Correction of the client’s emotional states through isotechnics

Isotherapy (drawing, modeling) – treatment with the help of fine arts. Therapeutic effect, correction through visual activity.

Isotherapy in the form of organization can be individual and group. In modern foreign and domestic isotherapy (V. E. Folke, T. V. Keller; R. B. Khaikin, 1977, M. E. Burno), there are areas of this method:

the use of already existing works of fine art through their analysis and interpretation by patients;

motivation for independent creative manifestations in visual activity.

Isotherapy is widely used in psycho-correctional practice in various fields of medicine:

psychiatry, therapy, and in medical and special psychology. The use of isotherapy in medicine is due to therapeutic and rehabilitation tasks, and in psychology – to a greater extent, corrective and preventive. Isotherapy gives positive results in working with children with various problems – mental retardation, speech difficulties, hearing impairment, mental retardation, autism, where verbal contact is difficult. In many cases, painting therapy performs a psychotherapeutic function, helping the child to cope with their psychological problems.

Visual-playing space, material, image in the drawing are for such children a means of psychological protection, which helps in difficult circumstances.
Drawing therapy is considered, first of all, as a projection of the child’s personality, as a symbolic expression of his attitude to the world.

In this regard, an important and responsible task for a psychologist conducting isotherapy is the task of separating in a child’s drawing those features that reflect the level of the child’s mental development and the degree of mastery of the drawing technique, on the one hand, and the features of the picture, reflecting personal characteristics, on the other hand. another.

Characterizing the corrective orientation of drawing therapy used in working with children, three fundamental differences from drawing lessons are determined.

The first is related to the goals and objectives of drawing therapy: isotherapy is self-expression in drawing and modeling of a conflict situation, and in drawing lessons it is mastering the means and techniques of image.

The second difference concerns the products of visual activity: in therapy with visual activity, the quality of a drawing is not an important criterion for its evaluation (the drawing has its own value associated with the sequence of stages in resolving the child’s personal problems). In the classroom, the main thing in the analysis of the drawing is the measure and quality of the child’s mastery of the system of visual means.

The third difference is the difference between the functions of an adult in educational (didactic) and therapeutic drawing. In the classroom, these functions are reduced to the transfer of new ways and means of representation to the child and the organization of the process of their assimilation by the child. In isotherapy, a psychologist helps children to understand and resolve a problem situation, express it outwardly in a drawing (modeling) and determine a way out of it.