Terminating my first internship

“In the past I rarely took the time to ponder my feelings on leave-taking or to explore the many ways in which one person could leave another. I limited myself to a simple “good-bye” and thus avoided experiencing strong feelings. Indeed it has been my practice to deny my feelings on such occasions. When it came time to leave my practicum placement in a small, special education school within a community mental health center, I found myself troubled. I realized that I had worked very hard to establish the relationships about to be severed.”

“At times … [in my work] … I became so caught up in my own needs that I ignored the children’s. … In my eagerness to show before our time was up how much I cared, my patience wore thin.”

“The [art piece] would serve as an aid to memory, and through memory we would remain connected. As I thought about this I realized that I, too, wanted to be remembered.”

[Franklin, M. (1981). Terminating art therapy with emotionally disturbed children. American Journal of Art Therapy, 2, 55-57]

Notes & quotes from an art therapy student’s handbook

Rice, C. A. & Rutan, J. S. (1987). Inpatient group psychotherapy. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

Hearing and understanding patients must always take precedence over the blind application of guidelines, no matter how helpful they may seem (p. 131).

Ormont, L. (1992). The group therapy experience from theory to practice. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

As strong as our impulse is for change, for gain, for novelty, perhaps no one lives without virtually as strong an impulse to hold on to familiar habits and practices, patterns that offered protection, or seemed to (p. 119).

We can’t learn the new if we don’t let go of the old (p. 120).

Resistance ‘resists’ insight and emotional change (p. 122).

All resistances promise peace as a way of avoiding some unpleasant truth or reality (p. 124).

Sarra, N. (1998). Connection and disconnection in the art therapy group. In S. Scaife, & V. Huet, (Eds.), Art psychotherapy groups: Between pictures and words (p. 69-87). London: Routledge.

There are times when an art therapy group seems an almost impossible undertaking; when everything seems set against the development of the therapeutic space and we as therapists are filled with feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness (p. 69).

…the image plays a crucial part in all this. …it stands between self and other and perhaps can be controlled. At least its fate is in the hands of its maker. It can be hated and it will survive. This is beginning to sound like the attitude towards the therapist and indeed there is a similarity (p. 76).

The image in art therapy is therefore, like the therapist, a container, but everyone can reflect upon it potentially in an ‘out there’ reality-based way, which may be more tangible than the shifting internal world of the therapist or other group members.

Adult development

“In the adult there are no frustrating parents to stimulate growth. But there is a mature mind capable of tolerating the frustration generated by the recognition that some impulses may not be gratified the way they were in earlier stages of development and others will not be gratified at all.”

From Adult Development, Chapter 4, by Calvin Colarusso and Robert Nemiroff.

The power of kindness: honesty

Honesty: Everything Becomes Easier

“…not only is honesty compatible with genuine kindness, it is the very basis of kindness. False kindness pollutes. As long as you are not living in the truth, you cannot really communicate with others, you cannot have trust, you cannot relate. As long as you do not call the hard realities by name, you are living in the land of dreams. There is no room for you and me there, but only for harmful illusions. Inasmuch as we lie, we live a life devoid of reality. And kindness cannot exist in a world of masks and phantoms.”

“Not having to pretend simplifies our life. On the other hand, pretending day after day to be someone you are not, requires enormous effort.”

“Sometimes, in order to be kind, we first have to learn to look after ourselves.”

Warmth: The Temperature of Happiness

“Physical warmth-to be touched, cuddled, protected, nurtured, caressed, rocked-is not a luxury but a necessary condition for life. If babies do not get it, they die, and if they do not get enough of it, they do not thrive. As they grow up, they become fearful, neurotic, aggressive, and possibly criminal.”

“Someone close to us can also be thousands of miles away. Warmth becomes a more subtle but no less
important quality. Intimacy is not only physical, but also psychological and spiritual. It is the capacity to enter and to let enter, to get to know and to allow to be known. To reveal our own dreams, our strangest and most embarrassing sides. To be without fear.”

“… even having someone to talk to, to fill the emptiness of solitude is essential. For old people, the opportunity just to chat is useful in lowering the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Can this be a matter of mere intellectual stimulation? No. Another study shows that it is being touched that really helps old people who are afflicted with dementia to suffer less and be in a better mood.”

From The Power of Kindness by Piero Ferrucci.