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The
Techniques in General
The
five PhotoTherapy techniques are interrelated and interdependent
(click here
to find links for viewing an entire page about each one).
Like the fingers of a hand (and similarly inseparable from
it), they work best when synergistically combined. They
can also be useful in activating other therapy process;
for example, enhancing symbolic communication in Art, Play,
or other Expressive Therapies, assisting Jungian or Gestalt
process work, focusing hypnosis or guided imagery work,
giving visual form to family patterns or personal narratives
explored in Family Systems or Narrative Therapy, and so
forth.
Each
therapist using PhotoTherapy techniques will use them a
bit differently, depending upon that person's own professional
training and theoretical preferences, as well as each client's
particular therapeutic situational needs and goals. Thus,
there isn't one single fixed or correct way to use
these techniques (as long as the client is treated ethically!),
nor are there any requirements about applying them in any
particular sequence or combination.
There
is not even any need for special skill or training in photography
itself -- because this is about using photos as communication,
not as "art".
PhotoT herapy
is not about interpreting people's photos for them;
instead, the input should always come from the client, guided
by their therapist's photo-stimulated questions, while both
explore the image (and its emotional impact) together. The
perceptions and associated feelings each photo triggers
in the client (or therapist!) will be personally unique,
and since there is therefore no inherently wrong
way to interpret a particular photo's meaning, no external
interpretive criteria can ever be used to "objectively"
evaluate or measure a client's perception of it.
Similarly,
a person's reaction to a photo cannot, on its own, indicate
any definite diagnostic problem or mental condition -- and
thus no assumptions or assessments should ever be generalized
from singular responses. Instead, therapists
who have been trained in PhotoTherapy techniques are
taught to look for underlying patterns of responses,
for repeated themes and imagery,
for consistencies through time (and
often generations), for unusual or symbolic content, and
most of all, for emotional reactions indicating inner feelings
which the clients may or may not be consciously aware of
at the time of encountering the photo-catalyst.
Making
the photos, or bringing them along to the therapy session,
is just the 
start -- once the photo can be viewed, the next step is
to activate all that it brings to mind (exploring its visual
messages, entering into conversations with it, asking it
questions, considering the results of imagined changes or
different viewpoints, and so forth).
Therefore,
what for photographers is usually an end-point (the finished
photo) is, for PhotoTherapy purposes, just the beginning...
Thus, it is not just the visual contents of the photographs
themselves that are so therapeutically important, but also
everything that happens while the client is interacting
with them. Memories, feelings and thoughts that emerge during
the photographic dialogue, almost as "by-products" to the
process, often provide additional useful information.
As
clients discuss the layers of meanings contained within
their photographs, they also reveal a lot about themselves:
their inner value system, beliefs, attitudes and expectations
that inseparably accompany their words. These nonverbal
codes hold important clues about how people make sense of
their world (and their place within it). Asking questions
about the photograph, and to it -- as if it was alive
and could speak for itself -- further enhances the therapeutic
possibilities.
Using
PhotoTherapy techniques, the therapist's primary role is
to encourage and support clients' own personal discoveries
while exploring and interacting with the ordinary personal
and family snapshots they view, make, collect, remember,
or even only imagine.
The
Five Techniques, Individually*
(Note:
Clicking on any "technique title" below will take
you to a full page entirely for that particular technique
by itself -- including a longer explanation of what it is
and how it works, as well as anecdotal examples and photo-illustrations
from real experiences with its application)
Each
of the five PhotoTherapy techniques is directly related
to the various relationships possible between person and
camera (or, person and photograph) -- although in practice,
these categories often naturally overlap:
 |
1)
Photos which have
been taken or created by the client
(whether actually using a camera to make the
picture, or "taking" (appropriating) other people's
images through gathering "found" photos from magazines,
postcards, Internet images, digital manipulation,
and so forth), |
 |
2)
Photos which have
been taken of the client by other people
(whether posed on purpose or taken spontaneously
while the person was unaware of being photographed
-- but where people other than the client
have made all the decisions about timing, content,
location, and so forth), |
 |
3)
Self-portraits, which
means any kind of photos that clients have made
of themselves, either literally or metaphorically
(but where in all cases they themselves had total
control and power over all aspects of the
image's creation), |
 |
4)
Family album and other
photo-biographical collections (whether
of birth family or family of choice; whether formally
kept in albums or more "loosely" combined into narratives
by placement on walls or refrigerator doors, inside
wallets or desktop frames, into computer screens
or family websites, and so forth -- which were put
together for the purpose of documenting the personal
narrative of the client's life and the background
from which they developed. Such albums have a "life"
apart from, and far beyond, the individual images
which comprise them; and, finally...
|
 |
5)
"Photo-Projectives",
which is based on the fact that the meaning of
any
photo is primarily created by its viewer during
their process of viewing it (or taking or even
just planning it!). A viewer's perceptions and
reactions
in response to looking at any kind of photographic
image are actually projected by that viewer,
from "inside" their own unconscious inner map
of reality (which determines
how they make sense of what they see). Therefore,
this technique is located not in a particular kind
of photograph, but rather in the less-tangible
interface
between a photo and its viewer (or maker),
that "place" where each person forms their own
unique responses to what they see (reflecting
both phenomenological
and existential theory). |
Like
so many holistic approaches, PhotoTherapy suffers somewhat
from having to be taken apart for studying in any step-by-step
order, when in fact each technique is partially formed
by, and overlaps, several of the others.
Therefore,
the most effective application of these techniques
will occur when they are creatively combined
-- because they comprise an integrally interconnected
system that is far more useful as a holistic system, than
in any linear summation of its parts.
*
Note:
For information and publications about
VideoTherapy Techniques --
which is a related field, but not the subject of this
website -- contact the PhotoTherapy
Centre
PhotoTherapy
Home | The Five Techniques
| Compared with Other Fields
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and Development | Recommended
Readings | Student Theses
and Papers
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Weiser Bio & Publications | For
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