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Response to Therapeutic potential and lurking banality: The use of filmmaking in psychotherapy. DOI: 10.1037/a0040125 Paul E. Priester by Dr. Joshua Lee Cohen Ph.D. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292677035_Therapeutic_potential_and_lurking_banality_The_use_of_filmmaking_in_psychotherapy

Response to Paul’s writing and my claim that he did not in fact read the book before his review

My contention is that Paul E. Priester did not read key chapters in the book before forming his contention. Here is his contention “My main point of contention is the writing is disconnected from the larger culture’s method of use of video. The writers want to follow a Hollywood paradigm of creating, highly polished edited works of art. “

First of all, Paul may have had some good points about evidence-based work, psychoanalysis, and art therapy, but failed to read the chapter on Veterans, Trauma, and Adult Populations, Computer Animation Anthropology, or at Risk Youth in the foster care system. Instead, he seemed fixated on his own children and their population which is not inappropriate but does not address the actual chapters in the book accurately. He said “Being the first attempt at establishing such work, perhaps I should be less harsh and more encouraging, but in the television vernacular, “It is not ready for Prime Time.” I would have a healthy respect for his critique but respectfully disagree with his conclusions. Had he made an informed claim, rather than reading 2-3 chapters and generalized his opinions and presented them as facts I might not have been so harsh in my response.

My contention is that since he did not read Benjamin Patton’s chapter on healing Veterans and active duty servicemen and women or Kim Anderson’s chapter which was cited at the Zur Institute you missed their work as well as the published research that followed their chapters. https://www.zurinstitute.com/resources/hipaa/ and also missed the vision of the book and the adult population it addressed as well as children. Instead, he focused on critiquing both psychoanalysis and the field of art therapy as a “weakness.” which is a rather large claim which he failed to cite. He might not be familiar with Alan Schore’s work http://www.allanschore.com/ or Glen Gabbard M.D. here described by Ken Pope https://kspope.com/Gabbard.php Gabbard also writes on film, in addition to being a well-published Psychiatrist and also an avid movie critic and author.

Let’s return to what he stated in his “critique”

“Another manner in which the book misses current cultural practices is the area of Youtube confessions. Select any mental disorder and search on Youtube. You will find countless examples of individuals (especially young people) intimately disclosing what it has been like for them to live with the illness, many make reference to their counselors in the videos. “

If he had read the chapter about “

Digital Storytelling: Healing for the YouTube Generation of Veterans”

he would have read that 1. Adult populations can be helped with Hollywood Style filmmaking, which is backed by this clinical trial https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234913/

2. it is also backed up with over 40 years of research in “Digital Storytelling” and he also did not read Marty Otanez’s work https://clas.ucdenver.edu/anthropology/marty-otanez in Anthropology and or Kim Anderson’s work as well. https://www.zurinstitute.com/resources/hipaa/

Before I respond further, let’s review what he said first.

He did mention that Jon Ehinger’s Green Screen work was valid. He also said that the book fails because it offers a viewpoint from the field of psychotherapy that involves psychoanalytic work and you claim that the research is rudimentary at best. Then he said “realizing that there are psychoanalytically oriented clinicians who practice art therapy who would benefit from this exploration. “ Then he said “My main point of contention is the writing is disconnected from the larger culture’s method of use of video. “ Then he said “Perhaps, this reflects a different standard that is established within the art therapy world, “ He also made a comment on Jon Ehinger’s chapter stating, “I thought that this was beyond the technological ability of most people; but as I read the chapters, I realized that it was apparently quite easy for the novice filmmaker to readily use this technology. Green screen technology is the process of digitally placing a filmed individual in a separate, background environment. “ Then he said “If I were making a film with a client, I feel that I could use this technology and that there undoubtedly could be therapeutic value to its use. “ He then made a comment on my chapter “ I did find it interesting to consider how the process of editing can be therapeutic in itself, but this is completely foreign to the guerrilla tactics of video production of anyone in our culture who is under the age of 30. “

Paul then made a claim about how about using this approach in the context of treating specific phobias and as a component of systematic desensitization. “The mind reels at the exciting range of possibilities. But alas, this diverges from the reality of the current use of video.”

