Art Psychotherapy: Group Dynamics

One of the many significant concepts of group dynamics that I found to be the most interesting is the idea of how any and all aspects of the group process has the natural ability to bring up all the past relatable experiences of each individual group member. I found this to be very true on so many levels within each session, process and the overall development of the group. It has personally been meaningful to view the life of a group as a story with a beginning, middle and end—simply a process of constantly moving succession of moments. Seeing it in this manner then makes perfect sense that every story will remind us of all past stories and that every parts of the story will remind us of all the parts of past stories. With all of this in mind, I could not think of a better and more appropriate topic for my final paper than on the last session and ending of a group. Even as I write the introduction of this paper, I could not be more aware of my anticipation of reaching the concluding paragraph and final sentence as I tell myself, “Well begun is half done!”

The following is a description of what happened on our last session. The first exercise we did in class was called, ‘Positive Me’. Each member took out a sheet of blank piece of paper and wrote down their name and title of the specifically focused topic they presented to the rest of the class in the past two weeks. Then, in a similar fashion to ‘Round-Robin’ we did in one of the art therapy experiential exercises, the paper was passed onto the person sitting next to you. All the papers were passed around in a full circle and everyone was given a chance to remember, write down and share any (positive) responses, thoughts or feelings they had in response to each person’s prese...

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