Home  ›  Art Evoking and Expressing Emotion by William H Johnson

Art Evoking and Expressing Emotion by William H Johnson

Written By Saturday, April 30, 2022 Add Comment Edit

Mental wellness practitioners often focus on the identified trouble or diagnosis in order to provide treatment and alleviate suffering. They are not lonely, as man survival is oft contingent upon a focus on the negative in life (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001). This understandable human being tendency to attend to the negative should be balanced past focusing on the positive because entrenched personal and societal problems can be transformed by broadening cognition, perception, and behavioral repertories through positive emotions (Biswas-Diener, 2010; Johnson & Fredrickson, 2005). Because the broadening effects of positive emotions can help us widen perception and run into complex systems more clearly, exploring how positive emotions emerge, abound, and change over time is vital for increasing human potential and global well-being (Fredrickson, 2004; Lombardo, 2011; Seligman, 2011).

Positive emotions are defined as desirable adaptive experiences of typically brief multiple-component response tendencies that subjectively feel good, and both signal and produce optimal functioning (Fredrickson, 1998, 2004). Theoretical work and empirical research past Fredrickson (1998, 2004) and colleagues is underway that shows that such positive emotions broaden and build psychological and social resources and resiliency (Algoe, Fredrickson, & Chow, 2011; Algoe & Stanton, 2012; Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek, & Finkel, 2008; Fredrickson & Losada, 2005; Tugade, Fredrickson, & Barrett, 2004). "Positive emotions promote discovery of novel and creative actions, ideas and social bonds, which in plough build that individual'south personal resources; ranging from physical and intellectual resources, to social and psychological resource" (Fredrickson, 2004, p. 1367). This augment-and-build theory of positive emotions has been applied to mental health exercise (Bono & McCullough, 2006; Dick- Niederhauser, 2009; Garland et al., 2010; Hart, Vella, & Mohr, 2008; Layous, Chancellor, Lyubomirsky, Wang, & Doraiswamy, 2011; Seligman, Rashid, & Parks, 2006).

Further research is needed into positive experiences in psychotherapy that develop betwixt people (Garland et al., 2010; Russell & Fosha, 2008) as emotional expression involves a fundamentally interdependent, relational process (Rimé, 2009). Scholars have too identified evolutionary links between emotional expression and aesthetic experience as adaptive and crucial for increasing empathic, emotional connections to others. Authors debate that the artful meet is a natural and necessary human endeavor, which volition "take a vital bearing on the survival of the human species" (Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson, 1990, p. 183; see likewise Davies, 2005;Dissanayake, 1995, 1999, 2000). Inside this context, and based upon the recommendations of existing inquiry (Algoe et al., 2011; DeWall, Lambert, Pond, Kashdan, & Fincham, 2012), this study was designed to explore how expressions of positive emotions emerge specifically in the intersubjective context of fine art therapy.

Fine art therapy is a unique kind of psychotherapy that uses the process of making and viewing fine art inside the context of a helping human relationship to increase well-being for clients of all ages (Malchiodi, 2011; Rubin, 1999; Wadeson, 1980). Art therapy harnesses the benefits of art creation, a global homo activity that has evolved for personal and societal well-beingness (Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson, 1990; Davies, 2005; Dissanayake, 1995, 1999, 2000).

Throughout history, art making has been an essential purveyor of noesis nearly both the cocky and others (Barone & Eisner, 2012; Gerber et al., 2012; Knowles & Cole, 2008). Art acts to bring emotions into consciousness and encapsulates complex human experience through expressive form (Barone & Eisner, 2012; Langer, 1957; Yorks & Kasl, 2006).

