To the good people of Decatur, Georgia, who nourished my curiosity and creativity growing up; especially to my former Decatur High School English teachers Ann Lewis and Weldon Jelks, who encouraged me to write; and to Walter McCurdy Jr. and Reid Crow at the First Baptist Church, who taught me with their stories and music.

also

To Jim Cotton, Robbin Mclnturff, Mariam Cosper, and Laurie Smith at Adult and Child Developmental Specialists in Birmingham, Alabama, from whom I learned the art of good counseling.

“Counseling is a professional relationship that empowers diverse individuals, families, and groups to accomplish mental health, wellness, education, and career goals” (D. M. Kaplan, Tarvydas, & Gladding, 2014, p. 366). In accomplishing its goals, counseling is a creative process, and counselors focus on helping clients make developmentally appropriate choices and changes. Effective counselors are aware of the multidimensional nature of the profession and choose from a wide variety of interventions when working with diverse populations. As a group, the creative arts is a sometimes overlooked aspect of counseling that can promote the best within the helping arena (Neilsen, King, & Baker, 2016). By its very nature, the arts foster different ways of experiencing the world and are enriching, stimulating, and therapeutic in their own right. When used in clinical situations, creative arts can help counselors and clients gain unique and universal perspectives on problems and possibilities.

In this fifth edition of The Creative Arts in Counseling, I concentrate on how the creative arts can be used independently and complementarily to enhance the counseling process on primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Specifically, the following creative arts are examined:

• Music
• Dance and movement
• Imagery
• Visual arts
• Literature and writing
• Drama and psychodrama
• Play and humor
• Animal-assisted therapy, horticulture, and wilderness therapy

These arts share much in common. They are all process oriented, emotionally sensitive, socially directed, awareness focused, and applicable in numerous forms for working with clients over the life span. In addition, they enable people from diverse cultural backgrounds to develop in ways that are enjoyable as well as personally and socially enhancing.

Mental health providers such as counselors, social workers, psychologists, creative arts therapists, marriage and family therapists, psychiatric nurses, pastoral care specialists, and psychiatrists will find the content of these pages useful because of both the research and the pragmatic nature of the material covered. The material presented here comes from a variety of educational and treatment-focused work settings. Because of their systematic format, Chapters 2 through 9 may be especially helpful because they present a great deal of information in a relatively uniform manner. These chapters contain the following:

• Introductory background about the specific art form
• The premise behind using the art form discussed
• The general practice of using the art in counseling settings
• Unique use of the specific art with special populations, such as children, adolescents, adults, older adults, groups, families, and cultural minorities
• A summary
• Art-related exercises

Chapter 1 provides information on the history, rationale for, and benefits of using artistic methods in general; Chapter 10 highlights current trends in the use of the arts in counseling and includes additional resources. Together these chapters are bookends to those in between, enabling you to obtain a global view of the field, how it developed, and where it is going. Chapter 11 illustrates creative exercises in the different artistic domains covered in Chapters 2 through 9.

Creative Reflection boxes are distributed throughout the chapters to give you an opportunity and the means to reflect on your own creativity. They also, at times, demonstrate another way to incorporate materials and prompt you to a further exploration of your thoughts and feelings.

Overall, practitioners will find this book user friendly. Most of the ideas discussed here have been extensively field tested by experienced clinicians. By carefully reading this book, you will become better informed as a professional and be able to enhance your skills and effectiveness. The creative arts have much to offer the healing and helping professions and the clients who use these services.

Writing a book is similar to many other activities in life. Some say it is like having a baby and that the labor involved results in a newness that is breathtaking and well worth the time and nurture that went into the process. (My wife disagrees with this analogy and says being pregnant and then a mother is completely different. I imagine many other women would agree.) So I like to think of the process as similar to a good group experience. In productive groups, many people share valuable information and give you important feedback. In addition, groups usually occur over time. Psychoeducational and task groups help participants produce a product either directly or indirectly (and it is not a baby). Ultimately, the outcome is both an interpersonal and a personal experience. The group that has helped me formulate ideas, gather knowledge, and put together this fifth edition of The Creative Arts in Counseling contained some of the same individuals who helped me with the previous editions as well as a few new individuals.

