The Interdisciplinary Research Center for Arts and Spirituality: Therapy, Education and Society

Prof. Sharon Snir – Head of the center

Mail: [email protected]

Prof. Ofra Walter – Head of the center

Mail: [email protected]

Prof. Dafna Regev – Researcher

Mail: [email protected]

Prof. Tamar Hagar – Researcher

Mail: [email protected]

Prof. Susana Pendzik – Researcher

Mail: [email protected]

Dr. Dovrat Harel – Researcher

Mail: [email protected]

Dr. Tami Gavron – Researcher

Mail: [email protected]

Dr. Anat Heller – Researcher

Mail: [email protected]

Dr. Ya'ara Gil-Glazer – Researcher

Email: [email protected]

Dr. Galia Ankori – Researcher

Mail: [email protected]

Dr. Bat El Hazan-Liran – Researcher 

Mail: [email protected]

Dr. Neta Ram-Vlasov – Research Fellow

Mail: [email protected]

Dr. Efrat Roginsky – Research Fellow

Mail: [email protected]

Dr. Gal Shahar – Research Fellow

Mail: [email protected]

Dr. Tamar Hadar – Research Fellow  

Mail: [email protected]

Dr. Lali Keidar – Researcher Fellow

Mail: [email protected]

Or Shalev – Associate researcher

​Mail: [email protected]

Rotem Abraham – Associate researcher

Mail: [email protected]

Nihal Midhat – Associate researcher

Mail: [email protected]

One of the main assumptions underlying art therapy is that the creative work is a mirror to the inner world of the creator. The projection process in humans is a basic and universal mechanism that structures the external world according to the foundations of the internal world, and also takes place when engaging in artwork. This theoretical assumption suggests that through formal phenomena such as placement, line quality, color, shape, etc., as well as through understanding the subject, in the projective drawing, the inner world of the creator may be revealed, which is partly unconscious, and therefore not accessible in direct ways. In light of these assumptions, the field of art-based research includes a branch of research that deals with the study of drawings.

Prof. Sharon Snir along with Prof. Dafna Regev, Liat Cohen-Yatziv, Ofra Shofar and Shirley Rechtman examined representations of first-time expectant mothers. Together with Na’ama Eisenbach they investigated symbols emanating from the spontaneous artwork of survivors of childhood trauma.

In her research, Dr. Neta Ram-Vlasov works on human perceptions and narratives and their representation in creative works. Along with Professor. Limor Goldner from the University of Haifa, she studied drawn expressions of representations of trauma and dissociation among adults who experienced traumatic events in military service, according to an evaluation tool developed by Professor Rachel Lev-Wiesel. The evaluation scales were based on the way in which people who have experienced trauma perceive the impact of the trauma on their internal world, in the aspect of building and constructing narrative and in the context of perception of time, the ability to cope and the level of adaptation. In the research, it was found that visual elements in the drawings were related to measures of self-reported dissociation and post-trauma symptoms. 

With Professor Hod Orkibi of the University of Haifa, Dr. Ram-Vlasov developed an intermodal evaluation model for evaluating relationships and dynamics within the family. The model uses evaluation of family drawings, writing a scene and psychodrama intervention. Through a case study, Ram-Vlasov and Orkibi modeled how drawing enables the individual to make a visual expression of family dynamics and allows for reflection on visual characteristics of the drawing related to sense of belonging and individual autonomy in the family, relationships and conflicts between family members, and roles in the family system. In this evaluation model, writing supports building a narrative and in the transition from visual language to psychodrama. Psychodrama as a group intervention enables the individual to conduct an active, multilayered exploration of role perception and object relationships in the family and deep examination of the self in the family system. Additional research to validate this process will be conducted in future.  

Or Shalev conducted her thesis research at the University of Haifa under the supervision of Dr. Michal Bat Or, where she examined children's perceptions of parental rejection or acceptance through their projective drawing, "a person picking an application from a tree" (PPAT). It depicts a person in the process of achieving a goal (the apple) in a triangular relationship (between the person, the apple, and the tree). Children's subjective experiences of parental care were emphasized in the research, and associations between the symbolic content of the drawings and the children's self-reporting were examined. Research results demonstrated that empirical examination of the PPAT projective drawing can contribute to identifying latent relationship representations within the drawing, thereby enhancing our clinical understanding of these representations in a more narrative and holistic manner.