Fine art therapists and other mental health workers emphasize the health benefits of expression of a broad range of emotions. Adaptive emotional expression involves conscious emotional awareness through the integration of both cognition and affect (Kennedy-Moore & Watson, 2001). Exploring emotional experience within a therapeutic relationship has been positively correlated with treatment upshot (Coombs, Coleman, & Jones, 2002). Accumulating evidence shows that both emotional expression and the cognitive exploration of these emotions are important factors in therapeutic change, beyond therapeutic modalities (Whelton, 2004). One of the key strengths of fine art therapy is that fine art creation can assistance in emotional cocky- expression (Collie, Bottorff, & Long, 2006; Forzoni, Perez, Martignetti, & Crispino, 2010; Jones & Warren, 2006). In the art therapy literature, conscious and unconscious emotions are conceptualized as existence understood, expressed, communicated, and released through art making (Kramer, 1975; Lusebrink, 1990; Malchiodi, 2006; Naumburg, 1966). While clients report powerfully transformative experiences through emotional expression via creation and reflection about personally significant pieces of art, art therapy suffers from a lack of enquiry determining how exactly this procedure works (Slayton, D'Archer, & Kaplan, 2010). No prior research exists that has addressed expression of positive emotions through art therapy, which may be cardinal to its therapeutic action (Chilton & Wilkinson, 2009; Spiegel, Malchiodi, Backos, & Collie, 2006; Wilkinson & Chilton, 2012). This report addressed this gap past providing new and detailed information well-nigh the feel of intersubjective positive emotional expression through art making.

Inquiry purpose and question

The purpose of this study is to explore the dynamics of expressing positive emotions, inside the intersubjective fine art-making procedure, in an art therapy-similar feel for five coresearch pairs in the Mid-Atlantic Usa. The operational definition of the dynamics of positive emotions for this research report is actively shifting patterns of growth, change, or development of desirable adaptive response tendencies that subjectively feel skillful, and both signal and produce optimal operation, for instance joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, or awe. The research question is: What are the dynamics of expressing positive emotions within the intersubjective art-making process? Sub-questions include: How are positive emotions expressed through art making? What happens emotionally, cognitively, artistically, and relationally in the process of expressing positive emotions through art making within an interpersonal relationship? What patterns, images, symbols, metaphors, stories, themes, designs, or colors might emerge from the visual, verbal, and relational expression of positive emotions? This deliberately broad question is appropriate for exploring interpersonal emotional dynamics.

Method

The research method was arts-based research, in which art making is the main ways of inquiry. Arts-based research is defined as the systematic utilize of visual, performing, and/or literary artistic practices in the data collection, data analysis, and/or presentation of inquiry findings for the purpose of contributing to a useful torso of noesis (Hervey, 2000; Leavy, 2009; McNiff, 1998). The rationale for using arts-based research was that this method is peculiarly useful in illuminating qualitative, emotional aspects of intersubjective experience (Leavy, 2009; Sullivan, 2010). The knowledge that was sought involved discovery of intersubjective, relational psychological dynamics that cannot be quantified. Therefore, arts- based methods were used to evoke, explore, and communicate dynamic and shifting emotional experiences. To this end, this study used a relationally based arroyo, with a focus on caring relationships between researcher and participants.

Enquiry participants/coresearchers

The participants (N = five pairs) were from the Mid-Atlantic surface area of the Usa. In social club to minimize chance and to collect optimal quality normative data, coresearchers were express to v adult professional person art therapists. Further participant demographics were not collected. This group was chosen as art therapists have been professionally trained to create visual art and verbally discuss emotional experiences related to artistic expressions. Consequently, this group independent key informants who possessed unique expertise relative to the enquiry topic, and were likely to be able to be successful at relational dialoguing. Those who had a prior professional relationship with the primary researcher were sought considering a onetime collegial relationship is theorized to parallel in some ways an ongoing therapeutic relationship, which was key to the topic under investigation. Due to potential conflicts of interest, personal friends, current students, current supervisees, and past or present art therapy clients were excluded from the study. This report was canonical by the Drexel University Institutional Review Lath. Purposeful and snowball sampling was used to recruit all participants, who responded to an e-mail service forward to the membership of a local art therapy professional association, over the course of 2 months in the spring of 2013.

Investigational methods and procedures

All participants signed consent forms in which they consented to this specific use of their artwork and identified levels of confidentiality. They selected and reconfirmed choices regarding anonymity every bit they had options to create a "nom de feather" or to forgo confidentiality birthday. The primary researcher met with each coresearcher two times in a private location such as a home or function art studio, and these interviews were video recorded. In the first meeting, co researchers were asked to "please brand an artwork about how you are feeling at this fourth dimension," and to discuss if their fine art helped them to express emotions, and and so make a follow-up art piece to further express whatsoever positive emotion(s) they noticed. The objective was to determine if the coresearchers expressed positive emotions through art making and to identify through collaborative give-and-take the meaning(s) ascribed to the art.

