Expressive Arts Therapy & Attachment

Expressive Arts Therapy is an integrative, multimodal approach that facilitates the focused expression of drama, movement/dance, music, and visual art within a psychotherapeutic framework.

In Expressive Arts Therapy, the therapist can establish a secure base for the client to reflect on their experience by demonstrating sensitivity and attunement to client needs along with an intersubjective and empathic approach of innate understanding, listening, and support (Kossak, 2009).

For instance, some individuals may exhibit intense desires for ‘mirroring’ and ‘twinship’ representing their wish to feel connected and accepted in close relationships (Mikulincer & Shaver 2007). Expressive therapeutic techniques of “mirroring, role play, enactment, sharing, showing and witnessing” (Malchiodi, & Crenshaw, 2015, p. 9) while holding and providing space can allow creative expression by recreating the communication that takes place in a secure relationship.

Sensory experiences are emphasized experientially to enable emotional reparation through the reestablishment of feelings of safety and management of overwhelming emotions. Based on an individual’s preferred creative domain, expressive engagement (e.g., drawing an image of a pleasurable memory) can induce positive self-soothing emotions of comfort and relaxation similar to that of childhood (Malchiodi, 2012).

Expressive Arts Therapies can be holistic because it incorporates non-verbal communication through self-expression in body movement, music, art, or imagery. These forms can provide unique insights into the knowledge of sensations and early memories as they are often profoundly attuned to the repressed inner experience. Overall, through the self-regulatory emotions that emerge from an engagement with the arts, and the recognition of connection and approval in a therapeutic relationship, Expressive Arts Therapy can help restore a sense of well-being within an individual and their relationships that may have been lost in childhood (Malchiodi, & Crenshaw, 2015).

It offers the experience of a secure relationship through a psychosomatic space within us where attachment is genuinely identified, incorporated, and valued.

References

Kossak, M. S. (2009). Therapeutic attunement: A transpersonal view of expressive arts therapy. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 36(1), 13–18. doi:10.1016/j.aip.2008.09.003

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change. Guilford Press.

Malchiodi, C. A., & Crenshaw, D. A. (2015). Creative arts and play therapy for attachment problems. Guilford Publications.

Malchiodi, C. A. (2012a). Art therapy and the brain. In C. A. Malchiodi (Ed.), Handbook of art therapy (2nd ed., pp. 17–26). New York: Guilford Press.