Creating doorways: finding meaning and growth through art therapy in the face of life-threatening illness (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Narrative View of Art Therapy and Art Making by Women with Breast Cancer
Journal of Health Psychology, 2006
Art therapy (with an art therapist) and art making (without an art therapist) show promise as avenues for psychosocial support for women with breast cancer. The purpose of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of how 17 women with breast cancer in Canada and the USA used art therapy and their own art making to address their psychosocial needs, focusing particularly on meaning making. Narrative analysis of interviews yielded four storylines: Art and Art Therapy as a Haven; Getting a Clearer View; Clearing the Way Emotionally; and Enhancing and Enlivening the Self. The storylines show existence being affirmed, confirmed and proclaimed through visual artistic expression and meaning making being achieved through physical acts of making.
2017
Life-threatening illness can be sufficiently traumatic to shatter one‘s beliefs about self, others, and the world. This disruption can trigger an instinctive search for meaning. Research highlights that how individuals respond post-adversity can make the difference between experiencing posttraumatic stress or posttraumatic growth (PTG) and existential growth (EG). This paper presents the findings of a pilot study situated in a tertiary care cancer centre and details the impact of creative arts therapy on the experiences of individuals living through breast cancer. Ten women were interviewed about their experiences making art, many for the first time. Emergent themes included: the significant benefits of art-making on their sense of self-efficacy; the emotionally enhancing nature of art-making; the power of their artwork to trigger insights (including subthemes of EG, PTG) or in communicating their experiences to loved ones; and how art-making changed their worldview and life philoso...
2017
Description of the Project Life-threatening illness can be sufficiently traumatic to shatter one's beliefs about self, others, and the world. This disruption can trigger an instinctive search for meaning. Research highlights that how individuals respond postadversity can make the difference between experiencing existential angst and posttraumatic stress or existential and posttraumatic growth. This chapbook presents some of the findings of a pilot study situated in a cancer care centre and details the impact of creative arts therapy on the experiences of women living through breast cancer. Women were interviewed about their experiences making art, many for the first time. Findings are presented in the form of found poems (excerpts from interviews reframed as poetry) along with an illustrative example of their artwork. Found poems are a richer, more accessible, meaningful, and potent evocation of the themes than traditional analysis. Poetry allows the reader to access deeper insights and understandings of the texture and meaning of existential and posttraumatic growth, and how art-making can provide a safe, dynamic context for women with breast cancer to reflect on profound personal changes and to re-story losses through creative arts practices.
European Journal of Oncology Nursing, 2012
Purpose: The aim of this feasibility study was two-fold: i) develop lifelike torsos of two breast cancer survivors using innovative sculpting material and; ii) shed light on the meaning women give to the experience of breast cancer after viewing their sculpted torsos. Methods: This collaborative initiative between nurse researchers and artists was situated within phenomenological inquiry. Two breast cancer survivors shared their bodies, as models, and stories of their cancer journey and the experience of modeling to create life-sized torsos of their bodies. Key results: The participants articulated embodied knowing as each shared experiences of connectedness and relationship which culminated in the emergence of four core themes: The Landscape of Breast in Cancer; Red Shoes: The Re-claiming of Self; Liberation: towards an embodied self; and, Scars: Re-authoring Life. Conclusions: Active engagement in art through the use of one's body has the potential to open the door to healing, the generation of meaning and a reaffirmation of self.
The Arts in Psychotherapy, 2007
This qualitative study examined accounts of women diagnosed with cancer who engaged regularly in art as a leisure activity. The objective was to explore participants' experiences of cancer and their views about the contribution of artmaking to their subjective well-being. The study was based on the principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). A convenience sample of twelve women aged between 23-74 years participated in semi-structured interviews, and their accounts were analysed thematically. Participants described a range of ongoing difficulties associated with cancer such as fear for the future, pain, sleeplessness, role loss, activity restriction, reduced self-confidence and altered social relationships. They described art-making as supporting subjective well-being in four major ways.