After the initial two hour art interview, the primary researcher, Gioia Chilton, conducted audio-recorded reflexive memoing, reflection, and responsive art-making solo. Afterwards, the master researcher created response art, a work of fine art made past an art therapist nearly the art therapy experience (Fish, 2012; Wadeson, 2003). In this study, response art was created by the primary researcher to explore the artwork and interaction of the first fine art interview, and and then shared back with the participants. A subsequent second art interview enabled opportunities for the coresearchers to provide feedback nigh the response fine art. Boosted artwork was so created jointly, by both parties, to reflect on the work at that time, followed by subsequent solo audio-recorded memoing and reflection by the researcher.

After each pair met for the 2 interviews and afterwards initial data was analyzed, coresearchers met as a larger group to provide boosted validity (in the qualitative sense) past fellow member-checking the initial thematic and artistic findings developed by the primary researcher. Equally an boosted validation procedure, a carve up group of five peer art therapists not otherwise involved with the study besides provided feedback.

The information analysis processes involved two strategies: 1) traditional apply of qualitative data analysis practices such every bit verbatim transcription of all recordings, construction of a matrix of fundamental findings and the utilise of MAXQDA-ten software for coding themes; and ii) arts-based inquiry data analysis methods. The analysis of the interview information, creative data, creative responses, and artistic synthesis addressed the inquiry question in the class of multiple, interactive and linked creative and thematic findings.

Findings

The study produced more findings than can be fully described in this article. Multimodal artistic forms of visual art pieces (Effigy 1; Table ane), several unlike kinds of verse, a video, 3 stories, four themes, and an arts-based theoretical model (Effigy 2), were created, all of which interactively addressed research questions relative to what happens in the procedure of expressing emotions through art making within an interpersonal relationship. A primary source of data was the artwork created by the coresearchers. More specifically, Tabular array one presents the overall creative response to the inquiry question past aggregating all the visual art created during the course of the written report past participant and category. Every bit a means of data analysis, the primary researcher created an acrylic painting titled, Birth of Intersubjectivity (Figure i). Because the use of the artistic symbol of eggs-in-nests appeared independently in 4 of the five coresearchers' fine art, the painting as an arts-based information analysis practice provided structural corroboration—a method of providing methodological brownie—of the artistic show in the coresearchers' artwork. Equally an artist, the primary researcher wanted to create a textured and circuitous surface that felt atmospheric, considering a thematic element in the artistic data was the presence of a celestial surroundings, symbolically representing a safe and spiritual/therapeutic/nurturing space. Additional perspectives were provided during the validation procedures. These meetings lent supplementary evidence that was incorporated into the artistic and thematic findings, such as the resistance to conceptualizing emotions equally merely positive versus negative. Collectively, respondents stated they felt the study to be accurate, every bit they connected or reconnected to the lived experience of the coresearchers. Respondents concurred that the coresearchers' distinct voices were heard, both literally and through visual art, a quality highly valued in the paradigm from which this research springs. Finally, the validation procedures highlighted the utility of the findings in evoking emotions.

Figure 1. Nativity of Intersubjectivity, acrylic on canvas, 30×xl inches.

Effigy ii. An arts-based emergent theoretical model of the dynamics of expressing positive emotions within an intersubjective relationship, constructed in the shape of a spiral with arrows to indicate flowing progressive and iterative move.

Table ane. Coresearchers' art over time.

Qualitative themes

The following qualitative themes worked dynamically together to express emotional life.

Coresearchers made emotions visible through artistic symbols and metaphors of nature imagery

During this procedure, feelings were communicated and generated via artistic symbol and metaphor. Feelings or emotions involve conscious or unconscious college order cerebral processes such as memories and images. Cognitive processes such every bit memories and images lead to appraisals, which prompt iterative surges of subjective experience, affecting physical facial expression, bodily sensations, and mental processing, and impacting new appraisals. These short- lived, transitory, brightly felt yet diffuse ephemeral emotions and sensations, embedded in an intersubjective context, modify the ways we think, acquit, and see ourselves and the world around united states of america (Burgdorf & Panksepp, 2006; Fredrickson, 2004; Rimé, 2009; Scherer, 2005; Stolorow, 2005).

The cosmos of fine art forms expressing emotions then acted as springboards to prompt further emergent linked and layered concepts and associations to the artistic process and last product.

