Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy

Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy by Laury Rappaport is brilliantly conceptualized and written and will be useful to any mental health worker. Integrating theory, practice and case examples, the author successfully achieves her goal of integrating art therapy with Focusing with application to a wide variety of clients and settings. Her exercises and case examples reveal her to be a gifted therapist and her writing affords her the opportunity to share her creative talent with others. A must read. -Barbara F. Okun, PhD Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School; author of Effective Helping: Interviewing and Counseling Techniques, Seeking and Connections in Psychotherapy, and more. Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy is a major contribution to art therapy literature and practice. Laury Rappaport introduces a contemplative method and philosophy grounded in the body's felt-sense of experience and its innate and largely unrecognized wisdom. This intellectually provocative, yet thoroughly practical text, establishes Rappaport as an emergent leader in the art therapy world and author of a book that every student and art therapist must read in order to appreciate the depth and breadth of our discipline. -Shaun McNiff, University Professor, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA, and author of The Arts in Psychotherapy, Art as Medicine, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, Art-Based Research, and more. In a time the fields of neuroscience and somatic therapy increasingly inform therapeutic intervention, Laury Rappaport has written a book that is both timely and passionate in its message. As we continue to understand the relationship between the brain and emotion, sensory work or the A felt senseA is central to recovery and repair of both psyche and spirit. Rappaport provides a needed and comprehensive resource on why infusing the process of Focusing with art therapy is natural combination and one that creatively brings together mind and body in treatment. Every therapist who uses creative methods in their work will benefit from the wisdom found throughout this volume. -Cathy A. Malchiodi, PhD, ATR-BC, LPCC, National Institute for Trauma and Loss; faculty, Lesley University; author of Creative Interventions with Traumatized Children, Handbook of Art Therapy, Expressive Therapies, Breaking the Silence: Art Therapy with Children from Violent Homes, and more. The reader can get a solid foundation in both Focusing and Art Therapy through Dr. Laury Rappaport's book. The book goes further to transform both of them, in showing how Focusing is always functioning in Art Therapy and how Art Therapy explicates the Focusing process. With lots of exercises, enriched with examples from therapy and workshops, Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy dives deeply into the life process and yet it succeeds in being a highly practical book. -Akira Ikemi, PhD, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Kansai University (Japan), Certifying Focusing Coordinator and Focusing-Oriented Therapist, The Focusing Institute. Here is finally a fascinating text and guide by a practitioner and experienced teacher in the field, who has the expertise to undertake the long overdue task, in providing a practical grounding for what philosophically supports a similar process, Focusing and Expressive Arts Therapy. Laury Rappaport is an articulate teacher and committed artist, who as a psychotherapist can look back on a long professional career, mastering Focusing and Expressive Arts Therapy alike. Based on this expertise, she eloquently presents a rich text written from a truly phenomenological perspective, that guides like a red thread through this practical book. As a result it speaks to therapists of diverse traditions. What a helpful contribution for a wide range of practitioners interested in the Arts or Focusing. -Paolo J Knill, PhD, Dr.h.c., Provost, European Graduate School, Swizterland Co-author of Principle and Practice of Expressive Arts Therapy and Minstels of Soul: Intermodal Expressive Therapy Dr. Rappaport's professional, accessible and enjoyable detailed approach to Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy includes a user-friendly introduction to Gendlin's Focusing Method as well as a bridge to using Focusing with art therapy. The 44 focusing-oriented art therapy exercises included are easy to follow and clinically useful. Dr. Rappaport's book is for beginners and well-practiced professionals who work with individuals and groups. Readers will find it both refreshing and practical and a much used addition to their libraries. -Dr. Doris Arrington, ATR-BC, Licensed Psychologist, Notre Dame de Namur University, Professor Emeritus, and author of Home is Where the Art is, and Art, Angst, and Trauma: Right Brain Interventions with Developmental Issues.