Phototherapy Techniques: Exploring the Secrets of Personal Snapshots and Family Albums (2nd Edition)

PhotoTherapy techniques use ordinary personal snapshots and family photos (and the feelings, memories, thoughts and information these evoke) as catalysts for therapeutic communication and personal healing, reaching areas inside a person that words alone cannot access.

"PhotoTherapy Techniques: Exploring the Secrets of Personal Snapshots and Family Albums" is the most comprehensive introduction to the field of PhotoTherapy available. Emphasizing the "what", "why", and "how" of these practical techniques, this book is an excellent substitute for a training workshop!

Written by psychologist, art therapist, consultant, trainer, and PhotoTherapy pioneer Judy Weiser, this book (now in second edition) explains and demonstrates each of the major techniques involved, and provides theoretical rationale from both psychology and art therapy contexts. It also includes many photo-illustrated client examples, case transcripts, and practical experiential "starter" exercises so that readers can immediately begin using these techniques in their own practice.

This book is about photography as "personally-symbolic communication", rather than "art" -- exploring what a photograph is about emotionally, in addition to what shows on its surface visually. Thus these techniques require no previous experience with cameras or photographic art -- and they can therefore be used successfully by therapists of all theoretical orientations, work settings, or client specializations.

Often used as a text for university courses as well as for "Continuing Education" licensing credits for numerous mental health professions, this book is a "must" for not only therapists and counselors, but also anyone interested in family communication, diversity/cross-cultural work, conflict resolution, special education and other classroom applications, grief and bereavement counseling, coaching, community development, media/cultural studies, visual literacy, visual anthropology/sociology, research, and even scrapbooking!

*TABLE OF CONTENTS*: 1) Photographs as Therapeutic Tools 2) The Five Techniques of PhotoTherapy 3) The Projective Process: Using Photographic Images to Explore Client Perceptions, Values, and Expectations 4) Working with Self-Portraits: Understanding the Images Clients Make of Themselves 5) Seeing Other Perspectives: Examining Photographs of Clients Taken by Others 6) Metaphors of Self-Construction: Reflecting on Photographs Taken or Collected by Clients 7) Photo-Systems: Reviewing Family Albums and Photo-Biographical Collections 8) Using PhotoTherapy to Promote Healing and Personal Growth

**AUTHOR BIO**: Founder and Director of the PhotoTherapy Centre in Vancouver, Canada, and former Editor of the Journal Phototherapy, Judy Weiser is a licensed Psychologist and registered Art Therapist who has focused her thirty-plus years of therapy practice on using PhotoTherapy techniques to help her clients heal. She currently consults, lectures, and gives training workshops world-wide, teaching people how to use these techniques to improve their therapy practice -- and their lives.