The coresearchers chose nature imagery to symbolically link emotions to artistic content. Nature imagery is defined as visual and symbolic representations of organic living wildlife, depicted by coresearchers in their artwork during this study, such as birds, collywobbles, eggs in birds' nests, flowers, trees and branches, landscapes, seascapes, skies, atmospheres, mandalas, earth and lord's day. These symbolic representations emerged in the relational matrix, equally collaborative discussions resulted in the identification of socially constructed meanings for the images, symbols, metaphors, stories, designs, and colors within the art, which became representative of the intersubjective emotional experience. Meanings were synthetic linking emotions with creative content; wildlife/nature imagery such every bit butterflies, birds' nests, and flowers. Notable in this theme was that five researchers with similar backgrounds independently of each other chose to apply nature imagery in their artwork to represent emotions.

Through discussion, intersubjective interpretations were adamant through which nature imagery became associated with sure named emotions or qualities. When Gretchen K. was asked "Do you experience like you've, expressed any emotions?" she indicated that the fine art-making process helped her to both clarify and uncover her emotions: "definitely…It'due south clarified things, I do feel content at domicile, and even though it's behind in that location [gestures to artwork], it's at that place! …and the image, kind of, shows me that it'due south in that location" (encounter Table i). According to Gretchen Thousand., the bird's nest symbolized the emotions she identified as delectation with her habitation life. Making the epitome helped her to gain "a piddling more insight into the emotions that I do have…and then now it'southward a petty more organized equally to what is what."

The repeated theme of emotions and/or art'due south meanings as hidden, secret or mysterious, and of the art procedure revealing positive surprises over time was fuel for a short free verse verse form titled Secrets:

Secrets

artwork, tell your secrets

similar furled green mysteries

interlocked like a brown bird'south feathers

tint the cold printing fibers a bluish-pinkish hue I can't draw and the tendrils hide the bird's eggs

every bit the chubby beard stained with paint

distract the center by hiding

spirals of wisteria

that radiate our dreamy secrets

Secrets was written to investigate and interlock through lyric poesy the repeating concepts of: ane) nature depicted through fine art; and ii) aspects of the self every bit hush-hush or hidden. These ideas lend themselves to the metaphor of the art symbol itself as a precious package of meaning, a hidden egg, not yet hatched, that even so meanders toward significance.

Over again, here several art forms to build structural corroboration of the incisiveness, concision, and coherence of the creative form to stimulate and/or connect with the reader, with the goal of providing evocation and illumination (Barone & Eisner, 2012).

Relational trust led to expression of holistic emotional life

Over the two sessions, dynamics in interpersonal, relational trust—defined hither equally a willingness to be vulnerable or take risks in terms of emotional, artistic, and verbal expression—appeared amongst the coresearch pairs. Every bit social-emotional connections were adult between individuals, cognitive, emotional, and aesthetic responses to the aesthetic experiences were coconstructed in the relational space through discussion and art making.

Fine art making for emotional expression was said to feel "skilful," and was valued because it was seen every bit useful or helpful for clarifying and conveying emotions. Elizabeth, who did artwork most her recent loss of a friend, reported: "information technology actually felt really expert to brand a slice of art about it too, because I definitely feel like, this, losing her, was unprocessed grief for me…and so it simply happened [to be] so close to the surface today…This was something that I needed, actually…I needed to do."

Within this context, individuals expressed holistic emotional life, that is, both positive, pleasant emotions and negative, unpleasant emotions, as well every bit mixed and ambivalent emotions. There was an awareness of the essential interconnectedness of negative and positive emotions— of the holistic nature of emotional life. In addition to the resistance to this false dichotomy that divided whole experiences into positive versus negative emotions, there was a resistance to valuing the expression of positive more than than expressing the negative. The artwork allowed for a freedom of expression that superseded restrictive categories.

Response art served every bit an apotheosis of empathy

In this study, response art was defined equally a work of art that aimed to explore the artwork and interaction that takes identify in the first fine art interview, with the specific objective to aesthetically explore and encounter noesis that was created through the previous fine art making practices and transform it into new artwork in order to further agreement. This artistic response was created with the goal of creating meaning, exploring procedure, or amplifying empathy, a process developed by art therapists (Fish, 2012; McNiff, 1998; Wadeson, 2003). In this study, response art was experienced by coresearchers as an apotheosis of empathy. The response art represented or resymbolized the art and interaction of the starting time interview. It demonstrated attunement as it reflected amplified lived experience and raised issues of identity and differentiation between self and other.