Staff and researchers
Prof. Sharon Snir – Head of the Center
Email: [email protected]
Prof. Dafna Regev – Researcher
Email: [email protected]
Dr. Neta Ram-Vlasov – Research fellow
Email: [email protected]
Ms. Or Shalev – Associate researcher
Email: [email protected]

Social distancing and lockdowns imposed with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic harmed older people in particular, many of whom suffered from severe emotional distress, loneliness, and depression. In collaboration with the Israel Gerontological Society and several local authorities, the drama therapy graduate program at Tel-Hai College initiated a project to provide telephone support for older adults in the community. In this project, second and third-year drama therapy students were paired with older people who lived in their own homes and experienced loneliness. Following online training for drama therapy with older adults, the students conducted telephone meetings with the older people twice a week for 15 weeks. The meetings combined conversation and drama therapy interventions, based on imagination, movement, role-playing, story-making, and more. The project was accompanied by group supervision for the students throughout the entire process. At the end of the project, we conducted research in collaboration with Dr. Shoshi Keisari from the School of Creative Arts Therapies at the University of Haifa. The research examined the participants’ experience of the project and its impact, from three perspectives: the older participants, the students, and the community social workers, who served as contact people and continued to support the older participants after the project ended. The findings showed a double contribution to both the older participants and to the students who are training to be therapists. 
 

Staff and researchers
Dr. Dovrat Harel - Researcher
Email: [email protected]

Arts therapy is a rapidly developing therapeutic field. Arts therapists work in educational and health institutions, therapeutic centers, private clinics and elsewhere. These therapists have a great deal of clinical knowledge, making therapeutic practice broad, rich and comprehensive. However, there is a considerable disparity between this clinical knowledge and its dissemination as theoretical and research publications. Prior to the opening of recognized art therapy graduate programs in Israel and other countries in the last two decades, clinical knowhow and skills were transmitted in institutions, conferences and training courses. Arts therapists were less interested in conceptualization or written documentation. Today however, with the spread of arts therapy curricula in academia, therapeutic concepts, working models and empirical studies have flourished. We have conducted a good number of studies with graduate students at the University of Haifa and with experienced drama therapy students at Tel Hai College interested in making arts therapy practices with different populations more readily available.

Western society tends to think of the physical body as a separate entity and to create knowledge on the basis of what can be seen, thus creating alienation and separation between body and spirit (Springgay, 2005). Psychologists, social workers, and therapists who work in the field of psychotherapy frequently claim that effective psychotherapy requires something beyond cognitive explanations and individual reports related to external events. The awareness of physical presence in human life and in therapeutic and educational space is important. Physical presence creates unmediated contact in the unconscious world of the client and the therapist, the teacher, and the student. The therapeutic-learning space becomes more complex because physical presence introduces new dimensions to subjective experiences. Meetings in the therapeutic and educational space impact skin texture, body temperature, and muscle tone of involuntary muscles that unconsciously express the essence of the spirit and unconscious feelings. 

Recently, therapists and educators have become more aware of the importance of recognizing the 'body'. One of the therapist's challenges is to recognize, sense, understand, feel, and create new possibilities for non-verbal (body) language. Embodied knowledge tells an emotional and practical story for the therapist and the client. Developing awareness of non-verbal communication and sensory body language or body awareness expands therapists’ potential knowledge and treatment options by also focusing on non-verbal communication (Villadsen, Allain, Bell, & Hingley-Jones, 2012).

The teaching, learning, and educational environments in higher education are characterized by assignments and by the need for adaptation. Students experience of the accumulation of pressure and stress  in their lives. Diverse reflective approaches that integrate listening to the body, creating knowledge from bodily sensations, and quieting noise – all these enable meaningful learning together with processing emotions.  

