ABSTRACT
The use of creativity in psychotherapy provides a conduit for finding a voice that is not reliant on the spoken word. This chapter focuses on clients with severe to profound intellectual disabilities who experience emotional pain and who seek to find their voice through a connection not primarily dependent on language, but rather, through the intersubjective space where meaning making occurs, facilitated by shared creativity. The very structure of the therapeutic session often had to be thought about in a more creative way to enable clients to engage in a relationship that was beyond the realm of their prevailing experience. Disability psychotherapy requires the recognition and consideration of a multiplicity of complex concepts. Neuropsychologist and psychotherapist Allan Schore has extensively researched affect regulation in infants and the role of attachment, in order to create a neuropsychoanalytically informed mode of practice that benefits from strong foundations in affective neuroscience.