Empathy is defined herein as a deep understanding or resonance with the emotions of self or other through a combination of emotional simulation, perspective taking, and emotion regulation (Elliott, Bohart, Watson, & Greenberg, 2011). The art conveyed empathy through the expression of understanding of the coresearcher'south lived experience in a tangible form. The artwork embodied this understanding though providing a new concrete concrete object with which to represent the art and chat of the starting time interview. Coresearchers said they felt "reflected" and "mirrored," or that their experience was "amplified" after viewing the response art. Referencing the response art, Tracy said, "I think it'due south really beautiful…I experience like it really took all the ideas of the starting time slice and kind of amplified it, in a different fashion…what you reflected back is, really what I felt, and wanted to communicate." Amanda B. stated: "It'southward such a gift for me to sit here and see what you've fabricated. You're not disclosing anything of yourself, you're just offering dorsum, a piece, in terms of like the relational aspect…attunement to the process, attunement to the production, and then to the emotion behind information technology, so, your mirroring, you mirrored information technology back to me, but with your own experience added to it."

The primary researcher's power to perform as a response artist significantly afflicted the report's creative findings. These abilities included artistic skills as well every bit empathic listening and social-emotional connection and date. Nevertheless, both Monica D. and Amanda B. also noted that the psychological skill of "differentiating" between self and other was as well necessary in this process. Monica D. clarified: "I think there needs to be this separation, not so much betwixt my feel and your experience, only y'all're non…y'all're not trying to tell me anything most my experience, or make my feel dissimilar. You lot're kind of coming into information technology, and saying, 'Oh, this is what I experienced equally a result of that,' and that'due south what makes the emotion bigger. It's your bringing your piece of it into it likewise, simply I all the same take my slice and I kind of talk to it, talk to each other."

Joint artwork involved negotiations of aesthetic decisions to reimagine associated symbolic and metaphorical meanings

After the second session, coresearchers were asked what it was similar to make art together. Elizabeth found: "I recollect nosotros created something that'southward actually so appealing, to me anyhow. It's very appealing and happy, and joyful and positive…and continued." Monica stated: "I liked starting and giving to y'all and seeing what you would come with, then seeing what I would come up with, and…hum, I retrieve that part of information technology worked really well, and sure things, certain placements, and how things were going to go, I feel we were right on the same folio with that." Tracy described the entire process including the response art and final synchronicity of the thematic elements present in the joint art pieces: "I did something, yous understood information technology, and reflected information technology back, and added to it, and then I felt understood, and yous felt understood." Gretchen K. remarked, "I think it makes us more aware of our impact on each other, because it's right in the art." The art-making process was used to aesthetically explore the dynamics of expressing positive emotions past generating farther art symbols exploring the re occurring concepts such as protection, nurturance, connection, awe, beloved, or mystery.

Final synthesis summary

Multiple, interactive, and linked sources of information informed the findings of the written report. Complex, meandering and contained, the themes have necessarily been written in a linear narrative in this commodity, while the art is presented amid the themes, intermeshed, linked, and emergent. An arts-based theoretical model (Effigy 2) was constructed to present emergent theory of how positive emotions were expressed through art making. This formed a synthesis, rooted in the data, which depicted the dynamic quality of the findings. In this model, the viewer tin can see how coresearchers expressed emotions dynamically through creative symbols and metaphors involving nature imagery.

As relational trust adult in an intersubjective space, emotions such as surprise, interest/curiosity, wonder, awe, vulnerabilities, fears, and anxieties were made visible though artistic creation. While coresearchers were influenced to focus on the positive due to priming, many participants resisted conceptualizing emotions in the restrictive duality framework of positive emotions versus negative emotions. Authenticity required acknowledgment and expression of negative emotions as linked, mediating, and even powering positive emotions, and of the holistic and non-binary nature of emotional life.

The response fine art served as an embodiment of empathy and demonstrated attunement every bit information technology reflected and amplified lived experience. The response art procedure also raised issues of identity and differentiation betwixt self and other. Creating the joint artwork involved negotiations of aesthetic decisions, and was a mode that co-researchers reimagined, clarified and destabilized prior associated meanings and evoked farther emotions. Overall, the emergence of emotions within the intersubjective art therapy human relationship might be conceptualized equally a progressive and iterative process beginning with metaphors of life and nature, development of trust, revelations of emotion, empathic responses, reflexivity and joint art making creating and causing destabilization, deconstruction, reconstruction, and reimagining of perceptions and meanings.

