The Aesthetic Experience of the Client in Psychotherapy

Abstract

A reconceptualization of psychotherapy as art, namely, as an aesthetic experience, is explored. The author argues that previous notions of psychotherapy as art-those that focus on practitioner artistry and react against psychotherapy as science-have stifled productive discourse of the art in psychotherapy. The author's approach, instead, examines how both here-and-now processes and therapeutic change are experienced by the client aesthetically, as he or she would experience a work of art. Aesthetic experience is defined as both appreciating intrinsic qualities of therapeutic relating and creating a self with aesthetic value. Varying notions of aesthetic experience are discussed, and, using Johnson's theory of embodiment metaphors and Polkinghorne's narrative self, similarities between aesthetic experience and psychotherapy are uncovered. Implications for research, and the relation between psychotherapy as art and science, are explored.