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Trained as a clinical art therapist, I especially appreciate the creative and expressive process both in my personal life and in my clinical work. With great enthusiasm, I share a process driven by my work with child patients during the course of their treatment. From the notion that creativity is a dynamic process intertwined within the constructions of art therapy and play therapy, I find value in their synthesis within a psychoanalytic framework.
Co-creating a culture of play and spontaneity within the analytic relationship fosters exploratory action and interaction as a mode of engagement. This context of creative relating was brought to my attention and emerged in relation to the numerous youngsters I have treated over the years. As an art therapist in a nonprofit agency for foster youth, I did not have toys available. Instead, I had a variety of art supplies ranging from magic markers, glue, construction paper, masking tape, paint, and a variety of household scraps (paper towel rolls, boxes, and yarn). To my surprise, the children used the art supplies differently than I had expected.
Children use art in the natural course of communication and symbolic expression. Yet, these young people fashioned the art supplies into
creative possibilities beyond what I had learned to expect in my graduate training. They began using the art supplies, themselves, as tools for expression and interaction. One young man began linking magic markers creating a magic wand. He would then use the wand to change me into someone else. Another child used a box, paint, and fabric to create a bedroom where he played out his sexual abuse. Another child, abused by his mother, used masking tape to weave a web throughout the office where we acted out being spiders and flies navigating though the web without getting stuck to the adhesive tape.
An important aspect of therapeutic action with these young people was that their creativity became the impetus for engagement with me. My willingness to