In recent years I have developed practical pedagogy that uses a focusing approach – focusing on bodily feelings according to a theory developed by Professor Eugene Gendlin of the University of Chicago. This practice, commonly used today by therapists,  makes it possible to explore new worlds by providing a basis for listening. Focusing is related to creating contact with a deep sense that inspires finding new meanings. I developed an adaptation of the focusing practice for academia in two spaces. First, focusing as a practice in which social work students focus on bodily sensations that allow discovery of inner knowledge for promoting a professional approach and greater emotional intelligence. Second, the approach was adapted as a focusing practice in guiding a research seminar for master’s degree students in education. Findings have shown that using focusing practices adapted to a seminar research helped the students quickly transition from stressful situations  they frequently experienced in the research seminar to positive situations, thus lessening pressure and allowing them to focus on the seminar writing (Walter& Golan,2019) 

Later, I expanded the use of listening to the body through a pedagogy of body movement and mindfulness with MSW students. It was found that the focusing practice contributed to personal well-being and promoted a professional approach (Walter & Golan,2020). 

I expanded the studies dealing with an intervention using tools of mindfulness and reflection to research the impact of meditation in therapeutic and educational spaces. In addition I conducted research with unique peer support specialists who were suffering from bi-polar disease or schizophrenia, examining the role of spirituality in their recovery process. In addition, I studied the use of spiritual tools and identified their impact on personal well-being, emotional intelligence, and compassion in cultural contexts.  

Projects 

A project for mindfulness and feelings with children and youth young survivors of slavery and child labor in India. The project was funded by the Israeli and Indian embassies. 
In the photo, an exercise in mindfulness and feelings in a group of teens  freed from child slavery thanks to the Nobel prize winner Kailash Satyarthi.

A mindfulness project with children on the autism spectrum and deaf children. Lankanau, a center belonging to the ENJO organization - the Indian Ministry of Health.

The relationship between the therapist and the client is ascribed key importance in psychotherapy. This relationship is considered to play a significant role in the ability to create change in treatment. In art therapy, the art materials serve as another central player in the therapeutic relationship. The presence and importance of the art materials in therapy shifts the spotlight from the therapist-client relationship to a triangular relationship composed of the client-therapist-artwork. This triangular relationship reflects a complex connection, where client-therapist, client-artwork, and therapist-artwork relationships exist simultaneously, express each other, and influence each other's development. The theory of the triangular relationship is crucial in art therapy, but many of the assumptions underlying this theory have not yet been explored. In 2021, we established an art therapy clinic at Tel Hai College, in cooperation with the University of Haifa and with funding from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), whose activity aims to explore this triangular relationship in art therapy. Students interested in experiencing time-limited art therapy are given treatment at a discount, in exchange for their participation in studies conducted in the clinic. Note that this treatment takes place under professional supervision, and in full compliance with the rules of ethics, so that the clients' privacy is fully preserved. These studies for example have examined the roles of art in the therapeutic process, the characteristics of the therapeutic relationship, and their effects on the outcomes of treatment. Our previous studies included work on written reflections and responses working with different art materials, the relationship between reactions to working with art materials and individual characteristics such as attachment patterns, and between the characteristics of therapeutic relationship, the relationship between therapeutic alliance and treatment outcome, and others.

The Ministry of Education is the largest employer of arts therapists in Israel, with more than 3500 therapists employed in this system despite the fact that initially no studies had been conducted on this subject in Israel and although arts therapists needed to grapple with difficulties related to the encounter between the educational and the therapeutic language. After years of working as art therapists, this issue became central to our research work. In recent years we have been collaborating with the Ministry of Education to research the integration of arts therapy into the education system. These studies have dealt with the conceptualization of field practices, the role of arts in the therapeutic process, multi-team collaborations, dealing with arts therapists going on maternity leave, advantages and disadvantages of the therapeutic process, the significance of the therapy room, the working conditions of therapists in the education system, and others.

