Counseling and Creativity, Reflections

Substance of the BookbyGeorge HageThis book presents a professional autobiography of the author as a professional counselor serving multicultural clients, ages 12-25 years. The therapeutic approach is that of the counselor as artist-mentor and the client personality as artist-canvas. Fundamentally, the client personality as artist and canvas is guided into seeing self as creating and being created. Unfolding in this creative process is the remaking and making of the composition of personality, which is likened to a composition and portrait of balance, equilibrium and wholeness. Analogies applied are derived from the principles of design, music, poetry and written composition. The balance and equilibrium attained in composition are reflective of the wholeness and self-actualization of the client personality. The client thusly becomes the work of art and artist. Through interaction with the counselor, the client interreflects with the traits of self-mastery of the counselor. Among these traits are self-reflection, self-awareness, self-management and self-direction. The client, through the process of self-actualization, cultivates the knowledge of the personality while applying it as a palate to the canvas of self. In this manner, the client is empowered to create a personality that is unique, whole and balanced. At the base of client personality lies the client autobiography. Autobiography provides the paradigm for the uniqueness of personality and the means of mentoring and empowering the client. Taken into consideration are the following: culture, education, family, nationality, religion, spirituality, gifts, talents, interests, desires, achievements, struggles, weaknesses and strengths. Interreflectively, such characteristics lie at the base of artists, musicians, writers, and designers and counselors. Another metaphor applied to the counselor is that of pedagogue from its ancient Greek and Roman understanding. This is not in the contemporary sense of the teacher who is considered as imparting knowledge and skills to the learner. Rather the pedagogue cared for and taught the total person from childhood through early adulthood. Such is the counselor as mentor and guide. This person fosters the nature of the client with the power of creativity, as creativity is of the essence of the human beingness of the person. This assumption lies at the base of this book: "In the beginning God created...," "God made Adam in his image and likeness," and "God breathes into Adam ruach, the Spirit wind of his life and Adam becomes a living life" [Italics mine] (Genesis 1:1, 26-27; 2:7). As God enters into and with the human being in creative relationship, initiating and fostering the livingness of creative life, the counselor as artist and mentor enters into this same creative process. In process, as God and humankind fellow share in the dynamic spiritual living of creativity, so counselor and client inter-reflect with this same dynamic. This terminus becomes manifested in the esthetic of self-actualization, wholeness, balance and creativity.