Exploring the benefits of intersectional feminist social justice approaches in art psychotherapy

This paper charts a research and knowledge exchange project between a university and group of art psychotherapists who came together in a project aimed at better understanding the benefits of critical feminist social justice approaches to art psychotherapy. It outlines the impact of the partnership for art psychotherapy practice, practitioners’ continued professional development and patients’/ service users’ benefit. Drawing on knowledges of critical feminisms held within the university and art psychotherapy expertise from local health services, the project evaluated the benefit of a practice enhancement activity and resource hub as consciousness raising training in intersectional feminism for developing critical feminist social justice approaches to art psychotherapy practice. The project was designed as a qualitative participatory study. The four main salient themes emerging from the data were that the enhancement activity and resource hub provided; patient/ service user benefits, improved practitioner reflexive critical thinking; recognition from practitioners of the importance of being attentive to patient’s/ service users’ situatedness; and acknowledgement by practitioners of the helpfulness of likeminded collectives for sustaining critical feminist social justice praxis. Project findings suggest that critical feminist social justice approaches are beneficial to art psychotherapy praxis and that continued engagement with current and re-emerging feminisms could continue to progressively reimagine and reshape that praxis.

Ahmed, S. (1998). Difference that matter: feminist theory and postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ahmed, S. (2006). Orientations: towards a queer phenomenology. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 12:4, 543-574.
Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ahmed, S. (2014). Wilful subjects. Durham: Duke University Press.
Baines, S. & Edwards, J. (2015) Considering the ways in which anti-oppressive practice principles can inform health research, The Arts in Psychotherapy, 42, 28-34.
Bechdel, A. Bechdel test movie list (2016). http://bechdeltest.com/ Accessed 14.12.16.
Butler, J. What is critique? an essay on Foucault’s virtue. (2001). http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/butler/en Accessed 14.12.16.
Cooper, J. (2005). Thrown in at the deep end. In J. Campbell, Art psychotherapy: race and culture. (pp. 85-102). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Crenshaw, K. (2017). On Intersectionality: Essential Writings. New York: New Press.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43:6, 1241-1299.
Davis, A. Y. (2016). Freedom is a constant struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the foundations of a movement. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Degarrod, L. N. (2013). Making the unfamiliar personal: arts-based ethnographies as public engaged ethnographies. Qualitative Research, 0:0, 1–12.
Fannin, M., MacLeavy, J., Larner, W. & Wefei, W. W. (2014). Work, life, bodies: new materialisms and feminisms. Feminist Theory, 15:3, 261-668.
Frost, S. (2014). Re-considering the turn to biology in feminist theory. Feminist Theory, 15:3, 307-326.
Harding, S. (1993). Rethinking standpoint epistemology: what is strong objectivity? In L. Alcoff and E. Potter (Eds.) Feminist epistemologies. New York/London: Routledge.
Harraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. London: Free Association Books.
Hesse-Biber, S. N. (2011). Feminist research: exploring, interrogating, and transforming the interconnections of epistemology, methodology, and method. In S. N. Hesse-Biber (Ed.) Handbook of feminist research: theory and praxis, Second Edition (pp. 2-26). Los Angeles: Sage.
Hogan, S. & Cornish, S. (2014). Unpacking gender in art psychotherapy: the elephant at the art psychotherapy easel. International Journal of Art Psychotherapy: Formerly Inscape, 19:3, 122-34.
Hooks, B. (2000). Feminist theory: from margin to center. London: Pluto Press.
Lorde, A. (2007). Sister outsider. New York: Random House.
Lykes, M. B. and Hershberg, R. M. (2011). Participatory action research and feminisms: Social inequalities and transformative praxis. In S. N. Hesse-Biber (Ed.) Handbook of feminist research: Theory and praxis, Second edition (pp. 331-367). Los Angeles: Sage.
Mohanty, C. T. (2013). Transnational feminist crossings: on neoliberalism and radical critique. Signs, 38:4, 967-991.
Sajnani, N. (2012). Response/ability: imaging a critical race feminist paradigm for the creative arts therapies. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 39:3, 186-191.
Talwar, S. (2010). An intersectional framework for race, class, gender, and sexuality in art psychotherapy. Art Psychotherapy: Journal of the American Art Psychotherapy Association, 27:1, 11-7.
Waller, D. (2003). Forword. In S. Hogan, Gender issues in art psychotherapy (pp. 9-10). London: Jessica Kingsley publishers.
Wise, T. (2011). Color-blind: the rise of post-racial political and the retreat from racial equality. San-Francisco: City Lights Books.
Wright, K. & Wright, T. (2013). Art for women’s sake: understanding feminist art psychotherapy as didactic practice re-orientation. International Practice Development Journal, 3:5.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Intersectionality and feminist politics. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13, 193.