ABSTRACT
This chapter explores gender theory in relation to arts therapies, highlighting international research. It offers on art therapy, dance–movement therapy, drama therapy and music therapy, emergent and hybrid practices are also shared, such as re-enactment phototherapy, therapeutic writing, art therapy in virtual reality and therapeutic photography. The chapter challenges the idea that images should be understood in purely individual terms, cut-off from social forms of oppression such as the gender realities that define and construct the subjective experience of identity. It explores being a male researcher and art therapist working with women who have experienced violence, looking especially at notions of home. The chapter investigates how empathy, reflexivity, feminist standpoint theory and ideas about intersectionality were employed in the research process. Cornelissen shares qualitative research that focused on how male and female dance movement therapists experience their gender in the process of a dance movement group therapy with a mixed-sex client group.
