The City Paper
Volume1 Issue 32 April 15, 1998
This article presents alternative medical and healthcare options available. This section is the portion on art therapy.
The Healing Power of Touch
Susan Harvey, a licensed massage therapist at Professional Therapeutic Massage and Holistic Skin Care, has seen Charleston change. When she moved to London 15 years ago, massage therapy was something that was not widely accepted in America as a form of medical treatment.
“Fifteen years ago you wouldn’t find a masseuse at where you get your hair and nails done,” Harvey says. “Today, it’s run of the mill.”
“But, massage is not a new thing,” she adds. It has only been re-re discovered.”
In fact, massage therapy is probably the oldest healing tradition. We have Chinese records of massage that date back over 3000 years, but many researchers believe it dates back much further. The theraputic qualities of touch are simply part of human nature.
In London, Harvey worked at the Hale Clinic, the largest alternative health clinic in England, opened in 1988 by Prince Charles and Princess Diana. In England, as in most of Europe, alternative health care is much more widely accepted. Private insurance even pays for some alternative treatments, but Britain’s national healthcare system is still reluctant to pay for non-Western medical treatments. Harvey doesn’t understand why insurance refuses to pay for holistic medicine.
Art Therapy
Dianne Tennyson, MAT, was a 19-year-old nurse working in the operating room at MUSC when she decided she wasn’t doing what she wanted with her life. She realized she wanted to pursuer her passion-art. So, she went back to school and earned a bachelor’s degree in art and a master’s degree in art education.
Tennyson wanted to teach, but no art education positions were open. Fortunately for Tennyson, she landed a job as an Art Therapist at Fenwick Hall Hospital (the now closed substance abuse and psychiatric hospital on Johns Island.) This position allowed her to remain focused on art, which she loved, while utilizing her psychiatric nursing background.
Art therapy is a vehicle for communication, healing and growth through non-verbal expression. This therapy uses art to uncover unconscious or emotionally-charged feelings that may be impossible to express through words alone.
“During my first year at Fenwick I saw things come out in art therapy that would not have come out in other treatments,” says Tennyson. She was so convinced and taken by the progress she saw in patients that she once again packed up her books and went back to school, this time to get her master’s in art therapy.
“I’m so lucky,” she says. “I just stumbled into it, and I have never done anything I love so much.”
Art therapy has gotten some attention in recent years as a good way to counsel abused children and children of divorced parents. However, Tennyson says that the therapy is good for anyone who wished to discover more about themselves. In fact, she offers a women’s group for any woman who wishes to express their feelings and learn about themselves through artistic creativity. No artistic talent or experience is necessary to participate.
Art therapists generally belong to one of two schools of thought. The first believes that art in and of itself is therapeutic. The second utilizes art to analyze and discover emotional and psychological problems. Tennyson sees herself somewhere in the middle, though she leans more toward the first school of thought.
Tennyson guides her patients through specific assignments. Some are skeptical or timid at first. “I had one patient at Fenwick who did not want to participate,” says Tennyson. “Eventually she discovered she had an amazing talent and she fell in love with art. Now she is even talking to publishers to have some of her work published.”
Through art, Tennyson has picked up on some issues that otherwise may never have surfaced. For example, when asked to draw picture of a family sleeping, one young boy drew his mother and older brother sleeping in the same bed. Without using art as a vehicle for communication, this family’s ugly secret, and the cause of this boy’s mental instability, might never have been addressed.
When you look at an image, the art does not lie,” says Tennyson. Because of art’s “tell-all” ability, she feel that art teachers need to be aware of “red flags” when they appear in students’ art. Anything that is abnormal should be questioned to see if it a manifestation of a deeper problem or just an overactive imagination.
“It is really sad,” Tennyson says. Most of these teachers don’t have any training and art is the place where you pick up on physical and emotional stress. There is a real need for education of art teachers. Art teachers need to be able to look at a child’s drawing and say this is not normal.” Unfortunately, there is no place in Charleston for them to get training.”
Art therapy, like all counseling is conducted under the strictest confidentiality. The patients gave permission for publication of all artwork used in this story.
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