Art as a catalyst for resilience: Women artists with life-threatening illness
2013
This phenomenological inquiry focused on the experiences of 12 professional women artists diagnosed with major medical illnesses, mostly cancer. Data from three in-depth interviews with each participant indicated that their beliefs, personal strengths, learned skills, and lived experiences were fundamental to their commitment to art as a way of life. The overarching question of whether long-term involvement in creative practices acted as a catalyst for resilience during and after treatments became the seminal exploration in this study. Data analysis used methods for qualitative research devised by Moustakas (1994), Giorgi (1985), and Forinash (2012), and a conversational approach in interviews suggested by Kavale and Brinkmann (2009). Findings suggest that uniquely learned artistic skills and an evolved creative process involving uncertainty, risk-taking, experimentation, flexibility, open-mindedness, determination, and perseverance served these artists well when they faced life-threatening illnesses. Their creative endeavors gave them a sense of direction, identity, and agency based on their commitment, beliefs, and intentions. These artists were proactive in their artwork and in dealing with diagnoses and treatment options even as their priorities and energies shifted to care and healing. Visual communication let them give voice to personal expression and acts of imagination that held essential purpose and meaning. The findings suggest that these artists had art practices that were life-affirming and that art-making for them was evidence of vitality. Although art-making changed during acute illness, all participants resumed art practices, with adjustments, during and after treatments. Most participants engaged in new or changed forms of expression. Art experiences ART AS A CATALYST 13 opened possibilities for renewal in health as well as in ill health. The study demonstrated that the creative process, accessed through art-making by these artists, can have a therapeutic effect, a placebo effect, with life resumed or at the end of life. This investigation suggests that physicians, clinicians, healthcare workers, and creative art therapists could engage and encourage their patients in creative endeavors that offer possible placebo effects while accompanying them through illness and assisting in ways of psychological healing that are age-old.
The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2007
Why do some women turn to creative art-making after a diagnosis of cancer? Eleven women provided qualitative accounts that were analyzed following guidelines for interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Some described taking up artistic leisure activities initially in order to manage emotional distress. Others emphasized their need for positive well-being, taking up art to experience achievement and satisfaction, to regain a positive identity, and to normalize family dynamics in the context of living with cancer. Participants' turn to art-making was facilitated by biographical and contextual factors, including pre-existing craft skills, long-standing personal values and coping philosophies, family role models for managing adversity, and the supportive encouragement of family and friends. Other research has acknowledged that positive lifestyle change and post-traumatic growth can occur after a cancer diagnosis, and this study reveals a multi-faceted process. The findings suggest a need for further research into the experiences that facilitate positive lifestyle change and subjective well-being among people who are living with cancer.
The Arts in Psychotherapy, 2009
This article takes its starting point from certain results from our randomized study on art therapy with women with breast cancer. Previous results from this study showed significant benefits on coping, quality of life, and symptoms for women who participated in an art therapy intervention. Analyses of interviews and diaries showed that especially women from the intervention group had distanced themselves from traditionally gendered understandings about cultural limits and boundaries. The aim of this study was to gain further knowledge about how women with breast cancer who participated in the art therapy intervention gave meaning to the gendered limits and boundaries in their daily lives, and to trace their trajectories, in therapy, towards helpful management of restraining boundaries. When analyzing the women's verbal reflections on the therapy sessions, we discerned five subject positions, defining them as follows: being someone who reacts to violation attempts; actively connecting body and self; actively locating oneself and moving forward; being in a position to see important connections throughout life; and being able to acknowledge and harbour conflicting emotions. The results of the study suggest that art therapy served as a tool that helped the women to get access to subject positions that enabled them to protect and strengthen their boundaries. This involved challenging dominating discourses and reacting against perceived boundary violations. Art therapy offered a personal, physical, and pictorial "safe space" with opportunities to deal with complex existential experiences and issues, and also make important connections throughout life. Looking back and summarizing important experiences acted as a way to prepare oneself for the future and moving forward.
Art therapy for women with breast cancer: The therapeutic consequences of boundary strengthening
The Arts in Psychotherapy, 2007
women with breast cancer (20 women in the study group and 22 women in the control group) participated in an intervention study involving art therapy. This article elaborates on previous quantitative results, taking a discursive approach and drawing on gender theories in analyzing the women's use of interpretative repertoires in interviews and diaries and their answers on single items of the Coping Resources Inventory (CRI). The aim was to inquire into whether and, if so, how and with what consequences women with breast cancer who participated in art therapy improved their access to beneficial cultural interpretative repertoires, compared to a control group. The results showed a connection between participation in art therapy, talking about protecting one's own boundaries, and scoring higher on the CRI compared to the control group. There was also a connection between the control group, repertoire conflicts, and lower scores on the CRI. Our interpretation is that art therapy became a tool the women could use to distinguish cultural understandings about boundaries and, through image making and reflections, to give higher legitimacy to their own interpretations and experience.