The course descriptions listed below generally contain at least a sample of course content. They may be modified from time to time as new information comes to the fore.

EXTH.054 A Wellness Model for Expressive Arts Therapists
Wellness has surfaced as an important focus regarding the quality of our existence. It is primarily involved with a combination of health promotion and disease prevention. Some of the ways these can best be accomplished are through living in harmony with ourselves, with others and with the environment. Expressive arts therapy can play a major role in helping clients to achieve these goals. ("Expressive arts," Deborah Koff-Chapin's "Touch Drawing," Aviva Gold's "Painting from the Source," etc.)

EXTH.055 Materials and Methods in Expressive Arts Therapy
A general introduction to the how-to's of expressive arts therapy. For example, how to set up an "open studio," with opportunities for self-expression in both arts and crafts. (Natalie Rogers' "The Creative Connection," etc.)

EXTH.056 Murals and Other Group Activities for Use With Young Children
Assisting children to become better socialized. The power of images to help those having difficulty communicating verbally. Group art, dance, music, drama and storytelling activities for use with young children.

EXTH.057 Dance, Drumming and Theater As Methods of Transformation With Troubled Adolescents
Exploring how performing arts can affect the lives of teenagers at risk. Modern dance techniques. Use of Japanese taiko drumming and other art forms from different cultures. Experimental theater. Psychodrama techniques such as role reversal, doubling and soliloquy. Improvisation and theater games.

EXTH.058 Writing As A Therapy
Psychological as well as physiological benefits of writing about traumatic experiences and of forming coherent stories out of chaotic personal histories. Techniques to facilitate the process.

EXTH.059 Working With Dreams
A basic introduction to various theories and methods of dream interpretation. Dream interpretation in other times and cultures. Freud, Jung, Perls. Also Boss, Erikson, Gendlin, Heidegger, Hillman, etc. The healing properties of dreams. Lucid dreaming. Nightmare help for children.

EXTH.060 Uses of Meditation, Relaxation and Guided Imagery to Relieve Stress
Meditation is about entering a state of reverie and illuminating the inner contents of the heart. It teaches individuals to simply observe whatever they are feeling - pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral - and thus reach a level of dispassionate acceptance. Relaxation techniques include breathing and muscle relaxation. The person closes their eyes and focuses on the slow, in and out sensation of breathing. Or they might focus on releasing the feelings of tension from their muscles, starting with the toes and working up to the top of the head, often accompanied by soft music or tranquil, natural sounds. Guided imagery is about the use of mental visualization to improve clients' psychological and physiological state. It may be guided by the therapist or self-directed, and uses spoken instructions as well as audio and visual tapes. Types of imagery include healing images and mental rehearsal images.

EXTH.061 Mandalas, Masks and Sandtray: A Jungian Perspective
The mandala is a universal symbol of wholeness. Using Tibetan and Navaho mandala rituals to assist therapeutic goals. For thousands of years cultures from around the world have used masks to enter into the healing realm of the imagination. Maskmaking as a way of bringing forth and learning about a new persona. Sandtray using miniature images, sand and water can be employed by children, adolescents, adults, families, couples and groups to create worlds of play and creative investigation. The process promotes self-expression, shared visions and community with others.

EXTH.062 Cooking As Therapy
Working with a different type of physical activity. Chopping, kneading, mashing, pounding, stirring, straining, stuffing, unmolding. Using creativity and imagination. Emotional release. Mood alteration. Personal accomplishment and enjoyment. Sharing with others. Remembering significant events from the past. Combatting sexual stereotypes.

EXTH.063 Supervised Practicum in Expressive Arts Therapy
Students are responsible for finding clients and for supplying examples of the work they produce as well as audio tapes or other transcriptions of actual sessions, which are then reviewed with the supervisor.

EXTH.064 Integration Seminar
Recent therapeutic "cocktails," e.g., "psychomusic," Reiki/guided imagery, Reflexology/color meditation, massage/music or poetry, etc. Putting it all together. (Producing an effective résumé and portfolio.)

EXTH.028 Theory of Expressive Therapy
Expressive therapy has its own unique artistic, lexicographical, philosophical, psychiatric, psychological and spiritual roots and traditions. Phenomenology, Existentialism, Wilhelm Reich, Otto Rank, Harry Stack Sullivan, Fritz and Lore Perls, etc. Art as the language of feeling. Freedom and responsibility. Embracing the non-linear and the non-rational. Changing from moment to moment.

EXTH.029 Expressive Therapy as a Means of Assessment and Diagnosis (includes the DSM IV)Psychology's urge to become a science. Classifying "mental illness." Alternatives in the form of "patterning," responding subjectively, and consensual validation. The "flight into health."

EXTH.030 Expressive Therapy with Children and Adolescents
An overview of child and adolescent development. Unique advantages of expressive therapy as a modality of choice for working with children and adolescents. The role of play in general. "Unconditional positive regard" for clients and their work.