Staff and researchers

Prof. Sharon Snir – Head of the Center  

Email: [email protected]

Prof. Dafna Regev – Researcher

Email: [email protected]

The period of old age brings changes in diverse areas of life and requires the recruitment of resources to adapt to the changing reality. In this period of life, people experience multiple losses and separations, and sometimes an increasing sense of uncertainty and helplessness. On the other hand, the period of old age provides possibilities to engage with the free and authentic self, and thus it also promotes processes of growth, balance, and healing. One of the resources that prepares an older person for a changing reality and to cope with the challenges of this age is the imagination. Studies have shown that using the imagination improves cognition in advanced age and that creativity and imagination contribute to better coping with the frequent changes, and to decreasing symptoms of depression in old age.  The Sand Stage is a therapeutic tool in drama therapy, developed by Dr. Anat Heller. It evolved from sand tray therapy. The clients/actors create a picture in the sand from a collection of miniature figurines. Then, with the help of a therapist through phenomenological mediation, they create an active, dramatic scene from it. In this way, the clients/actors tap into their powers of creativity and to different theater roles: playwright, director, actress and audience, and through them they experience different positions: leading, operating, choosing and moving, emotional expression, observation and more. Use of the sand stage in the framework of drama therapy in old age has the potential to implement capabilities of imagination, acting, creativity, and playfulness of the older participants in a structured, defined, and stable framework. The research examines how the sand stage helps older adults promote emotional processes in old age.

This doctoral dissertation examines arts therapies for ultra-Orthodox children (including art therapy, dance/movement therapy, music therapy, psychodrama, drama therapy and bibliotherapy). It was conducted at the Arugot Center in Haifa, which provides educational and therapeutic solutions to ultra-Orthodox children and their families who are facing emotional, academic or developmental difficulties. This study was funded by the Ministry of Education.

This work implements a mixed method approach. The qualitative part examines perceptions of the factors associated with arts therapies for ultra-Orthodox children regarding the unique characteristics of therapy, the challenges and benefits, as well as the impact of an evolving relationship in an intercultural encounter. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with non-Haredi arts therapists working with ultra-Orthodox children (published article, see reference below), interviews with parents of ultra-Orthodox children who received arts therapies (published article, see reference below), and interviews with educators who teach these ultra-Orthodox children (currently in the data writing stage). In addition, drawings of the therapeutic relationship by ultra-Orthodox children were collected at three time points throughout the therapy.

The quantitative part examines processes that occur within therapy and their relationship to therapy outcomes. In particular, it explores the therapeutic alliance and the clients' reactions to the artistic work, and their implications for the clients' self-perception, behavior and academic achievement. The therapists and clients filled out process questionnaires at three time points throughout therapy, and the therapists, clients and their parents filled out outcome questionnaires at the beginning and end of the therapy (The article has been accepted for publication). Analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data should lead to a better understanding and characterization of the therapies and the therapeutic relationship.

Staff and researchers 
Lali Keidar – Research Associate 

Since the inception of the art therapy profession, art therapists have used creativity as a response to clinical needs. During clinical supervision, the supervisee’s artwork can provide a better understanding of the therapeutic process, and reveal thoughts and feelings related to the therapist-client relationship. The clinical literature has shown that creative responses during supervision enable reflection on transference and countertransference, can uncover conscious and unconscious elements in the relationship, and reduce anxiety regarding the therapeutic process. New neuropsychological theories and the research on implicit aspects of the relationship are fueling new ways of using art in clinical supervision.

Despite the clinical awareness of the importance of using art in supervision, it has not been widely researched. Dr. Gavron developed and coordinated an art-based MA supervision training program for experienced arts therapists at the University of Haifa at the School of Creative Arts Therapies. Dr. Gavron and Professor Hod Orkibi examined the effects of the art-based supervision course on the participants. Dr. Michal Bat-Or and Dr. Gavron also supervised Vika Lis Ron’s doctoral dissertation at the School of Creative Arts Therapies at the University of Haifa. Her research focuses on the “one canvas” model of supervision and its influence on art therapy supervisees. 

Staff and researchers 

Dr. Tami Gavron 

Mail:  [email protected]

In recent years, the field of arts therapy has significantly expanded its therapeutic approach from a clinical-medical to a social-community model. Community-based art therapy involves interventions with populations subject to discrimination, vulnerability and injustice, and aims to foster dialogue and ties between groups in conflict, using creativity and imagination to create social change. The field of social arts therapy focuses on the ways in which art can influence communities in situations of crisis and distress. In so doing, art therapists have increased their therapeutic range to become social influencers.

