Book Review: Healing Trauma in Children with Clay Field Therapy
Dianne Shannon (MA, RCAT)
Saskatoon, SK
Since graduating from KATI in 2012, Dianne Shannon has delivered art therapy primarily for children and youth through her private practice in Saskatchewan and for Indigenous organizations in BC. Clay is her personal creative medium of choice for throwing, hand building, and the satisfaction that comes with playing in mud.
The following is a review written by Dianne for the book Healing Trauma in Children with Clay Field Therapy: How Sensorimotor Art Therapy Supports the Embodiment of Developmental Milestones, by Cornelia Elbrecht (2021), published by North Atlantic Books.
“Work at the Clay Field puts the focus firmly on what movements were inhibited due to once experienced trauma, where development was arrested, resulting in the shutdown of certain parts of the brain. The therapeutic setting aims to create an environment of safety and support that allows these blocked, braced, dissociated aspects to be “re-membered” and reconnected with the child’s life-stream.”
- Cornelia Elbrecht (2021)
Art therapists familiar with Cornelia Elbrecht will be aware of her work on healing trauma through sensorimotor art therapy, the principles of which are fundamental to clay field therapy. Elbrecht herself has been an art therapist for over 40 years and is the founder and director of the Institute for Sensorimotor Art Therapy and School for Initiatic Art Therapy in Australia. The institute offers a two-year art therapy program as well as workshops delivered around the world for clay field therapy and guided drawing.
Cathy Malchiodi provides the foreword for Elbrecht’s Healing Trauma in Children with Clay Field Therapy. Malchiodi is the 2022 Cecil and Eda Green Honors Chair on trauma and expressive arts. She has worked for more than 30 years as an expressive therapist specializing in non-verbal and sensory-based treatments for traumatic stress delivering presentations and workshops as well as authoring numerous books. Malchiodi explains clay’s unique qualities as an art therapy material because of how a person’s hands make contact with and manipulate the medium. This haptic connection, that she explains with a nod to Viktor Lowenfeld, is intrinsic to clay field’s capacity to contain and reflect back implicit, embodied memories of trauma in the patterns and shapes made in the clay.
Malchiodi describes how the ability of participants to shape clay, pull it apart, and build it up again has a healing resonance with neuroscience, Buddhism’s principle of impermanence, transformative self-expression, and acceptance of imperfect beauty. These insights echo the comprehensive references found in Elbrecht’s book to experts in trauma therapy as well as participant experiences in the clay field. In addition to Malchiodi, Elbrecht provides the perspectives of Peter Levine, Bruce Perry, Bessel Van der Kolk, Maggie Kline, and Stephen Porges (to name a few) as well as descriptions of participants to demonstrate the relevance and efficacy of the clay field for helping children heal from trauma.
“Deuser invites the reader into Elbrecht’s book with a promise of hope for art therapists wanting to use clay field therapy to help children heal from trauma – a promise that comes from an unwavering belief in the healing potential of clay field therapy combined with the utmost respect for Elbrecht.”
The origin of clay field therapy arose from the work of Hienz Deuser, who writes the prelude for Healing Trauma in Children with Clay Field Therapy. Deuser explored the use of clay as a therapeutic medium in Germany in the 1970s. Elbrecht was a participant in Deuser’s initial clay field therapy sessions as he developed the process of using clay contained in a wooden box as a sensory/symbolic healing experience. Deuser came to realize how movements of the hands in clay resonates with the symbolism, insights, and archetypes of Jung and Neumann, gestalt, along with developmental stages as understood through the insights of Piaget, Klein, Winnicott, and Gehlen. Deuser invites the reader into Elbrecht’s book with a promise of hope for art therapists wanting to use clay field therapy to help children heal from trauma – a promise that comes from an unwavering belief in the healing potential of clay field therapy combined with the utmost respect for Elbrecht.
From the landscape of the clay field arises a narrative in three chapters about the two clay shapes. Photo used with permission.