EXTH.034 Legal and Ethical Issues Confronting Expressive Therapists
Importance of the therapist's ability to recount a theory of what's wrong and what needs to be done to correct it. Does it work? The therapist's own continued growth. Avoiding dwelling on things simply because they are "interesting."

EXTH.035 Expressive Therapy with Couples and Families
Dysfunctional family interactions as "poor theater." (J. Zinker) Using family systems approaches.

EXTH.036 Independent Study in Expressive Therapy
After selecting an area of study in consultation with their mentor, students conduct their own independent research and report on the results.

EXTH.032 Short Term Expressive Therapy and Crisis Work
Getting to the heart of the problem. Providing practical advice. Giving clients homework. Life-threatening and other high risk situations in which clients find themselves. Intervening in a timely fashion.

EXTH.037 Cross Cultural Expressive Therapy
Understanding different cultural influences on psychological development. Forming helping relationships with people from different cultural backgrounds.

EXTH.038 Research Methods (Case Studies) in Expressive Therapy
Obtaining basic information through the intake interview: demographic information, historical background, the client's problems and symptoms. Providing information about individual sessions as well as the overall progress of therapy: What was the therapy like? What did the therapist do? How did the client react? What did the client talk about or do in the therapy? Did the client benefit from the therapy? Why or why not? Maintaining the anonymity of the client: not using real names or any other specific information that identifies the person. Students prepare their own case study covering a client they have actually worked with.

EXTH.018 Expressive Therapy with Groups
Techniques such as focusing on the group rather than on individual members, becoming part of the group, encouraging everyone to participate, asking questions, guiding the discussion, making sure it is relevant for all involved, "going around the circle." New experiences for group members such as being in a committed and supportive environment, paying more attention to others, expressing themselves in front of or together with the group, receiving feedback from the group, learning that they are not alone and that others are experiencing many of the same things, sharing confidentiality, developing ease and comfort within the group, having a sense of hope, trying out new behaviors that have worked well for others, giving as well as getting help, sharing information about recovery.

EXTH.014 Supervised Practicum in Expressive Therapy
Expressive therapy at its most fundamental involves a relationship. Since only the therapist is available for working with in supervision, emphasis is on the role of the therapist. Exploring what the therapist does or does not do to promote progress. "Resistance" as something the therapist may be doing inadequately in terms of their own behavior. Students are responsible for finding clients and for supplying audio tapes or other transcriptions of actual sessions, which are then reviewed with the supervisor.

EXTH.039 Thesis/Final Project Seminar
Students can choose to do either a thesis or final project. (Creating a successful private practice. Establishing a presence on the web.)

EXTH.040 Current Psychotherapies
A review of some current psychotherapies, especially those relating to expressive therapy or expressive arts therapy. Existential Psychotherapy, Gestalt Therapy, Client-Centered Therapy, Experiential Psychotherapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy, Process Oriented Psychology, some Japanese therapies, meditative therapies, etc.

EXTH.041 The Therapeutic Dialogue
How to talk with clients: listening, questioning, reacting, "attending to," "being with," working "in the moment," etc. Focusing on style. Staying on the surface as far as questions are concerned. Allowing something to emerge. The importance of telling one's story. Acknowledging what is real.

EXTH.042 The Artist's Working Process
The process used by artists, i.e., painters, sculptors, dancers, composers, musicians, actors, directors, poets, writers, multi-media artists, performance artists, etc., to create works of art. This process occurs in stages over time, and includes elements of drive, play, sensing, feeling, fantasy, imagination, incubation, risking, letting go, insight or illumination, awareness, standing out of the way, going with the flow, working through, critiquing, integrating, transformation, completion, and rest. "Finding and making." The way of the artist.

EXTH.043 Standards of Ethical Practice
A review of current standards of ethical practice pertaining to the work of expressive therapists and expressive arts therapists. Based on the official Code of Ethics of the national association.

EXTH.044 Uses of Humor
Gentle uses of humor and playfulness to relieve tension and counteract rigid attitudes and body posture. Unique applications and techniques to use with children.

EXTH.050 Body Language
Paying attention to the client's tone of voice, facial expressions, eye movements, clenched teeth, tightening of face or body muscles, physical gestures, etc. Techniques to point up specific states of feeling, e.g., "make a face!" Observing and commenting on inconsistencies, and whatever seems to be "missing."

EXTH.048 The Therapist's Use of Themselves as a Healing Agent
The therapist's awareness and sharing of his/her own intuitions, fantasies, "drifting off," memories, physical responses, etc., in the therapeutic encounter with the client (as long as these seem likely to be helpful to the client). Offering the occasional psychoanalytic or other interpretation. Becoming a witness to change.

EXTH.053 Independent Study: Responding to the Arts On Their Own Terms
Independent visits to museums, galleries, artists' studios, concert halls, theaters, etc. Exploring the arts as a unique language, as well as the unique "meaning" of the arts.