Then he stated. “Researchers have suggested that increased social media use can foster narcissism, although this effect is questioned by some (Weiser, 2015).”

He also said that “Perhaps the book represents the strengths and weakness of the primarily psychoanalytical and art therapy approaches from which it is couched. “

He concluded with “The weaknesses would be the strength of the research supporting this practice and its benefit to other theoretical orientations. Being the first attempt at establishing such work, perhaps I should be less harsh and more encouraging, but in the television vernacular, “It is not ready for Prime Time.”

This might all have been true but he is cherry-picking chapters to prove a false contention and did not read key chapters that disprove his theory of the book’s inability to reach people over 30 with Hollywood style movies. Instead, he reverts back to his own children as clinical examples and does not recognize the field of Digital Storytelling or the long history of film/video-based therapy going back to the 1940s mentioned in the book or the use of filmmaking with Veterans in the Foreword by Cathy Malchiodi which he also did not read.

Here is what the real debate and contention should be about, it’s use with PTSD and trauma from the literature review of a clinical trial based on a research article that is a follow up to the chapter in the book he critiqued but probably did not read.

“Video has been used as an element in therapy in recent years for different populations and in the treatment of various psychological issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD (Wedding and Niemiec, 2003; Gantt and Tinnin, 2007, 2009; Johnson and Alderson, 2008; Nanda et al., 2010). However, despite the growing use of its growing use of the video medium in various therapeutic settings, the field is still in the nascent stages of development; therefore, no consensus has yet been reached regarding what precisely constitutes video-based or filmmaking therapy or how it works to alleviate patients’ suffering (Johnson and Alderson, 2008). Because films can be used in different ways and because they serve various purposes in therapy, the field is still lacking a definitive nomenclature. For example, the term “video therapy” is currently used to describe several uses of video in therapy, such as watching films (cinematherapy), video-recording oneself in order to witness and reflect on one’s behavior, or making films (Cohen, 2013). Consequently, several overlapping definitions and uses of video therapy exist. In addition, evidence of the effectiveness of using the video medium in therapy is only slowly beginning to emerge (Malchiodi, 2015). Lastly, there is a debate as to whether video- and filmmaking therapy should be considered part of art therapy or whether it should be considered its own, separate therapy. That is to say, although some scholars (e.g., Malchiodi) view video-based therapy as falling under the category of art therapy, others suggest that it differs in some essential ways from other creative arts therapies. Cohen and Orr (2015) suggest that video-based therapy shares certain common aspects with creative arts therapies including projection (where the video can be used to engage with difficult materials), the use of one’s imagination, the enactment of bodily sensations and emotions, and editing, which involves creativity and sense-making (Cohen and Orr, 2015). In contrast, Johnson (2015) differentiates therapeutic filmmaking from creative arts therapies in its focus on the product, which is usually not the focus of the latter. Another significant difference Johnson describes is the film’s unique relationship with the dimension of time. That is, filmmaking can be seen as being “multiply therapeutic,” as it is characterized by both the benefits of the timeless arts (such as sculpture, and drawing) as well as those of the time-based arts (such as drama or dance).” LEARN MORE

Tuval-Mashiach, R.&  Patton, B. (2015) Digital Video Production: Healing for the YouTube Generation of Veterans In Cohen J,L, , Johnson, J.., & Orr. P (Eds), (2015) Video and Filmmaking as Psychotherapy: Research and Practice.  New York: Routledge.

Tuval-Mashiach R, Patton BW and Drebing C (2018) “When You Make a Movie, and You See Your Story There, You Can Hold It”: Qualitative Exploration of Collaborative Filmmaking as a Therapeutic Tool for Veterans. Front. Psychol. 9:1954. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01954 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01954/full#B6

Conclusion,

Most people read the foreword, leaf through a book and then read the introduction, look at the references, or the conclusions of the chapter to see the main points but Paul made some huge claims about the weakness of Art Therapy and Psychoanalysis without citing his contention and then missed the vision and the target population without reading the chapters on Anthropology, Veterans, HIPAA, Ethics, or Trauma and went to talk about how his kids might use it instead. My contention is that he did not read the book before making this critique.

References in the field of Film/Video-Based Therapy and Therapeutic Filmmaking

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