Art and Trauma: An Altered DSM by Ron Huxley, LMFT

Art can be a way for us to heal from intense grief and trauma. Some things can’t be expressed complete in words and require the aid of images and sensory expressed movements.

It can help us transcend our emotional pain and find ways to regulate our nervous systems that encode trauma in our memories. Even when our minds cannot remember our traumatic pasts, our body still remembers.

The french painter, Charles Braque, stated that “art is a wound turned to light.” Art takes many forms. One contemporary form of art is called Altered Books. an Altered book is a form of mixed media artwork that changes a book from its original form into a different form, altering its appearance and meaning.

Ron Huxley, a family art therapist, altered a diagnostic and statistical manual along with a group of therapists to demonstrate how therapists can overuse labels to diagnose mental disorders and risk losing the essence of humanity each client brings to therapy. Therapists can take themselves too seriously and transforming a dry clinical manual with fresh artistic insights can make them better healers.

Click here to view the Altered DSM Book.