EXTH.065 Conversations with Steve Ross
Expressive therapy and expressive arts therapy both work by engaging clients on a level below the surface, allowing that to affect what lies upon the surface, leading to something new above the surface. The focus of these informal one-on-one conversations is on accurately understanding what you are doing so you can do it even more efficiently and effectively. Conflict resolution through creative problem solving: finding alternative solutions.

EXTH.066 Expressive Therapy as Active Hypnosis: Dissociation in the Service of Wholeness
The reflections that I will offer here are in order to synthesize a disputed topic as contrasted with the position of those who consider passivity essential to hypnosis or with that of those who believe that solely verbal expression is conducive to pychological improvement and healing. Based on my evidence gathered over 40 years, I contend that there is hypnosis every time a person is mostly engaged in imaginative thinking whether in quiet and solitude or in very active pursuits. This I've called "the new hypnosis." After a brief treatment of the basic principles involved, I'll address myself to a few practical consequences and applications following from the principles.

Preliminarily, it seems to me that a true expressive therapy practitioner is also a hypnotherapist because the client who enters into expressive therapy is fully in hypnosis. To free dance in the process of expressing your feelings of freedom and independence, just to imagine a specific instance, requires an alternative mental state as compared with the ordinary state of awareness. Hypnosis is understood by most as being an "altered state of mind" (I prefer alternative or alternate to avoid the negative connotation of being "altered"), which basically means that the person is functioning under the predominant influence of the right-brain. In the literature "trance" seems to refer to this special mode of right-hemispheric thinking. Thus, bypassing the ontological and metaphysical discussions about mental states, I prefer to leave it at this: When one is engaged in expressive therapy or in hypnosis the activities of the right cerebral hemisphere prevail over those of the left-brain. Because of this proven fact (Negley-Parker, 1986), from the position of the new hypnosis, I consider that expressive therapy is truly active hypnosis. Even if expressive therapy professionals may not prefer the designation of their work as hypnotic, my emphasis may be helpful in understanding the wonderful results obtained by means of expressive therapy. This is so because the research literature on hypnosis is very vast and what it proves and demonstrates can be applied, with the appropriate changes, to expressive therapy as well.

Finally, the syllogism to sustain my contention that expressive therapy is active hypnosis would run like this: There is no expressive therapy without the client being in trance and trance means to be in hypnosis, therefore expressive therapy is hypnosis.

EXTH.067 Freeing Yourself From Blocked Energy
Removing energy blocks by sensory treatment techniques permits both the therapist and the patient the increased freedom to be creative in their healing. The workshop today will demonstrate Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Thought Field or Energy Field Therapy, Visual Kinesthetic Dissociation and other techniques to remove energetic blocks and permit increased creativity. A brief description of the above therapies will be given and the audience will participate in learning how to use the Energy Therapies for themselves and with their clients.

EXTH.068 DSM IV
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has become the world's standard for evaluation and diagnosis. We will discuss the descriptions of mental disorders and how to diagnose clients. Whether we work clinically in a private setting or public sector, we need to recognize and evaluate disorders if we are to accurately diagnose and then treat accordingly. Additionally, for purposes related to insurance, employee assistance programs, case histories, referrals and consultations, it is necessary to understand DSM IV criteria. Taped vignettes will accompany the presentation.

EXTH.069 Healing Encounters: The Power Is Within You
This practicum focuses on bringing forth what lies within the client, partly through bringing forth what lies within ourselves (sensitivity, imagination, intuition, creativity, etc.) It encourages and supports therapists' use of those generally overlooked and undervalued faculties that are part of the "artist in each of us," especially the use of one's own body and physical presence. The result is a genuine depth approach to counseling and psychotherapy, as well as to the various activity therapies. Individual participants are invited to work with another participant, with commentary by the workshop leader and other participants.

EXTH.045 A Body-Oriented Approach to Psychotherapy
Taking your body with you. The therapist's use of his/her own breathing, centering, physical "presence," body position, facial expression, voice inflection, etc., in the therapeutic encounter with the client.

EXTH.047 Supervision II: Interpersonal
A supervisory practicum in which students provide examples of the work they are doing with clients on an interpersonal verbal level, and receive feedback in the form of comments and suggestions (which may include a number of personal "experiments" that students can perform). Factors in who students are as persons and how this affects the work they do.

EXTH.046 Incorporating the Arts in Your Daily Practice
Ways to utilize the arts as such in your current practice. Helping clients help themselves. What works with whom. Organizing arts activities and matching them to client's needs. (A young man's body is maimed in an automobile accident. Subsequently, he wants nothing more than to become an architect.) Exploring and combining a wide range of media and art forms. Recovery of spontaneity and joy.

EXTH.049 Supervision I: Participating With Clients in Arts Activities
A supervisory practicum in which students provide examples of the work they are doing with clients in this innovative and highly effective genre, and receive feedback in the form of comments and suggestions.

EXTH.051 Independent Study: Using the Institute's Video Library
Students view and report on videos pertaining to their special interests.

Electives
Students select from a wide range of choices to fill out their program or accommodate their special interests.