verbal, Intelligent, and Successful has the best outcome in therapy.

We may ask why those people enter therapy. Well, they are thriving in transition and don’t wait until they face a crisis whether it is a relationship problem, job dissatisfaction, or career change.

BTW, Carl Jung was a Godfather of art therapy and many people are influenced by his theory without even knowing it.:smilewinkgrin:

[stlukesguild]

Most artists I know have little of no use for art therapy. On one level, there is a great distrust of "using" art to some utilitarian end... something Modernism struggled against. On the other hand, there is a disgust with the manner in which art therapy has been mis-applied and misused by therapists, social-workers, psychologists ans psychiatrists and even art critics in an attempt to utilize works of art as a means of analyzing artists.

[Delta40]

lol. Thanks for the wonderful comments. I agree that it was the condescension of the coordinator that got up my nose, coupled with people who contextualized everything - even my pain into their own....

I enjoyed writing the poem though!