A Psycho-Educational Approach to Shaman Storytelling and Art Making: A Hermeneutic Study of Female Victims of Domestic Violence and their Ego Strength
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Author
Buescher, Jessica
Date
2008
Degree
Master of Arts in Art Therapy
Abstract
The author uses a hermeneutic research design to show a relationship between shamanic
storytelling used in South American shaman traditions to a psycho-educationally based
art therapy approach in working with women who have been victims of domestic
violene. Art therapy and shamanism seem to go hand and hand. They both use art and
imagery as a way to capture the essence of ‘dis-ease’ of a person. Although both topics
have been the subjects of many combined articles in the creative art therapy field few
have dealt with explicit archetypal themes of shamanism. The series of art tasks for this
study apply theories of psycho-educational principles, ancient shaman knowledge in
traditional storytelling form, and a series of art and dialogue tasks to assist in the breaking
down of the abuser-victim phenomenon. The results yielded positive statistics in the
categories of relaxation, but the emotions of feeling strong, good, and loved were still
hard to access. Villoldo (2006) wrote “As each generation attempts to work through the
legacy of the family trauma, someone has to make a conscious decision to rewrite the
story” (p. 73). This could not be a more appropriate quote given the population of this
study.