Group Analytic Art Therapy, written by an internationally renowned psychotherapist, provides readers with a practical and theoretical framework for using group art therapy in a range of settings.
Based on over 20 years’ experience of conducting group art therapy, this book is packed with suggestions for group art therapy practice and many explanatory diagrams. The author also explores the dynamics and psychological effects of diverse group situations, based on examples from his own clinical practice, and offers an illuminating insight in to his own theories and practical applications of group art therapy in the context of the developments in the field.
Group Analytic Art Therapy is both a comprehensive reference and an inspiring text for practising and trainee art therapists, psychotherapists and group therapists.
Based on over 20 years’ experience of conducting group art therapy, this book is packed with suggestions for group art therapy practice and many explanatory diagrams. The author also explores the dynamics and psychological effects of diverse group situations, based on examples from his own clinical practice, and offers an illuminating insight in to his own theories and practical applications of group art therapy in the context of the developments in the field.
Group Analytic Art Therapy is both a comprehensive reference and an inspiring text for practising and trainee art therapists, psychotherapists and group therapists.
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Reviews
Reading the text has been illuminating, for McNeilly has shed new light on the depths of the group analytic enterprise... I warmly commend this book to art therapists and group analysts alike. This is a rich, readable text which will stimulate thought and enable us to see more clearly the simple in the complex and the complex in the simple.
This is a book which will be of great use to art therapists working with groups whether they wish to follow a strictly analytic approach in the work or not. Indeed, this book will be of great interest to any group therapist. It highlights and clarifies many of the profound aspects of the group analytic experience and it describes the possibilities offered by introducing art-making to the group analytic situation. The theoretical text is accompanied, all the way through, by hypothetical and real clinical examples of the concepts he explores making it easier to digest.
McNeilly is a practicing art psychotherapist in the UK and an art therapy educator in Portugal. Drawing on some 20 years of experience conducting group art therapy, he discusses his theories about group processes and dynamics. Coverage includes an overview of group analytic theory, a brief history of group analytical art therapy, Foulkes concept of the "group as a whole", the concept of "the individual in the group" and transference constellations.
In the community where I work, art therapy is central, deeply containing group, to which group members attribute a special role in their recovery. McNeilly's rich and stimulating book helped me to understand more clearly why this is so. I recommend it.
Gerry McNeilly's "Group Analytic Art Therapy" fills a gap in group art therapy literature on both sides of the Atlantic. The book reinforces the need for art therapy theoreticians and professionals to continue researching aspects of their profession and to write about their efforts. It encourages them to reflect on their practice and to share those reflections with the wider community of professionals working in therapeutic enterprises.... "Group Analytic Art Therapy" is an important contribution to the still relatively small body of group art therapy literature. Art therapists, group analysts, psychotherapists, and art educators will find the book useful for the insight it gives into the theory and practice of group art psychotherapy.
For hungry readers, who know what they are looking for, there is much to chew on here - about group dynamics, the concept of "the whole group", group transferences and bringing group and individual into a healthy working balance, as well as concepts that McNeilly has developed in connection with specific features of the art therapy group.
The book explores the dynamics of diverse group situations amply illustrated from McNeilly's own clinical experience.