Creative Expression Specialization
What Is Creative Expression?
The Creative Expression Specialization is based on a “low skill/high sensitivity” model that recognizes we are all born with the capacity to make music, dance, write, and paint our experience. Images, both verbal and non-verbal, call to us through our sensing bodies and we pay attention to them through the arts. Developing our openness to the poetry of our lives is fundamental to optimal spiritual, physical and psychological wellness and growth. Recognizing the long tradition in every culture that the arts are necessary for human evolution, ITP offers the Creative Expression Specialization to students who wish to follow an artful path through their studies.
This Specialization includes an in-depth personal exploration and expression within a supportive community as well as experience in using multiple modalities to increase capacities for creative thinking and doing in those we wish to serve.
Program Contents & Requirements
A student registers for the Specialization and then follows a unique path focusing on the arts as they complete their own program’s requirements.
PHASE ONE
- 15 units of coursework with choices available across all programs at ITP (some of these units are already within a specific program and some are electives)
- Special Project and/or Professional Application: explores a deeply personal theme or a professional application through the arts
- Practicum: 3 units with an emphasis on bringing the arts into the world
- Final Portfolio: contains a record of a unique and artful transformative journey through the arts at ITP
PHASE TWO
- Program Coursework: Completion of all required Ph.D./Psy.D. or M.A. coursework
- Dissertation (Ph.D./Psy.D.): contains a significant creative expression component
Tuition
For most programs, the fee is included within tuition. There may be some exceptions.
Special Features
- ITP is the only accredited graduate school in the U.S. which offers a Creative Expression Specialization that can be integrated into both M.A., Psy.D., and Ph.D. degrees.
- The Program is directed by a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist.
- In addition to coursework, there are research opportunities to demonstrate the efficacy of Creative Expression in personal healing and social action.
- The Specialization affords students the possibility to move through all of their studies preserving an artful, inquiring presence.
Sampling of Courses
- Advanced Clinical Skills, Expressive Arts
- Art as a Sacred Practice
- Engaging Difference
- Exploring the Language of the Body
- Poetry Therapy
- Jung & His Symbols
- Ritual and Music
- Through the Arts Theater and Social Action
- Transformative Fiction
- Evolution of Being Through Singing
Career Applications
Internationally, the expressive arts are used by therapists, researchers, spiritual directors, coaches, teachers and others in the service professions to help individuals and groups give voice to their lived experience. Also, organizational consultants incorporate expressive media in problem-solving, conflict resolution, vision-seeking, brainstorming, planning and diversity training. It is increasingly understood that work with those who have been traumatized must include right-brain work with images expressed artfully.
There exist a number of post-graduate creative expression certifications offered by international organizations that give academic credit to ITP’s Creative Expression Specialization as a step towards professional membership. The ITP CE Specialization satisfies the academic requirements to become a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist or Expressive Arts Consultant & Teacher with The International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA) as well as registration in The Poetry Therapy Association.
For More Information
Lisa Herman, Director of Creative Expression, LHerman@itp.edu, (650) 493-6835 ext. 247
