Abstract
The place of art therapies in education have significantly changed during the past few years in Hungary. The main aim is to adapt the methodologies to the needs of the rapidly changing educational sphere, and at the same time to promote the institutional-social integration and inclusion of people with special needs. These tasks are even more in the forefront of the activities of the lecturers of art therapies at the College for Special Education in Budapest. They have to prepare the students of special education for a profession that requires openness and sensitivity, effectiveness and competence.
The proposed presentation aims to explore the history, present and possible future of (visual, musical and dramatic) art therapies organised with "normal" and special needs people. It wishes also to point out the philosophical and methodological difficulties college lecturers have to face while attempting to merge their educational and therapeutic activities.
The proposed presentation is organically complemented by the poster presentation (detailed separately) that intends to illustrate the art therapy activities with "normal" and special needs people in Hungary. Both the oral and the poster presentation focus on therapeutic activities run in integrated or inclusive settings.
Introduction
Creative therapies have not long been part of the educational, special educational provision in Hungary, and are still not very well-known activities. The lack of these approaches could in the pre-1989 period have been regarded as a result of the hostility of the regime towards any kinds of activities that went against the uniform and predictable ways of dealing with problems. In the post-communist period, though, there is no ideological barrier, but still, the difficulties mostly prevail.
In this paper our aim is to outline the possibilities that three of the creative therapies - music therapy, art therapy and drama therapy - offer to special education, and by doing so speaking for their wider implementation in special educational settings. In this paper our intention is also to give some background information about the training of prospective special educators.
Definitions
This year, in 2000. Special Education training at higher educational level celebrates its 100th anniversary in Hungary. Creative therapies, however, for most of its history have not been regarded really useful and therefore acceptable. After long debates, art, music and drama have all become part of the training of special educators at the College for Special Education (now Faculty of Special Education), Budapest only about a decade ago. Music arrived first, in 1986, then art therapy in 1990, and drama in 1991 also found their place in the training programme. Creative therapies, regardless of the means and form they are using, can be defined by the following words:
its essence is not in the "aesthetic" qualities of the artistic activity but in the iconic, visual [...] communication that is primal, preverbal and often free from chronological structures and therefore independent of any aesthetic value judgement. (Vasarhelyi, 1996: 6)
in other words: the therapeutic method is a system of educational means that functions and reveals its potential in mutual processes between the therapist and the client. The content of these processes is defined by the chosen creative means and the necessary developmental strategies. Creative therapies make extensive use of the techniques the different genres - drama, music or visual arts - offer, but their primary aim is not the creation of an "aesthetically perfect" artefact but to channel the feelings, thoughts and attitudes of the participants.
Creative therapies function in a double frame: it is in part a private (individual) activity that reverberates between the "making" and "appreciating" artistic processes, and in part necessarily collective (social), as the artwork can be seen or listened to by others who might consequently share their perceptions with the "maker". This process therefore is a cyclic one where the process of making encapsulates the actual status of the person creating it, while the making and appreciating of one's work changes this very attitude and leads to further creations. In this regard, creative therapies partly go against the traditional view of art as belonging to the "high culture" and requiring special qualities. It is worth noting here that the art education in Hungary is still dominated by this "traditional" approach: the teaching of music and visual arts involves very little of free playing with the materials, instruments, while drama education is virtually non-existent (though it is part of the National Core Curriculum since 1995). This is obviously not to say that these approaches regard artistic qualities unimportant, only that in the education of young children and people with special needs guided self-expression should be of paramount importance.
The therapeutic approaches
When developing our arts therapy approaches for people with special needs, our intention was to set up a theoretically and practically up-to-date structure that suits both the developmental needs of the clients and the professional requirements. The members of the research group, formed at the Faculty of Special Education work closely together to link their activities for the best possible result that could be achieved by the creative processes. However, as the design of the different creative therapy research processes are rather dissimilar, it is much easier for the sake of this paper to deal with them separately.
a) Visual Arts therapy
The ongoing research takes place in boarding homes for students with learning difficulties, having unresolved emotional disturbances that hinder their personal-social development and learning. The aim of the creative processes here is the building up of a firmly rooted personality structure that leads to calmness and security, and therefore the enhancement of learning. The educational therapeutical approach of those using visual therapy at our Faculty can be encapsulated by the words of Bálványos (1998), who writes that
"aesthetic joy is nothing else but the recognition of one's self, the enhancement of one's humanity. Therefore aesthetics and its densed form, art helps the socialisation of the person. It trasforms the person into a social being, and because it happens in a historically-socially determined frame, we can argue that art is the most effective and precious means of education."