Community-based interventions are inherent spaces of joint creativity that evolve with the community. The art therapist becomes part of the community, along with community workers and artists join. The creative space in the community belongs to all and art is made publicly by different groups and communities in collaborative spaces and outside the therapy room. Since research in art therapy is relatively new and much of the writing is clinical-focused, more research and reflection on community projects and the issues that arise are needed to develop theoretical and practical models. The key issues relate to interventions with communities from various cultures, the involvement of the community, as well as the roles of the artwork and the art therapists. Studies should emphasize the identity of the art therapist as a social change agent and as a member of a community in crisis.

In the last several years, numerous community art therapy projects have been conducted in Israel and internationally. Some of these projects have been financed privately or were under the auspices of NGOs. Recently, projects have been developed as part of curricula. Many graduate art therapy programs in Israel teach and research community art therapy, as led for instance by Professor Efrat Huss, Dr. Michal Bat-Or, Dr. Debra Kalmanowitz, Rina Buberoglou, and many others. The community approach promotes rich collaborations resulting in joint research, learning and thinking. At the Israeli Association for Creative Arts Therapies (YAHAT) conference in 2021, Dr. Michal Bat-Or, Rina Buberoglu, Dr. Angi Jacobs-Kayam and Dr. Tami Gavron presented a panel discussing how community-based art therapy is taught in Israel. Dr. Debra Kalmanowitz, Dr. Michal Bat-Or and Dr. Gavron authored a chapter for a book edited by Dr. Efrat Huss on community art therapy. Professor Sharon Snir and Dr. Gavron have studied community interventions in the Philippines in collaboration with Dr. Michal Bat-Or and researchers from the Philippines. Dr. Gavron was part of a project led by Dr. Bat-Or studying vignettes in an open studio model with at-risk children. For the past two years, Professor Snir and Dr. Gavron  have been researching community-based art therapy projects by students from the graduate art therapy program at Tel-Hai College.

The MA curriculum in arts therapy at Tel-Hai initiates and implements a range of projects in the community, such as a clinical seminar with children of asylum seekers from Eritrea, an intervention with immigrant youth from Russia and the Ukraine at the Nahalal youth village during the war in the Ukraine, and facilitating a research seminar in which students design and conduct art-based community interventions. 

Staff and researchers

Dr. Tami Gavron

Email: [email protected]

Music therapy has long been shown to contribute to public health and is used in medicine, rehabilitation, education, and more. For over 30 years, several academic programs for training music therapists have been operating in Israel. Among the graduates of these programs are dozens of therapists from the Arab-Palestinian society who are an integral part of the Israeli arts therapy community. Several studies (Khouriyeh, 2021; Roginsky, 2022) argued that the experience of therapists from the Arab society in Israel entails a cultural gap which manifests both during the introduction to the profession and later on, when starting to meet with patients in the field. It seems that this gap is partially caused by differences between Western music therapy approaches and the cultures and contexts of the different streams of the Arab-Palestinian society in Israel. 

The Arab culture is more than two thousand years old, and music had always played a significant part in its everyday life, and in a variety of spiritual and medical practices (Sidik, Kamaruzaman & Abdullah, 2021). However, it seems that the music therapy provided today in the Arab world is mainly based on approaches and practices that originated in Western societies and rarely do Arabic music therapists connect to the traditions and histories of the Arab world in their daily practice (Saada & Coombes, 2020). 

Our research group, which includes music therapists, musicians and Israeli academics of Arab-Palestinian and Jewish origins, aims to study and develop music therapy methods that will serve the needs of the Arab-Palestinian public in Israel. The group focuses on establishing culture sensitive teaching methods, supporting scholarship in this field and forming a comprehensive theory regarding the use of Arabic music in music therapy practice. In addition, the group wishes to perform seminars in these topics and to train supervisors of Arabic origins, thus providing adequate music therapy services to this part of the Israeli society. The group is committed to equal participation of the professionals and its consumers from among the Arab-Palestinian society in Israel, to encourage cooperation with various relevant organizations and to build an open-access body of knowledge in the field of Arabic music therapy. 