Word

The findings suggest that the coresearchers made emotions visible through artistic symbols and metaphors of nature imagery in the fine art they created. These symbolic expressions inverse over time, equally the art object was constructed and new art objects were created in response, condign representative of layers of intersubjective emotional feel. Yet notably, in that location were striking similarities between the coresearchers' initial artworks. These metaphors and symbols were coconstructed and contextualized within the warm interpersonal collegial relationships, culturally situated between art therapists who appeared to identify as white women. The initial independent option of imagery of butterflies, flowers, birds, nests, and picayune girls by multiple participants raises interesting questions about why these images were highly-seasoned and what the coresearchers were expressing about their relational experience in this particular context. Taken together, this imagery of flowers, footling girls, hearts and and so forth found in the written report may seem conventionally feminine and even possibly stereotypical of how positive emotions are traditionally expressed within The states mass culture.

The discovery that vivid creative symbols can make visible to self and other the subjective experience of emotions is non a new thought in the art and art therapy literature (Hinz, 2009; Kramer, 1975; Langer, 1957; Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Seiden, 2001). Symbols can prompt powerful emotional connotations related to the surrounding cognitive ideas, which may be inaccessible or unconscious (Clore & Huntsinger, 2009; Izard, 2009). For example, the bird'due south nest symbol, which was independently used in artwork created by Monica D., Gretchen Grand., Amanda B., and Tracy, and then afterward used by the principal researcher in response (run across Figure 1), has been repeatedly used in art therapy research on attachment security (Kaiser, 1996; Kaiser & Deaver, 2009). Inside the art therapy community and beyond, this symbol can represent attachment. That is, individuals can make cerebral-emotional associations from a representation of a bird'due south nest to memories and images of their experiences of nurturing acts of care, such equally a parent gives kid. Questions about the influence of gender, professional civilization, and the result of the relationship with the primary researcher arose related to the similarity and prevalence of this imagery.

In addition to content, the formal art elements such equally color and shape served to evoke associated meanings. Seiden (2001) asserts, "color, of all the [fine art] elements, well-nigh closely resembles human feelings or emotion" (p. 77) in its impact, associations, and fluidity. The use of vivid or anarchistic colors and fluid media are theorized to evoke strong emotions besides as to correspond them (Hinz, 2009). Inquiry has as well shown that individuals associate colors with both positive and negative emotions (Kaya & Epps, 2004). In the current report, like colors such equally soft dejection and greens accented by warmer reds, yellows, oranges and pinks, can be seen in the artwork across cases (see Table 1). These colors carry and prompt emotions, as when Elizabeth identified the imperial in my response art every bit a "spiritual" color. The colors symbolically represented emotions, thereby reinforcing the aesthetic ability of symbolic forms, to create further associated and constructed meanings.

Another area of interest in the formal art elements of the artistic results is the use of the shape of the mandala, a term for the circle course used in many of the artworks created during the study (see Table one). The mandala is a worldwide symbol, used in art therapy techniques, and is a form that is said to represent the "enclosure of a sacred space," (Cooper, 1978, p. 103) and/or harmony, wholeness, integration, the cycles of life, nature, and fourth dimension (Betensky, 1977; Hinz, 2009; Jung, 1986; Walker, 1988). The mandala form, used in the fine art of five of five coresearch pairs (see Tabular array 1), was perchance employed for its synthesis function, as it tin suggest a unified whole.

In the report, coresearchers used the physical art materials, the surround, and the interpersonal relationships as a space to express connexion, comfort, empathy, and safety, every bit well as vulnerability and anxiety. And so within this space, holistic emotional life was expressed through artistic form, behavior, conversations, and reflection. That is, both positive, negative and nuanced or mixed emotions were expressed, and to exist authentic required acknowledgment, exploration, and expression of this range of emotions. The authentic is artful (Franklin, 2012; Hervey, 2004) and in an iterative loop brings an interpretive vitality.