The therapeutic approach followed by this research group is based upon the psychological findings and theories of Gestalt-therapy (primarily the work done by Friedrich Perls) and psychoanalysis (Freud, Winnicott, and Hungarian exponents like György Vikár and Zsuzsa Gero).
Therapeutic sessions are designed to serve the needs of different age groups, but as the visual capacities of the students rarely match their chronological age it is decided by the therapists for each individual which group the student should go to. The methodology of the therapy can be divided into two types:
| - | Free painting "under protection" (tension releasing therapy for young students) |
| - | Developmental visual therapy for older students. |
Free painting is for students of kindergarten or primary age (5-10 years old). Students working in these settings are protected by a "protective space" and a "protective person". "Protective space" as a concept is inspired by the 'clos-lieau' (protective room) of Arno Stern. The room is calm, home-like, inspirating for the students. There is a "protective person", a "mother-representative" in the room who acts as a leader, while sends out signals of appreciation not only towards the artwork but of the child as a whole person. The main features of the activity are the following:
| - | it is a group session, though gives space for individual developmental procedures as well; |
| - | the therapists are not to lead but to follow the participants' intentions; their work is confined to the help of those who "stuck" in some ways; |
| - | the structure of the sessions follow a certain pattern (everyday rituals for making things and processes familiar); |
| - | the limits of actions and behaviour are wide but clearly drawn; |
| - | the creative activities are of highest importance during the sessions, all other activities are subordinated; |
| - | music is played during the sessions to create a friendly and warm atmosphere; |
| - | sessions are recorded on video, photo, and in the leaders' journals; |
| - | having completed an artwork, students comment on them; this commentary is recorded on video. |
The other form of visual arts therapy, Developmental visual therapy is for students aged 12-14 years. As these students have mostly lost their ability and willingness of any free creative activities, the aim of these sessions are to regain and then retain creative inspirations. In these groups the therapists follow a specially designed developmental procedure that differs in accordance to the needs and developmental levels of the participating students.
b) Music therapy
Music therapy makes use of the nonverbal communicative possibilities provided by music. It can be regarded as a double activity in itself, as music therapy is continually a receptive and active process. It communicates, or can communicate not only the preverbal difficulties and conflicts but the transverbal, spiritual or transpersonal experiences as well. Music as a medium makes symbolic objectification and symbolic communication possible, while through the musical product the inner conflicts of the person are also mediated. Musical production is, as Winnicott (1967) says, a "transgressing object" that connects inner and outer, personal and interpersonal experiences.
It is based on the conception that everybody who is for any reasons unable to enter spontaneous creative procedures can be regarded as a potential "creatively disabled".
Music therapy sessions run by our colleagues at the Faculty are organised for many different settings: the range of clients is from adult alcoholic patients in detoxicating centres to school age autistic students in primary and secondary schools.
The therapeutic approach followed by the therapists is the free expressional therapy that offers a structured environment for tension-releasing, communicating and (if and where possible or appropriate) talking about feelings, thoughts, experiences brought up by, or gained during the sessions.
c) Drama therapy
Drama therapy, as defined by the American National Association for Drama Therapy (NADT) is "the systematic and intentional use of drama/theatre processes, products, and associations to achieve the therapeutic goals of symptom relief, emotional and physical integration and personal growth." Drama therapy is an active approach that helps the client tell his or her story to solve a problem, achieve a catharsis, extend the depth and breadth of inner experience, understand the meaning of images, and strengthen the ability to observe personal roles while increasing flexibility between roles.
Drama therapy evolved from the experience and research of psychotherapists, teachers, and theatre professionals who recognised that sometimes traditional verbal therapies were too rigid to permit clients to confront and work through individual disturbances. The balanced verbal and non-verbal components of drama therapy with its language of metaphor allow clients to work productively within a therapeutic alliance.
It is the responsibility of all registered drama therapists to adhere to the profession's ethical, moral, and legal standards as prescribed and accepted by the association and its membership. These standards cover principles of accountability, competence and confidentiality in treatment, supervision, and research.
