KAQI

clicks	1153
Vol (number)	4(2)
title	A Narrative Study on Art Therapists who Performed Art Therapy Sessions with the Visually Impaired
author(s)	Eunyoung Gil (Sookmyung Women’s University)
Keywords	therapy for the visually-impaired group, self-understanding, selfreflection, therapeutic relation, narrative inquiry
Abstract	The purpose of this study is to reveal the meaning of the experience of the narrative inquiry of the art therapists who performed the art therapy sessions with the visually impaired, living in a care facility. Four art therapists participated (out of six art therapists who originally performed art therapy sessions) who agreed to join this research. Four art therapists performed the total of 26 group art therapy sessions from March 2013 to November 2017. The collected information and materials used for this research were therapists’ own art exhibition works, published materials for the exhibition of the therapists and the visually impaired, art therapy diaries, indepth interviews, photographs, diaries, videos, and journals of the researchers. This research adopted the narrative inquiry method to closely look into the deeper and direct experience of art therapists and to understand how the meaning of their experience was revealed in the process of looking into the life of the researcher and the meaning of reconstructing this particular experience with the visually impaired. Art therapists who performed art therapy sessions with the visually impaired initially started the sessions with ‘fear and excitement’ and experienced ‘breakdown of prejudice and emergence of genuine encounter.’ As time passed, ‘more intense sense of us: unity’ was formed while supporting and reflecting each other. With the experience, they came to have a new understanding as art therapists who are leading the session but also coming along, going beyond the typical relations as the active giver (art therapists) and the passive receiver (the visually impaired) and they came to realize new image as ‘an art therapist walking along’ the participants. Therapists came to have a new sense and ‘apperception’ through the experience of ‘conducting art therapy that was alive and meaningful.’ Art therapists came to appreciate the diversity of therapeutic relationships that could not be identified with art mediums alone, and came to understand both of complexity and flexibility of a human being in a deeper sense. For the visually impaired, the session of art therapy was the time and place where we were alive.
file	Eunyoung Gil.pdf