Retrieve that this study focused specifically on how positive emotions are expressed through art making and how meaning about this expression is developed in art therapy-like environments because the theoretical broadening effects of positive emotions may widen perceptions, and build social and psychological resources which, in an upward spiral, lead to increased well-beingness (Fredrickson, 2004; Seligman, 2011). Positive emotions were divers as desirable and adaptive experiences that feel good (Fredrickson, 2009), equally in the experiences that coresearchers labeled gratitude, interest, love, promise, and awe. Yet, at that place was a reoccurring misconception that focusing on the positive meant negating or ignoring negative emotional experience, which also was expressed in this study as anxiety, grief, loss, and fear. Negative emotions are likewise potentially desirable and adaptive experiences, even if they do not experience proficient. In the positive psychology literature, it is well recognized that one of the "big questions" is: "tin nosotros separate the positive from the negative?" (Ciarrochi, Kashdan, & Harris, 2013, pp. 21–22; see also Lazarus, 2003).

A fundamental finding was that participants resisted conceptualizing emotions every bit positive versus negative. Questions emerged such as, was it useful to focus on positive emotions? Was the split between positive and negative emotions also simplistic or unrealistic? What nearly significant bittersweet experiences such every bit poignancy, a mix of emotions that occurs when 1 faces meaningful endings (Ersner-Hershfield, Mikels, Sullivan, & Carstensen, 2008)? Some of this argue stemmed from the erroneous assumptions people fabricated about positive psychology and the study of positive emotions. A closer look at the positive psychology literature indicates that the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (Fredrickson, 1998, 2004) always recognized the importance of negative emotions and identified beneficial ratios of positive-to-negative emotions, recognizing that both kinds of emotions have evolutionary survival value (Fredrickson & Losada, 2005). While recent work has led some to question the mathematical formulations that helped popularize the recommended minimum iii-to-1 ratio of positive-to-negative emotions (Brown, Sokal, & Friedman, 2013), other evidence continues to support this theory (Fredrickson, 2013) that emphasizes the value of a full range of emotional experience.

This report included specific moments in which the positive emotions generated trust within the intersubjective art-making process that may accept induced a wider scope of awareness and vision. An example of this is the response of Gretchen K., who made art representing her negative emotions nearly piece of work chaos, and feeling barren in terms of her inventiveness, every bit well equally positive emotions about delectation at domicile. She said, "it felt good to make a piece focusing just on the positive emotion, from that [initial art] piece; it made that emotion larger and more real…it made a span…It's antiseptic things, I feel like I have a little more insight." This construction of new self-cognition could be testify of the broadening function of positive emotions, and the transformative capacity of artmaking. Intersubjectively constructed positive emotions, enacted through laughter and moments of intimate considerateness to one some other, helped to lighten and widen understanding. This led to the generation of new insights.

As coresearchers iteratively congenital connections between different ideas, symbols, and emotionally expressive moments through artistic research, the positive intersubjectively constructed emotions appeared to augment scope of awareness to enable moments of transcendent creative consciousness and new perceptions, thoughts and feelings, which spiraled upward toward new generation of significant. The dynamic dialectic interaction between both positive and negative emotions was depicted through the art, and shown as interconnected and interdependent, shifting and coconstructed. In the end, possibly the focus on positive emotions simply provided a safe and enjoyable starting place from which to explore deeper complexity of emotional experiences.

The written report'southward findings suggest that relational trust was an of import factor in the process of expressing these holistic emotions within an interpersonal relationship. In psychotherapy, relational trust is thought of equally growing inside a "holding environment," a term widely adjusted from Winnicott (1960). The belongings environs refers to a supportive psychological space, which, in a relational perspective, includes secure interpersonal zipper that creates a trusting atmosphere. This context of relational trust permitted the meandering and containment in the art making, where creativity could be enacted for purpose of emotional expression. In the theoretical model (Effigy 2), the reader can see visually that this theme was central. The relational trust held a psychologically safe space for art making processes to unfold. This space allowed layered and emergent meanings to develop through the construction of response art, which served equally an embodiment of empathy, another interwoven theme.

Another aspect of this finding was the evocation of new questions about an fine art therapist's potential clinical utilize of response fine art. Coresearchers described positive emotions after seeing their experience amplified or mirrored by viewing the response art. The response art was a concrete embodiment of the master researcher's empathic response to their emotional experience, perceptions, artworks, and our word. The response fine art communicated this understanding via the capacity of the art symbols to evoke a way of knowing the other through empathic resonance (Franklin, 2010; Fromm & French, 1962; Vanaerschot, 1997). Empathy can be defined as "an intersubjective induction procedure by which positive and negative emotions are shared, without losing sight of whose feelings belong to whom" (Decety & Meyer, 2008, p. 1053). Therapists' skills in emotional simulation/regulation, imagining the perspective of some other, performance of verbal and non-exact expressions of empathy, and ability to perceive empathetic resonance are essential components of their ability to found therapeutic alliances. Therapists' embodied and cogitating process of empathy enables a deep agreement of both self and other (Finlay, 2005).

