Narratives of therapeutic art-making in the context of marital breakdown: older women reflect on a significant mid-life experience

Abstract

and aspects of the narratives that conveyed present-day identities and artistic endeavors. The narratives revealed the complexity of the journey through marital breakdown and depression into health, and showed that therapeutic art-making could best be understood, not as a stand-alone experience, but as given meaning within the context of wider personal and social resources. Participants looked back on therapeutic art-making that occurred two decades earlier and still described this as a significant turning point in their personal development. Art as an adjunct to counselling/therapy was not only symbolically self-expressive but provided opportunity for decision-making, agency and a reformulated self-image.Key words: art, mid-life, divorce, narrative 3 Narratives of therapeutic art-making in the context of marital breakdown: older women reflect on a significant mid-life experience.

Description of arts therapies practice with adults suffering from depression in the UK: Qualitative findings from the nationwide survey

“…However, apart from several rather older and more general studies (e.g. Reynolds et al, 2008 andLiebmann, 2007 on Art Therapy; Blatt, 1996 on Dance Movement Therapy; Emunah, 1994 andDokter, 1996 on Drama Therapy; Odell, 1988 on Music Therapy), little can be found in the literature on how arts therapists work with clients suffering from depression in the UK, and the specifics of treatment of this particular group. There is therefore, a need for a timely review of the state of arts therapies for depression in the UK.…”

Art psychotherapy practice with adults who suffer from depression in the UK: Qualitative findings from a depression-specific questionnaire

“…Although the literature includes accounts of arts therapists addressing depression (Dokter, 1996;Payne, 1996;Cattanach, 1999;Reynolds, Lim & Prior, 2008), the available case studies often offer descriptions of individual practices, which do not form consistent patterns of the overall practice of arts therapies.…”

Tangled Up in Grief: Bob Dylan's Songs of Separation

“…It creates a montage of past, present, and future that suggests the narrator has been, is, and always will be "on the road"-a prediction which has proved ever truer for Dylan himself, who in 1988 started what became known as the Never Ending Tour, a clear dismissal of the idea of settling down to a stable domestic relationship. Further, the song presents a response to separation through the idea of a continuing journey, a common metaphor in analyses of the experience of marital breakdown (e.g., Reynolds, Lim, & Prior, 2008). As we might expect from the first song in what was to become a series about separation, the primary impulse, which contradicts the direction of the narrative as indicated above, is to search for restoration of the lost relationship: in the last verse the narrator has to find the woman "somehow," and he asserts that their feelings have always been "the same."…”