Registered drama therapists are trained in theatre arts, psychology, and psychotherapy. Training includes improvisation, puppetry, role-playing, pantomime, mask work, and theatrical production. Training in psychology and psychotherapy includes theories of personality, group process, and supervised clinical experience with a broad range of populations.
Drama therapy benefits many client populations and is used in a variety of settings. These include psychiatric hospitals, mental health facilities, day treatment centres, nursing homes, centres for the physically/developmentally/learning disabled, substance abuse treatment, schools, businesses, and correctional facilities. Some populations served include children with learning and social difficulties, the developmentally delayed, psychiatric patients, the disabled, substance abusers, AIDS patients, and those with disorders associated with ageing.
Goals are determined by the needs of each population. Some specific benefits likely to be achieved in drama therapy are reducing feelings of isolation, developing new coping skills and patterns, broadening the range of expression of feelings, experiencing positive interactions, and developing relationships.
Published research studies include assessment tools, statistically-based measurements, role play tests, and assessments using puppets with children. Current outcome studies are descriptive, using the case study method.
Drama therapy is a health and human service profession that dynamically and effectively addresses the needs of people from young children to the elderly. It can be used in the assessment and treatment of individuals, couples, families, and groups. Drama therapists may be the primary or adjunctive therapist within a treatment team, depending on the needs of the institution and the individual. Drama therapy is firmly rooted in a belief in the healing power of drama. While drama as an educational activity serves for mediating some sort of information, skill, for exploring different areas of humanity, drama as therapy is for developing and strengthening different psychic functions, or the correction of dysfunctional ones.
There is, though, an area that has in the past decades received - at least in Hungary - little attention, namely the area of educational therapy. In its wider sense the term covers all the activities educational diagnostics (i.e. the processes of uncovering the sources of learning difficulties) and the processes that aim to eliminate or lessen the effects of these problems. In other words: educational diagnostics concentrate less on the hidden (psychologically or otherwise determined) reasons, and more on their concrete features that manifest in the client's activities.
It is based on the experience of professionals that the enhancement of the learning process and the consequent success have a positive effect on the development of the personality, and that has a further enhancing effect - so that the process becomes a self-generating circle.
There are lots of research papers from Dewey to Piaget, speaking for the educational and developmental benefits of play, especially role-play (see e.g. Jones, 1996; Szauder, 1996). It follows therefore that with the consciously planned, structured form of play we can in many ways enhance the developmental processes and learning activities of students with learning difficulties or other disabilities.
At present there is no research programmes connected to drama therapy closely linked the Faculty, while the member of the above mentioned research group has for years been involved in theoretical and practical research of the field.
The training of special educators
Before the major reorganisation of the higher educational sphere in Hungary in 1999, the College for Special Education was an independent college training special educators for all kinds of disabilities, developmental retardations. Now the institute is a Faculty of Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem University, but some of the main features have not changed. Among these is the fact that, unlike in many countries, students of special education come into training after their matriculation, i.e. there is no obligation to receive a teaching degree first, neither to have professional experience in the field.
Before the major reorganisation of the higher educational sphere in Hungary in 1999, the College for Special Education was an independent college training special educators for all kinds of disabilities, developmental retardations. Now the institute is a Faculty of Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem University, but some of the main features have not changed. Among these is the fact that, unlike in many countries, students of special education come into training after their matriculation, i.e. there is no obligation to receive a teaching degree first, neither to have professional experience in the field.
These features make it necessary for the training to start from the very beginning, and help students to gain professional insight into all areas of their chosen profession in four years. It is these four years, therefore, while the theoretical background and the techniques of creative therapies can be mediated to them as well. All types of creative therapies follow a level-based structure where the latter phases build upon the experiences and skills acquired at previous levels.
Training in music, visual arts and drama therapies are structured in a common pattern where there are three levels. These levels are as follows:
References
BÁLVÁNYOS, H. (1998): Esztétikai-muvészeti ismeretek, nevelés, Balassi, Budapest JONES, P. (1996): Drama as Therapy - Theatre as Living, London - New York, Routledge SZAUDER, E. (1996): Drama as Pedagogy - An Argument for Buliding a Curriculum Around Drama, M. Ed. thesis, University of Central England, Birmingham VASARHELYI, V. (1996): Vizuális pszichoterápia, Animula WINNICOTT, D. W. (1967) Übergangsobjekt und Übergangsphenomene, Psyche 23.
 |
 |