Ph. D. Thesis
An Ontological Inquiry into the Conceptualizing Experience of Daily Life Therapy
- Sprouting the Life-giving Seed of a Maladjusted Child
Min-jung Lee
Department of Art Therapy
Graduate School, Yeungnam University
(Supervised by Profe...
Ph. D. Thesis
An Ontological Inquiry into the Conceptualizing Experience of Daily Life Therapy
- Sprouting the Life-giving Seed of a Maladjusted Child
Min-jung Lee
Department of Art Therapy
Graduate School, Yeungnam University
(Supervised by Professor Sun-Nam Choi)
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to uncover the significance of an art therapy which encompasses both the temporality and spaciality of a participant's daily life for its therapeutic treatment by overcoming the limitation of practicing a therapy in a room setting. For this purpose, this study had made an ongoing experimental attempt until the results of the study reached the conceptualization of 'daily life therapy' as a new therapeutic methodology.
On the basis of a whole understanding of a Jeanie's(the participant's) daily life with the viewpoint of him, the inquiry was able to create a detailed therapeutic methodology on a contextual basis, which, in turn, enabled the researcher to conceptualize daily life therapy. This process was not just to meet Jeanie but was to encounter his physical and concrete circumstances in which he resided in.
There were two ontological questions raised by the researcher. The first was 'How do the researcher and the participants (Jeanie and her mother) experience the daily life therapy?' The second was 'How the concept of daily life therapy is being shaped?'
The main participant of this study were Jeanie, a maladjusted child in his 2nd grade, her mother, and the therapist(the researcher). The research period was from March 2014 to March 2015. With the symbolic clues shown in Jeanie’s artworks during the interviews and the art therapies performed in an early stage, the therapist was able to understand Jeanie’s daily life wholly. In addition, the therapist visited his school and house not only to observe his daily life but also to explore his relationships with his family, friends, and classroom teacher. The researcher recorded, transcribed, and interpreted each art therapy session, inquiry and observation data, and the interviews with his parents systematically. Besides, the researcher made a continuous effort not only to reconceptualize one's preoccupations toward the participants through field-note keeping, journal writing, and artwork creation but also to collect credible data through Jeanie's articacts, his mother's analysis and interpretation of various data collected from Jeanie’s artifacts, her mother’s field notes containing Jeanie’s daily life, photos and dairies, etc. which were enough to be explicable in terms of his life. With all the above-mentioned efforts, the research was successfully empowered to conceptualize daily life therapy as a new therapeutic methodology.
By walking on this ontological journey into finding the meaning of daily life therapy together with Jeanie and her mother, all of us as the participants in this study were able to encounter their multiple selves, to reconstruct their ontological meanings, and to experience becoming the real subject of their lives. By crossing beyond the limitation of being caught within a therapy room the researcher entered into the understanding of the participants' daily life and brought the understanding to the autobiographical inquiry of the researcher as an art therapist. Accordingly, the researcher tossed the following ontological questions such as, ‘What is the essence of a therapist's life?' and ‘What should the therapist believe in doing therapeutic practices', and 'How should the therapist live?’ during the study period on a continuous basis, and those questions were finally explained. this ontological questioning and answering allowed the researcher to reflect on the true meaning of living as a therapist.
As the results of this study, there were the six stages needed in order to fulfill the process of daily life therapy practice. Firstly, the therapist needs to 'reconceptualize one's preoccupations' regarding Jeanie and his daily life. Secondly, the therapist needs to ‘enter into Jeanie’s world’ in order to understand his life circumstances both at home and at school. Thirdly, the therapist needs to ‘evaluate one's preoccupations' based on the whole understanding of Jeanie through interview, observation and artifact. Fourthly, the therapist needs to 'reconstruct Jean's physical and cultural environments' so that it can become a rich soil in which Jeanie is able to enroot one's interest or purpose in it. Fifthly, fifth, the therapist needs to help Jeanie to ‘communicate and harmonize with the world’ through experiencing success stories by inquiring into his own life issues and problems. Sixthly, the therapist needs to ‘assist not only Jeanie but also his mother so that they can maintain the newly developed dynamics in managing the newly emerging tensions, anxieties, uncertainties coming after the success stories accomplished beforehand.
This study implied two therapeutic significances. Firstly, the a client begins to sprout one's own seed only in a soil which is fertilized with dialogical caring. Secondly, daily life therapy becomes a rich soil where a child germinates its sprout. Accordingly this study successfully reconceptualized the concept of daily life therapy as follows. The domains of daily life therapy are divided into two aspects, both of which are anyhow not inseparable. The first is an inquiry methodology by which a therapist understands the whole life of a participant and the second is a therapeutic methodology with which a therapist intervene into the therapeutic situation based on the whole understanding of a client. There were three phases in terms of the application of daily life therapy. Firstly, a therapy should be conducted on the basis of a whole understanding of a participant. Secondly, an environment must be conducive to the natural germination of a participant's physicality. Thirdly, a client should receive basic care and dialogue from one's parents, free oneself from the oppressed situation one is situated in, and regain any kind of psychological stability due to the developing communication skills of the parents. The therapeutic value of the daily life therapy was to understand the participant’s overall life.
In summary, a therapist should understand a client's general environment in wholesome ways by using interview, observation, and artifact analysis, and help one's families(or custodians) to become an ontological inquirer an