The Dramatherapy Graduate Programme at Tel-Hai College (Israel) enrols around 20-25 students per year, of whom approximately 10-20% belong to the Arab-Palestinian population living in Israel (including Bedouin, Christian, Druze, and Muslim). Often the learning process takes place against the background of security and political events, at the centre of which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although the students do not enrol in the program to deal with the conflict, the complexity of the situation challenges the learning process, and could easily lead to mutual hostility, stigmatization, and mistrust. 
Over the years, we have observed in the programme a sort of “island of sanity” taking place – even in the darkest times, such as the recent political developments in Israel and worldwide. We thought that this remarkable occurrence could be partly influenced by dramatherapy-based pedagogy, which encourages intercultural understanding and trust-building relationships between the parties. Dramatherapy processes have been known to foster dialogue in conflict situations (Volkas, 2014), develop cultural sensitivity and awareness to stigmas and implicit biases (Williams, 2016), and have been thoroughly used in connection with social justice issues (Sajnani, 2016; George Trottier & Williams, 2019; Snow, 2022). 
This research takes a closer look at the pedagogy of dramatherapy in relation to its potential for promoting openness and creating trust-building relationships. Strongly based on experiential learning, dramatherapy pedagogical methods combine a sensitive application of verbal and non-verbal means, body-work, voice, movement, and improvisation, coupled with active listening and empathy-generating tools. Furthermore, dramatherapy training methods encourage the expression of personal feelings and opinions in a full and authentic way (Bird & Tozer, 2016), while also allowing for the use of aesthetic distance (Landy, 1996). 
This new qualitative, arts-based research study focusses on the experiences of Palestinian and Jewish dramatherapy students of each other throughout the duration of their master's programme studies.

As part of a course coupled with community service, offered through the Education Department, we have instigated a project with the goal of changing the attitudes of older adults toward the integration of people with developmental disabilities in the community. Through a series of quantitative and qualitative studies, we examined the attitudes of older people before and after a short-term intervention program, in which students from the Education Department, people with developmental disabilities, and their staff, visited seniors clubs and participated in joint activities.

One of the most meaningful sessions was an encounter through art. In it, the participants prepared large frames from posterboard and decorated them with modeling paste and a variety of creative materials. As shown in the photos, the work was carried out on tables around which sat students, older adults, and residents from the Revadim Bagalil program. Prior to this session, there was a preparatory session in which the students taught the technique to the residents from Revadim Bagalil, and created small frames in which they placed photos of the activity. Thanks to this preparatory session, residents of Revadim Bagalil arrived at the seniors club with self-confidence and knowledge, which helped them integrate and lead the activity together with the students. 

After the session, we held a joint discussion, in which the participants talked about the positive experience of meeting new people. Focus groups with members of the seniors clubs elicited three main themes: 1) The members’ pleasure at touching the art materials, which, according to most of them, it had been years since they had last used; 2) Their positive experience of getting to know a population with whom most had never had dealings before; and 3) Their willingness to continue their connection with the Revadim residents.

Participants in the project: Students from the Education Department, Tel-Hai College; retirees from the kibbutzim Ayelet Hashahar, Amiad, and Kfar Hanassi; and staff and residents of Revadim Bagalil, which provides housing and employment for adults with developmental disabilities.

Staff and Researchers

Dr. Galia Ankori – Researcher

Email: ankori. [email protected]

Prof. Eli Carmeli, University of Haifa - Researcher

Research workshop: Art-Based Supervision– Characteristics and applications to clinical work
Two workshops have been conducted at the research center. They were designed to examine the views of supervisors who use art-based and creative processes in the framework of graduate student supervision at Tel Hai College. The goal was to better understand the advantages and the qualities of using creative tools to support and utilize them. The workshop and joint learning resulted in a study that focused on the advantages of art-based supervision, and the implementation of different models of individual and group supervision. A pilot study with 12 supervisors defined the research questions related to art-based supervision. The main study analyzed 60 written and creative supervision diaries that the supervisors kept for a period of three months. Their experiences were consolidated into a theoretical conceptualization.  

Drawings as an assessment tool