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CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology for Clinical Settings
Volume 15 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1417035
Meeting the Multidimensional Self: Fostering Selfhood at the Interface of Creative Arts Therapies and Neuroscience
Provisionally accepted- School of Society and the Arts, Ono Academic College, Kiryat Ono, Israel
Intriguing explorations at the intersection of the fields of neuroscience and psychology are driven by the quest to understand the neural underpinnings of “the self” and their psychotherapeutic implications. These translational efforts pertain to the unique Creative Arts Therapies (CATs) and the attributes and value of the self-related processes they offer. The self is considered as a multi-layered complex construct, comprising bodily and mental constituents, subjective–objective perspectives, spatial and temporal dimensions. Neuroscience research, mostly functional brain imaging, has proposed cogent models of the constitution, development and experience of the self, elucidating how the multiple dimensions of the self are supported by integrated hierarchical brain processes. The psychotherapeutic use of the art-forms, generating aesthetic experiences and creative processes, touch upon and connect the various layers of self-experience, nurturing the sense of self. The present conceptual analysis will describe and interweave the neural mechanisms and neural network configuration suggested to lie at the core of the ongoing self-experience, its deviations in psychopathology, and implications regarding the psychotherapeutic use of the arts. The well-established, parsimonious and neurobiologically plausible predictive processing account of brain-function will be discussed with regard to selfhood and consciousness. The epistemic affordance of the experiential CATs will further be portrayed, enabling and facilitating the creation of updated self-models of the body in the world. The neuropsychological impact of the relational therapeutic encounter will be delineated, acknowledging the intersubjective brain synchronization through communicative verbal and non-verbal means and aesthetic experiences. The recognition and assimilation of neuroscientific, phenomenological and clinical perspectives concerning the nested dimensionality of the self, ground the relational therapeutic process and the neuroplastic modulations that CATs have to offer on the premise of fostering, shaping and integrating selfhood.
Keywords: the self, nested layers, self disturbances, Creative arts therapies, embodiment, predictive processing, brain-to-brain synchrony, integration
Received: 15 Apr 2024; Accepted: 09 Sep 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Vaisvaser. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Sharon Vaisvaser, School of Society and the Arts, Ono Academic College, Kiryat Ono, Israel
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