Lectures

Many healthcare clients have a dysregulated stress response system. This is often due to chronic or traumatic stress. This can cause a person to become unbalanced and less adaptive to a variety of situations.

The neural networks involved in stress response are disrupted; they no longer work well together. Thinking or feeling then takes over. When you're only thinking or feeling, your repertoire for dealing with different challenges becomes smaller. Your adaptability and resilience diminish.

These neural networks are not so easily influenced by talking or thinking about them. They are affected primarily by meaningful experiences on a physical, affective and cognitive level. A meaningful experience is one that touches, moves, stimulates, excites, inspires and takes you out of your comfort zone. It creates space for change.

Art therapists are experiential practitioners who can use their art form - art, music, dance and theatre - methodically to activate meaningful experiences tailored to the client. But how does this actually happen in practice? What do art therapists have in common when activating physical, affective and cognitive experiences? What is specific to each art form? What does this mean for treatment and how can it be explained from a neuroscientific perspective? 

The analogous process, originally developed by Dr. Henk Smeijsters, is a theoretical model based on parallels between design processes in the arts and processes that drive behavior. These processes are largely "unconscious", on a "non-cognitive" level. We can now further substantiate this theoretical model with findings from neuropsychological research. For example, we know that (neuropsychological) processes that are activated during design in the arts are analogous to the processes that control (daily) functioning. We also know that these processes can be influenced mainly through experiences. By gaining targeted experiences during the shaping process, the functioning in situations outside the therapy is influenced. Let art therapists be very good at that.

Are you an art teacher? And are you increasingly coming into contact with students with challenging behaviour? Then this lecture is interesting for you. Insights from art therapy are translated into art education. It gives you ideas and guidelines on how you can continue to stimulate the art-making.