Course of Study for the Expressive Arts Therapy Program

Course Descriptions

This three-year program covers individual, group, couple, and family therapy and includes a yearlong practicum under the supervision of licensed mental health professionals who are also expressive arts therapists.

The training meets the educational* requirements for California’s Marriage and Family Therapy license (MFT), the Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) accreditation, and is designed to meet the educational requirements to become a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist (REAT) with the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association.

*Please note that in order to become a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, you must also complete 3,000 hours of internship in addition to your educational requirements. You will graduate from our program with between 700 and 1,000 hours that will count toward licensure.

Core Curriculum

This is a description of the EXA classes students will take during their three years in our program. Please see the MCP page for a description of the required general therapy skills classes in addition to these specialized classes.

Advanced Expressive Arts Seminars
Advanced EXA seminars provide an opportunity for students to develop clinical EXA skills with specific issues or populations. These include EXA with At-Risk Adolescents; EXA and Trauma; EXA with Elders; EXA and Substance Abuse

Alcohol and Chemical Dependency Counseling
Survey of current treatment approaches to chemical dependency and examination of humanist transpersonal perspectives.

Child Therapy
Techniques to remedy or prevent problems in children and their families. Case material introduces strategies of intervention.

Clinical Application of EXA Therapy
This course explores the use of EXA therapy in the assessment and treatment of specific issues commonly encountered in clinical work such as trauma, severe and persistent mental illness, alcohol and drug use/addiction, dual diagnosis, life transitions, and medical issues. It also looks at the application of EXA therapy with various populations (e. g. couples, families, children, youth, & immigrants) and within designated settings (e.g. community mental health, hospitals, schools). Learning is enhanced 1) through clinical observations of EXA therapy in a variety of Bay Area facilities and 2) through the initiation of a specific arts-practice that they will continue to deepen throughout the course of the EXA program.

Couples Counseling
Theoretical and therapeutic approaches to working with couples, including object relations, ego analytic, cognitive-behavioral, existential, and transpersonal perspectives, as well as family-system approaches. Students learn how to integrate the use of visual arts, music, movement, drama, and the language arts with these different theoretical approaches.

Expressive Arts Therapy Approach: EXA Collaborative & Narrative Approaches
This class introduces students to the theories and practices that inform collaborative and narrative approaches to EXA. Rooted within social constructionist philosophy and congruent with the principles and practices of the Recovery Model, students learn how to use EXA to build collaborative relationships with clients, integrating "playful approaches to serious problems" (Epston, Freeman & Lobovits) They learn to co-author with clients strengths-based alternative narratives in written, visual, poetic, musical and embodied forms.

Expressive Arts Therapy Approach: Intermodal
A "flow" approach to expressive arts therapy developed over the past 20 years in Europe and America. It is based on finding meaning through following different but interconnected elements of imagination, including images, movements, or sounds and rhythms. Presents a model of the therapist in dynamic, creative interaction with the client, where insight into the therapeutic relationship is stressed, particularly when experienced as an aesthetic response.

Expressive Arts Therapy Approach: Person-Centered
Integrates Carl Rogers' evidence-based theory with multi-modal arts practice in individual therapy and group work to support self-awareness, healing and self-determination, key factors that are congruent with the Recovery Model. Emphasis is on core conditions of empathy, honesty and unconditional positive regard to encourage respect for individual uniqueness and cultural diversity.

Expressive Arts Therapy Integrative Seminar
Taken in the final semester, this course integrates personal, artistic, academic, and clinical elements of the program. Final project is completed, including a personal journey statement, arts presentation, integrative paper, and clinical case study. Integrative paper articulates each student's philosophy and approach to expressive arts therapy. Case study includes a clinical case presentation integrating expressive arts therapy and other clinical approaches.

Family Dynamics and Therapy
Covers the family life cycle, as well as the theories and methods of many of the major family theories, including strategic, brief strategic, systemic, narrative, solution-focused, family of origin, structural, and symbolic-experiential family therapy. Includes experiential expressive arts processes and instructor-demonstrated family of origin interviews.

Group Facilitation & Therapy
This course provides the basic theories and practice necessary to design and facilitate: psychoeducational groups, special topic groups, peer support groups, and other groups currently delivered in community mental health settings. In addition basic theories and practice in group process will be presented and experienced, especially those used by creative and expressive arts therapists.

History and Foundations of EXA Therapy
This course covers the creation of the EXA field; its history and philosophical foundations from its indigenous and multicultural roots to contemporary practices with individuals, couples, families, groups, and communities. The class focuses on the innate healing power of the creative process in relation to the integrative use of visual arts, music, dance, drama, and imaginal language arts in therapy. We will explore the implications and interplay of EXA therapy within the Recovery Model of mental health as well as other EXA-based clinical approaches.

Human Development and the Family
Theories and research in life transitions, stages of development, and rites of passage, from prenatal conditions through adult experience to dying.

Integrated Arts in Therapy I & II
The Arts in Therapy courses focus on the therapeutic potential of the arts in practice. The use of single art forms as well as the use of integrative arts processes is explored. Students will develop foundational EXA skills in assessment and therapeutic interventions. Special consideration is given to issues of cultural competence and cultural humility in working with diverse populations when using the arts.

Pre/Post Practicum
Required of MFT trainees who wish to accrue hours toward licensure and who are not enrolled in Supervised Clinical Practicum (either Individual or Group).

Professional Ethics and Family Law
Ethical standards for the practice of counseling and psychology. Review and discussion of ethical and legal aspects of marriage and family therapy and practice.

Psychopathology
Comparative historical and contemporary views of the development of adult psychopathology and the categorization system of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

Psychotherapy Theories and Practices
This is an introduction to traditional and contemporary theories and practices of psychotherapy. We begin by situating the field in relation to its sociocultural, historical, and indigenous roots. We go on to examine contemporary psychodynamic, Jungian, existential-humanistic, cognitive-behavioral, and collaborative approaches integrating feminist and multicultural perspectives, addressing intersections with The Recovery Model. Creative arts-based case examples for various approaches are woven into the fabric of the class.

Research Methods
Overview of research methodologies with special focus on qualitative approaches, comparative ways of knowing, and the creation of an integral inquiry research project. Includes research in the creative and expressive arts therapies.

Supervised Clinical Practicum: Group
Presentation and discussion of case material. Emphases upon case formulation, the therapeutic relationship, development of clinical skills, and integration of expressive arts processes.

Therapeutic Communication
This course provides an overview of key concepts and methods in culturally-sensitive therapeutic communication integrating contemporary psychodynamic, existential-humanistic, constructionist, and other approaches with multimodal expressive arts . Experiential portion includes role-play, simulations, and aesthetic responses.