First, I want to thank Carolyn Baker and the American Counseling Association Publications Committee for accepting my proposal for a fifth edition of this text. Carolyn kept me on task in a timely and professional manner. Next, I want to thank Dr. Richard Hayes for encouraging and supporting me to write this book initially. Without Richard's advocacy, I doubt this work would have ever been written. I also want to thank the reviewers and editor of the first edition of this text, Drs. Howard S. Rosenblatt, Stephen G. Weinrach, JoAnna White, and Elaine Pirrone. They were honest and straightforward in their appraisal of the manuscript and offered constructive thoughts that made this work far better than it would have been otherwise. In addition, I want to express my appreciation to Wake Forest University graduate counseling students—Katie Anne Burt, Dan Barnhart, Michele Kielty, Debbie Newsome, Mary Beth Edens, Regan Reding, and Deborah Tyson, in particular—for contributing ideas and thoughts on counseling and the creative arts. Katie Anne, Dan, and Michele were especially helpful and industrious in locating the latest research on the creative arts and were meticulous proofreaders.

Finally, I am grateful to clients and colleagues over the years who have shared creative ideas with me and helped me to focus more on the importance of the arts in counseling. I especially appreciate the support of my wife, Claire, and our three children. They have humored me with jokes and goodwill while this book was in process. I am truly a fortunate individual to be surrounded with so much that is good, growth enhancing, and artistic.

Samuel T. Gladding is a professor in the Department of Counseling at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His academic degrees are from Wake Forest (BA, MA Ed), Yale (MA), and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (PhD).

Before assuming his current position, he held academic appointments at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Fairfield University (Connecticut). He was also an instructor of psychology at a community college and director of children's services at a mental health center, both of which are in Rockingham County, North Carolina. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor in North Carolina, a National Certified Counselor, a Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor, and a former member of the North Carolina Board of Licensed Professional Counselors.

Dr. Gladding is the author of a number of publications on counseling, including Becoming a Counselor: The Light, the Bright, and the Serious (2009); Counseling: A Comprehensive Profession (2013); Family Therapy: History, Theory, and Practice (2015a); and Groups: A Counseling Specialty (2016). He is the former editor of the Journal for Specialists in Group Work. He has served as president of the American Counseling Association (ACA) as well as president of the American Association of State Counseling Boards (AASCB), the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES), the Association for Specialists in Group Work (ASGW), and Chi Sigma Iota (Counseling Academic and Professional Honor Society International). He has also chaired the American Counseling Association Foundation.

Dr. Gladding has received numerous honors. He is a Fellow in the ACA and the recipient of the ACA's Gilbert and Kathleen Wrenn Award for a Humanitarian and Caring Person and the Arthur A. Hitchcock Distinguished Professional Service Award. He has also received the Chi Sigma Iota (CSI) Thomas J. Sweeney Professional Leadership Award, and the Association for Humanistic Counseling (AHC) Joseph W. and Lucille U. Hollis Outstanding Publication Award. In addition, Dr. Gladding is the recipient of the ACES Outstanding Publication Award as well as the ACES Leadership Award. Furthermore, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Creativity in Counseling (ACC), and the Research Award from the International Association of Marriage and Family Counselors (IAMFC). He is also a Fellow in ASGW and received this association's Eminent Career Award.

In 2008, the ACC named its Inspiration and Motivation award after Dr. Gladding. In 2015, ACA named its Unsung Heroes award after him.

Dr. Gladding has worked with counseling colleagues in Malaysia, Estonia, Australia, Singapore, Sweden, Austria, and South Africa and has been a Fulbright Specialist to Turkey and China. He is married to the former Claire Tillson and is the father of three adult children. He enjoys the arts, creativity, and humor on a daily basis.