This study demonstrates a particular way that an art-making process can help symbolize inchoate emotional meaning and embody or physically manifest attunement. As the response fine art reflected and amplified lived experience, this mirroring strengthened the benefits of the original expression and provided through new creative forms an additional perspective. Empathic resonance was seen in the report's use of response art, equally art therapists have likewise reported (Fish, 2012; Franklin, 2010; Moon, 1999). Nevertheless, coresearchers discussed how they felt empathic resonance while as well seeing the chief researcher'south unique signal of view as a person and creative person. This became an intersubjective, shared experience of empathic attunement, not just facilitated only jet-fueled through the powerful communicative properties of the symbolic fine art imagery.

Equally coresearchers aimed to meet the previous aesthetic noesis and button or transform it further, equally these choices were made, the associated symbolic and metaphorical meanings were revisited, reclarified, and resymbolized. This process and resulting artwork challenged the prior associated meanings and evoked further emotions related to encountering this challenge such equally "having fun," playfulness, anxiety, and pride. This art activeness was found useful by the coresearchers for producing last summations of symbolic content and providing closure, likewise as revealing interpersonal dynamics every bit the pairs experienced warm amusement, humor, and joy in creating together, as well as manageable anxiety.

Methodological concerns and limitations

Concerns about bias, identity, and competence in researching art therapy were present in the electric current study. Clearly, the gender and culture of the participants inform the study results. Recommendations for futurity inquiry include interview grooming involving skill-edifice exercises for the researchers, to increase competence. Due to these challenges, and in the larger social context in which in that location is a push for so-called evidence-based treatment and a backlash to critical interpretive postmodern forms of inquiry (Denzin, 2011), researchers may likewise want to deliberately incorporate into the enquiry protocol fine art making for the purpose of personal and professional reflection and self-analysis.

A criticism of the methodology was that each of the diverse steps of iterative fine art making was rich with data, worthy of its ain study. The volume of creative material made summarizing results hard. Simplicity in the design may accept immune for further depth of study, although this class of proliferative enquiry often unearths the complexity in the presumed straightforward. Finally, the limitations in this study included information loss, lack of fourth dimension, and that only four of five coresearchers attended the group member-checking session. The information loss involved the inadvertent lack of video recording of the second one-half of the first art interview with co researcher Tracy. This loss of information may take afflicted the principal researcher'southward ability to re symbolize her artistic expression during the data collection phase. Some other limitation was that coresearchers were given the pick to decline to participate in the last grouping session, and merely four of five coresearchers were able to attend, and thus one coresearcher did not get the opportunity to provide member feedback. A farther limitation of the study is the amount of time bachelor for human relationship building.

Implications for clinical applications and research

Clinical applications included a consideration of the therapeutic utilise of art symbols and metaphors and the use of response fine art and joint art making as potential fine art therapy interventions. In add-on, further research is needed well-nigh the clinical use of art therapy techniques, such as utilizing negotiation of aesthetic decisions to unearth information about the therapeutic alliance, to explore individuation, or to create emphatic responses. Clinical applications also included new agreement of the value of creating emotional expressive artworks that increase intersubjective knowledge through empathic resonance, a key to psychological integration, growth, and change. Specific recommendations for hereafter research topics include the use of art symbols and metaphors in art therapy for holistic emotional expression, relational and intersubjective experience in art therapy, and the use of response art and joint artwork techniques in art therapy.

Joint artwork was regarded as peculiarly useful for clarifying, and destabilizing and resymbolizing meanings related to fine art, concretely demonstrating the benefits of arts-based enquiry. Overall, this expanding discourse covered wide-ranging topics to aid identify the ways in which art therapy works. The study achieves the aim of the written report past contributing new knowledge to our understanding of how emotions emerge, are expressed, and assigned pregnant within an art therapy relational context.

juarezunge1986.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08322473.2015.1100580

0 Response to "Art Evoking and Expressing Emotion by William H Johnson"

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Iklan Atas Artikel

Iklan Tengah Artikel 1

Iklan Tengah Artikel 2

Iklan Bawah Artikel