Shaun McNiff

Suggests ways of letting the natural movement of intelligence take its course when creating art, music, poetry, or dance

An Artist's Guide to Letting Go

Trust the Process

By the time you finish this book, the term "inanimate object" will no longer have a place in your vocabulary, for Shaun McNiff will awaken you to the wondrous energies streaming out of familiar things and bringing a sense of magic into everyday life. Join the author as he discovers the autonomous spirits of a silver Mercedes convertible, a mysterious cigarette burn on the dining room table, and the scary shadow of a tree outside a child's room. Contemplate with him the bleakness of a hotel conference room and the crucifix that hung over his childhood bed. Let him lead you on a field trip to the "unholy lands" of the shopping mall and faculty meeting, to the familiar spirits of his seaside New England homes, to the realm of dream, reverie, and memory, as he demonstrates how to connect with the life-giving energies of images and things, places and people. These are the earth angels--spirits of everyday life that call for the return of our lost soul to the world. Unlike the images of winged beings that now pervade popular culture, the earth angels also include the soul's unattractive messengers, whose mission may require offense, pain, or fear as a preparation for change and renewal. Does a Styrofoam cup have soul? McNiff says yes, for the most debased things show us that the presence of the divine depends upon the quality of attention that we bring to our experiences.

Engaging the Sacred in Everyday Things

Earth Angels

In 1981, the author first published the groundbreaking, classic text, The Arts and Psychotherapy. This book is a rework of the original text. This new work integrates theory with practice, drawing upon concrete examples and case studies. It details the emergence of a multidisciplinary approach to working with people everywhere and offers glimpses into clinical work with children, adolescents and adults.

History, Theory, and Practice

Integrating the Arts in Therapy

Art therapy and all of the other creative arts therapies have promoted themselves as ways of expressing what cannot be conveyed in conventional language. Why is it that creative arts therapists fail to apply this line of thinking to research? In this exciting and innovative book, Shaun McNiff, one of the field's pioneering educators and authors, breaks new ground in defining and inspiring art-based research. He illustrates how practitioner-researchers can become involved in art-based inquiries during their educational studies and throughout their careers, and shows how new types of research can be created that resonate with the artistic process. Clearly and cogently expressed, the theoretical arguments are illustrated by numerous case examples, and the final part of the book provides a wealth of ideas and thought provoking questions for research. This challenging book will prove invaluable to creative art therapy educators, students, and clinicians who wish to approach artistic inquiry as a way of conducting research. It will also find a receptive audience within the larger research community where there is a rising commitment to expanding the theory and practice of research. Integrating artistic and scientific procedures in many novel ways, this book offers fresh and productive visions of what research can be.

Art-based Research

The theory and practice of creativity-culled from the lifetime of experiences of an esteemed art educator/therapist. With proven techniques he's discovered for jump-starting the creative process. aaaaaThere are art teachers-and then there's Shaun McNiff. An accomplished painter himself, with a fascination for the creative process, he's been teaching art for something like forty years, both to people who identify themselves as artists, and to those who carry no such identity-most notably to the many clients and mental health patients with whom he's worked to use art making as a therapeutic method. Having observed and worked with such a broad spectrum of art makers has caused him to observe the creative process-in others as well as in himself-in depth over a long period. In this book, he will offer his observations about creativity, what it is and how it works, along with practical advice on how to jump-start the process in oneself. His history and experience give his observations on this topic a good deal of heft.

Secrets for Unleashing Creative Expression

Imagination in Action

Presents a wide range of activities aimed at reviving art's traditional healing function and illuminates some progressive views in the rapidly expanding field of art therapy, including the practice of imagination as a force for transformation; the healing effects of group work; and total expression, which combines arts such as movement, storytelling, and drumming with painting and drawing. Original.

How Creativity Cures the Soul

Art Heals

"Whenever illness is associated with loss of soul," writes Shaun McNiff, "the arts emerge spontaneously as remedies, soul medicine." The medicine of the artist, like that of the shaman, arises from his or her relationship to "familiars"—the themes, methods, and materials that interact with the artist through the creative process. Art as Medicine demonstrates how the imagination heals and renews itself through this natural process. The author describes his pioneering methods of art therapy—including interpretation through performance and storytelling, creative collaboration, and dialoguing with images—and the ways in which they can revitalize both psychotherapy and art itself.

Shaun McNiff

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