ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author presents the key questions raised at the outset of her investigation and provides some final answers: what are breakthrough moments? What causes them? What is it about arts-based therapy that increases the potential for them to arise? and can they bring about lasting change? She identifies some of the different categories of breakthrough moments that might occur for a client. Clients are often held in trance-like periods of extended deep experiencing by the art-images they create–as if they intuitively know there is a secret message encoded within, waiting to be revealed. Art-images can trigger breakthrough moments for a client because they are able to contain, conceal, reveal and support the expression of emotion. Working with arts media gives a client the opportunity to work with deeper emotions in the form of symbolic images and these are predominantly held within the right hemisphere of the brain.
