Phototherapy Techniques: Exploring the Secrets of Personal Snapshots and Family Albums

In this book, Judy Weiser shows how mental health professionals can use clients' personal photos and family albums as catalysts for therapeutic communication. She reveals how initiating a dialogue based on such personally symbolic artistic expressions gives form to feelings which otherwise might be resistant to verbal investigations. She shows how to use this dialogue to stimulate recall of forgotten, blocked, or denied information and memories, and to apply these insights to an effective therapeutic framework. A comprehensive guide to PhotoTherapy, this book provides the theoretical principles, detailed techniques, anecdotal illustrations, and practical exercises that will help mental health professionals apply this approach in practice. Looking at all types of photographs - whether they are ones that clients respond to, collect, pose for, or create - Weiser describes various ways to engage clients with photographic imagery. Providing several examples from actual cases to illustrate how clients' responses to photographs can be integrated into the therapeutic process, she offers practitioners a powerful therapeutic tool, regardless of their particular theoretical orientation.