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Abstract
Traditional and non-traditional art materials and their symbolic content and rituals were used in parent and child work at the Montreal Children's Hospital, Canada. I have described how the theories and therapeutic concepts of infant psychiatry were combined with those of art development and art therapy, emphasizing group work but realizing these same principles applied when working with the dyad alone.
Introduction
Parent-child-dyad art therapy proposed a creative, imaginative, and visual experience comprised of non-verbal and symbolic expression. The art therapy process unfolded in the context of two therapeutic relationships, in which the cre-- tion of images was the pri-- mary mode of communication. The two therapeutic relationships were between the parent and child (the dyad), and the dyad and the therapist. The art therapist provided an environment for spontaneous, non-verbal expression. Art therapy facilitated expression and communication for the alleviation of stress by supporting expression of both conscious and unconscious feelings and thoughts. It might, in itself, have been a therapeutic agent for unresolved conflicts of both parent and child. The process was clinically developed and had a psychological and art-therapy basis.
Interventions in the literature that focused on working with parent and child together are included here. Harvey and Kelly (1993), dance, drama, and play therapists, worked with young children and their families, using observations of effective attunement. Attunements were defined as clear and shared non-verbal rhythms, postures, gestures, facial expressions, or verbal gestures initiated and matched by their subjects, 18-month-old Aaron and his caretaker. Gonnick and Gold (1992), a movement therapist and an art therapist, worked with children removed from their parents due to parental abuse and neglect, and their focus was on trauma and broken social attachments. Wix (1997) wrote about her four-year experience with a nine-year-old girl, and she included a seven-month period of motherchild art therapy. Lachman, Cohn-Stuntz, and Jones (1975) described two art-therapy sessions in the treatment of a mother and her seven and one-half year-old son. One goal of this intervention was to see how the mother and her son behaved toward each other.
Proulx and Minde (1995) reported on a group of fathers and their three-year-old offsprings. Through father-child art therapy, play, and discussions, fathers learned the needs of their toddlers and became...