In Elbrecht’s two earlier books, Trauma Healing at the Clay Field (2012) and Healing Trauma with Guided Drawing (2019), the reader is provided descriptions for using clay and drawing along with foundational and current trauma-based perspectives that Elbrecht deftly weaves into the somatic experience of clay and guided drawing. It won’t be a surprise then, that Healing Trauma in Children with Clay Field Therapy (2021) has a comprehensive overview of trauma-based research that is foundational for understanding sensorimotor art therapy. Applying trauma-informed principles informs how clay field therapy is beneficial for children whose traumatic experiences have impinged on their capacity to reach developmental milestones, which in turn manifests as behavioural and cognitive challenges that bring them to therapy.
Elbrecht’s introduction piques an art therapist’s interest and engagement to learn how clay field therapy extends the relevance and importance of the creative process for helping children with significant therapeutic needs. The reader begins to have a sense of how the clay field might bring them into the sacred healing space that is explained by neuroscience, feedback loops, and brain-wise processes yet in the felt sense is difficult to describe adequately. Elbrecht explains how the clay field supports a child to implicitly reconnect to earlier developmental experiences made vulnerable by trauma so a shift toward reparation and healing can take place. The introduction also provides a subtle caution for art therapists who are used to processing the symbolic or literal content of what’s created or who are hesitant about fluid mediums activating emotional discharge. The clay field encourages and supports mess making to revisit haptic developmental stages that traumatic experiences impeded while supporting symbolic and somatic expression through which a child can implicitly process and integrate trauma.
“Elbrecht explains how the clay field supports a child to implicitly reconnect to earlier developmental experiences made vulnerable by trauma so a shift toward reparation and healing can take place.”
The main content of the book is organized in three parts. “The Framework” explains the physical set up of the clay field and underlying theoretical principles including neuroscience, attachment, polyvagal theory, and trauma-informed interventions. This section provides a comprehensive over-view of trauma-informed therapy that is useful as a resource even if the reader doesn’t set up a clay field. Then “Haptic Development Building Blocks” describes how the clay field responds to nine essential and progressive childhood haptic developmental experiences. This information describes indicators for the art therapist to have a better sense of the child’s developmental needs that are presenting in the clay field. And finally, in “Case Examples,” practicing art therapists share experiences in the clay field from practical environmental considerations to examples of children’s experiences.
A helpful description of facilitating a clay field session with a child can be found under “Clay Field Therapy in the School and Preschool Setting” written by Phillipa Rose. Rose’s insights about the “unerring drive children have to complete their unmet sensory needs” (309), and how the clay field “assists people of all ages to arrive at a recognition of their own resilience, a clearer sense of their own worth, and a stronger, embodied sense of self,” (311) underscores how unexpected it is that a simple material and presentation – essentially clay in a box along with a bowl of water and a sponge – can have such profound healing potential for children who are so deeply wounded.
“Elbrecht explains how the process needs to be delivered with more than just enthusiasm and clay in a box for there to be meaningful therapeutic benefit.”
For those interested in clay field therapy training, visit the Institute for Sensorimotor Art Therapy website to find out when and where the certificate program is offered: https://www.sensorimotorarttherapy.com/certificate-in-clay-field-therapy. As with other books about art therapy modalities, there’s a wonder if someone should undertake the training before offering the intervention. Elbrecht explains how the process needs to be delivered with more than just enthusiasm and clay in a box for there to be meaningful therapeutic benefit. The training would provide more in-depth knowledge and reflections back about personal abilities and areas of growth. However, throughout the book are explanations about the physical set up and process, which perhaps suggests the information is intended for art therapists to offer the clay field in their practice.
For example, the first chapter describes the physical set up of a clay field including measurements, materials, objects, and placement. Expectations of what a session might look like and the role of the therapist provide a context for what an art therapist might expect if they set up a clay field. And Chapter 20 offers direction about setting up a clay field for mobile sessions that is also helpful for studio set up because there is more detail about the type of plywood to build the box, how much clay is used, tarps, protective clothing for the child, and more. Readers seem left to rely on their own judgement as to whether or not they feel comfortable facilitating clay field sessions without training. That being said, there is so much valuable information, insights, and inspiration throughout Healing Trauma in Children with Clay Field Therapy, to make this a valuable resource for all art therapists whether or not they choose to offer clay field therapy in their practice.
References
Elbrecht, Cornelia. (2021) Healing Trauma in Children with Clay Field Therapy: How Sensorimotor Art Therapy Supports the Embodiments of Developmental Milestones. North Atlantic Books.