The Legacy Of Edith Kramer

The Legacy of Edith Kramer presents a unique exploration into the life and work of the groundbreaking artist and art therapist. This edited volume examines the artist’s personal and cultural history prior to relocating to the United States as well as the later years when she worked as an artist, art therapist, and teacher as she developed her theoretical understanding of art therapy. Kramer’s solutions to creating a meaningful artist’s life run throughout the chapters within this book, and provide the reader with a sense of what is possible. Written by an international group of contributors, this informative new text offers a multifaceted view of Edith Kramer that will be appreciated by current and future art therapists looking to better understand Kramer’s exceptional mind and contributions to the field.

Edith Kramer is one of the pioneers in the field of art therapy, known and respected throughout the world. This collection of papers reflects her lifetime of work in this field, showing how her thoughts and practice have developed over the years. She considers a wide spectrum of issues, covering art, art therapy, society, ethology and clinical practice and placing art therapy in its social and historical context. Drawing on her very considerable personal experience as an art therapist, Kramer illustrates her conviction that art making is central to practice and cautions against making words primary and art secondary in art therapy. Art as Therapy offers a rare insight into the personal development of one of the world's leading art therapists and the development of art therapy as a profession. It will make fascinating reading for anyone interested in art therapy.

“A thrilling, challenging and educational book . . . examines the roles of spies such a Edith Cavell, Mata Hari, Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan” (Pennant Magazine). Women spies have rarely received the recognition they deserve. They have often been trivialized and, in cinema and popular fiction, stereotyped as vamps or dupes. The reality is very different. As spies, women have played a critical role during wartime, receiving and passing on vital information, frequently at considerable risk. Often able to blend into their background more easily than their male counterparts, women have worked as couriers, transmitters, and with resistance fighters, their achievements often unknown. Many have died. Ann Kramer describes the role of women spies during wartime, with particular reference to the two world wars. She looks at why some women chose to become spies, their motives, and backgrounds. She looks at the experience of women spies during wartime, what training they received, and what skills they needed. She examines the reality of life for a woman spy, operating behind enemy lines, and explores and explodes the myths about women spies that continue until the present day. The focus is mainly on Britain but also takes an international view as appropriate. “Tells the often surprising stories of some of the women who chose to become spies and to serve their country . . . An excellent work.” —The Great War Magazine

Lani Gerity shows in this book that puppet-making, incorporating both art and narrative, provides an ideal vehicle for therapeutic work. It is particularly valuable in the treatment of dissociative patients, whose symptoms may include disturbances in body image, a dissociated sense of self, a disrupted sense of history and causality, and a feeling of alienation from the self. Lani Gerity explores the application of this in the context of object relations theory. She shows the creative process working on many levels for dissociative individuals and groups. Making puppets, three-dimensional representations of the human body, helped one patient to integrate her sense of her body image and herself. Using puppets and creating narratives about them encourages patients to build communities and to release themselves from the hold of the trauma of their pasts. Descriptions and analyses of Gerity's work with dissociative patients in the US and Canada is underpinned by a theoretical framework which encompasses theories from the arts therapies and from psychiatry.

Over the years, art therapy pioneers have contributed towards the informal and formal beginnings of this fascinating and innovative profession. The development of the art therapy profession concerns a special breed of person who discovered the profound and unique power of the integration of art and psychology and had the energy and drive to create the new field. Important movements and milestones are highlighted including the dilemmas and crucial events of art therapy's evolution. Unique features include: the early days and influence; the United States at the time of the formation of the art therapy profession; Florence Cane and the Walden School; Margaret Naumberg's theory of psychodynamic art therapy; Edith Kramer's theory of art as therapy; the Menninger Foundation, art therapy in Ohio and the Buckeye Art Therapy Association; Elinor Ulman and the first art therapy journal; Hanna Yaxa Kwiatkowska and the invention of family art therapy; a brief history of art therapy in Great Britain and Canada; the 1960s and their influence on the development of art therapy; Myra Levick and the establishment of the American Art Therapy Association; the pioneer art therapists and their qualities and patterns; the definition and expansion of art therapy; the development of master's-level art therapy; art therapists of color and influence; the history of humanistic psychology and art therapy; the expressive arts therapy; Jungian art therapy; and the art therapists that began in the 1970s. Chronologies and study questions for discussion appear at the end of most chapters. Finally, the book presents issues essential to the field today such as art therapy registration, certification and licensing, art therapy assessment procedures, research, multiculturalism and art therapy as an international phenomenon. This text will be of primary interest to art therapists and students, to art educators and historians, and to those interested in how mental health disciplines evolve.

