| Art-making has been studied as a mode of social communication, socio-cultural expression, emotional catharsis and intelligent behavior. This inquiry focuses on art-making as a therapeutic phenomenon---dynamic, fluid, resonant, and adaptive---that manifests as a deeply felt sense of 'rightness' and well-being. Using concepts from Phenomenology, Pragmatism, Neurophenomenology, as well as, adapting art educator Eric Booth's conception of art "as a verb," that is, as an action rather than a material entity, and artist Marcel Duchamp's definition of art "as a choice," this study distinguishes therapeutic art-making as a temporal, rather than a spatial phenomenon, the consequence of pre-reflective choice grounded in the body's internal living matrix.;Based upon information gleaned from a number scientific sources, this study infers that therapeutic change, brought about through pre-reflective choice, entails the body's energetic informational system attaining a state of energetic congruency/coherency. Coherency occurs when each molecule, cell, tissue, and organ reaches an ideal resonant frequency via the neural synchrony of large neuronal populations, particularly in the gamma wave range. Pre-reflective choice activates the energetic transmission of embodied intentions, experiences, and contextual influences.;Importantly, pre-reflective choice does not pre-exist the process of art-making, but emerges in response to feelings of tension that arouse the impulse to restore a state of equilibrium---what John Dewey refers to as, "the passage from disturbance into harmony." However, the salubrious effect of therapeutic art-making is not founded in the image or art product, per se, but in the dynamic of 'making' that animates pre-reflective choice. This process appreciably differs from art-making ventures found in most art education classrooms that rely upon externally imposed directives. Rather, therapeutic art-making involves a deliberative internal processing grounded in one's intentional emotional, psychological, spiritual predispositions---inclinations governed by the innate need to maintain a deeply felt sense of 'rightness' and well-being, especially in times of adversity or distress, as exemplified in the art-making efforts of two pediatric patients, P and G. |
