Publications

Core Reading
These texts below are our foundation and classes emerge from this theoretical base. Although we expect that students will read and begin to integrate this material, classes will not always directly refer to these readings.

Play and Art in Child Psychotherapy: An Expressive Arts Therapy Approach
Ellen G. Levine
Ellen G. Levine draws on her extensive experience in clinical settings to present a series of case studies that demonstrate how art-making and imaginary play can provide a space for children to metabolize their experiences. Each study is followed by an arts-based research discussion of the themes that emerged in the clinical sessions and the basic principles that were followed in the work with the child or family. The model of expressive arts therapy is used to explore the questions that arise from the cases, which range from issues of war trauma, to anger, grief, and the impact of mental illness in the family.

This comprehensive guide to the use of play and art in working with children and parents will be of interest to students and practitioners in the fields of expressive arts therapy and psychotherapy, in addition to anyone working with children in disciplines such as psychology, social work and psychiatry.
Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy : Theoretical and Clinical Perspectives
Stephen K. Levine and Ellen G. Levine (Eds)
This book provides an arts-based approach to the theory and practice of expressive arts therapy. The book explores the various expressive arts therapy modalities both individually and in relationship to each other. The contributors emphasize the importance of the imagination and of aesthetic experience, arguing that these are central to psychological well-being, and challenging accepted views which place primary emphasis on the cognitive and emotional dimensions of mental health and development.
Principles and Practice of Expressive Arts Therapy: Toward a Therapeutic Aesthetics 
Paolo Knill, Ellen G. Levine and Stephen K. Levine
Challenging traditional therapeutic approaches to the arts in which art is often secondary to a psychological model, Principles and Practice of Expressive Arts Therapy provides a coherent theoretical framework for an expressive arts therapy practice that places the process of art-making and the art work itself at the center. The authors clarify the methodology and theory of practice with a focus on intermodal therapy, crystallization theory and polyaesthetics, and give guidance on the didactics of acquiring practical skills.
Tending the Fire: Studies in Art, Therapy and Creativity
Ellen G. Levine
This book explores the notion of creativity as an internal fire or sense of aliveness and vitality in the self. Moving from the author's own painting experience to an understanding of the emergence of creativity in the earliest mother-infant interactions, Ellen Levine brings together a theoretical understanding, drawn from psychoanaly-tic literature, with clinical material from practice as a child psychotherapist and expressive arts therapist. According to the author, using the arts in therapy is a process of fire-tending, of allowing play and experimentation to enter the therapeutic space and enliven the experience.
Minstrels of Soul: Intermodal Expressive Therapy
Paolo Knill, Helen Barba, Margot Fuchs
A discussion of polyaesthetics, crystallization, intermodal theory, and the roles of expression and catharsis provide a theoretical foundation for understanding this creative approach to therapy. Asking the question What happens when a client's art-making is received by the therapist?, the special considerations in the practice of expressive arts therapy are summarized, including relationship as art, play, structure and framing, low-skill and high-sensitivity work, and the phenomenon of the surprising experience that comes when a therapist and client work in a creative space together.
Trauma, Tragedy, Therapy: The Arts and Human Suffering
Stephen K. Levine
This book explores the nature of traumatic experience and the therapeutic role of the arts and arts therapies in responding to it. It suggests that by re-imagining painful and tragic experiences through art-making, we may release their fixity and negative hold on our lives and resist the temptation to assume the role of the victim. It addresses the damage done by the tendency to adopt stock methods of understanding and superficial explanations for the
depths, complexities, wonders, and exasperations of human experience. The book explores the chaos and fragmentation inherent in both art and human existence and the ways in which memory and imagination can find meaning by acknowledging this chaos and embodying it in appropriate forms.

Art in Action: Expressive Arts Therapy and Social Change

Ellen G. Levine and Stephen K. Levine
The authors explore the transformative power of the arts therapies in areas stricken by conflict, political unrest, poverty or natural disaster and discuss how and why expressive arts works. They look at the ways it can be used to engage community consciousness and improve social conditions whilst taking into account the issues that arise within different contexts and populations. Leading expressive arts therapy practitioners give inspiring accounts of their work, from using poetry as a tool in trauma intervention with Iraqi survivors of war and torture, to setting up storytelling workshops to aid the integration of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants in Israel.
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Ellen Levine & Stephen Levine
POIESIS
A Journal of the Arts
and Communication,   Vol. 21
All the recommended & core texts
can be purchased at:
Caversham Booksellers
98 Harbord Street, Toronto,
(One block west of Spadina Ave.)
Tel: 416-944-0962   
Fax: 416-944-0963
Email: [email protected]