Celluloid Activist is the biography of gay-rights giant Vito Russo, the man who wrote The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, commonly regarded as the foundational text of gay and lesbian film studies and one of the first to be widely read. But Russo was much more than a pioneering journalist and author. A founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and cofounder of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), Russo lived at the center of the most important gay cultural turning points in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. His life as a cultural Zelig intersects a crucial period of social change, and in some ways his story becomes the story of a developing gay revolution in America. A frequent participant at “zaps” and an organizer of Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) cabarets and dances—which gave the New York gay and lesbian community its first social alternative to Mafia-owned bars—Russo made his most enduring contribution to the GAA with his marshaling of “Movie Nights,” the forerunners to his worldwide Celluloid Closet lecture tours that gave gay audiences their first community forum for the dissection of gay imagery in mainstream film. Biographer Michael Schiavi unravels Vito Russo’s fascinating life story, from his childhood in East Harlem to his own heartbreaking experiences with HIV/AIDS. Drawing on archival materials, unpublished letters and journals, and more than two hundred interviews, including conversations with a range of Russo’s friends and family from brother Charlie Russo to comedian Lily Tomlin to pioneering activist and playwright Larry Kramer, Celluloid Activistprovides an unprecedented portrait of a man who defined gay-rights and AIDS activism. “Schiavi tells a compelling story in this biography—from his re-creation of life on the streets of East Harlem and in Greenwich Village of the 1960s and 1970s to the way he conveys Russo’s excitement about his film research and popular education to his account of the AIDS years in New York City.”—John D’Emilio, Italian American Review “In [Schiavi’s] hands Russo’s life is both fascinating in its own right and a window into a larger milieu of activism during two critical decades.”—Italian American Review Best Special Interest Books, selected by the American Association of School Librarians Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers Finalist, Gay Memoir/Biography, Lambda Literary Awards Finalist, Over the Rainbow Selection, American Library Association

Taking a new and innovative angle on social work, this book seeks to remedy the lack of holistic perspectives currently used in Western social work practice by exploring Indigenous and other culturally diverse understandings and experiences of healing. This book examines six core areas of healing through a holistic lens that is grounded in a decolonizing perspective. Situating integrative healing within social work education and theory, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from social memory and historical trauma, contemplative traditions, storytelling, healing literatures, integrative health, and the traditional environmental knowledge of Indigenous Peoples. In exploring issues of water, creative expression, movement, contemplation, animals, and the natural world in relation to social work practice, the book will appeal to all scholars, practitioners, and community members interested in decolonization and Indigenous studies.

The real world of professional ethics in art therapy is, more times than not, a spectrum of shades of gray. In this exceptional new fourth edition, the authors raise questions and provide information related to the many ethical dilemmas art therapists face. Several chapters refer to the Ethical Principles for Art Therapists and Code of Professional Practice of the Art Therapy Credentials Board. Changes that were made to the AATA Ethics Document in 2013 are discussed. Models of how to think through and resolve the difficult ethical problems art therapists encounter during their professional lives are presented. A chapter discussing burnout and compassion fatigue—“costs of caring”-- provides an understanding of the responsibility that systems hold in supporting therapists and clients. Within each chapter, there are dilemma-laden vignettes intended to stimulate reflection and discussion. Most chapters include a series of questions pertaining to practical applications aimed at helping to review the material, formulate, and clarify positions on key issues. Also included are suggested artistic tasks intended to help the reader engage with topics in meta-cognitive, kinetic, visual, and sensory methods. Compelling illustrations throughout the text are provided as examples of creative responses to the artistic tasks. In addition, informational topics dealing with ethical violations, rights of artworks, marketing, advertising, and publicity are explored. The importance of multicultural approaches is expanded with the discussion that competence is a baseline for practice as an art therapist. Significant updates were made to the chapter that explores art therapy in the digital age. The appendices contain ethics documents of the British Association of Art Therapists for comparison. This unique book is designed for art therapy students, art therapists, expressive arts therapy professionals, and will be a useful and supplemental textbook for art therapy courses dealing with professional ethics and supervision, art therapy theory and practice.