ABSTRACT
The artistic metaphor utilizes drawing strategies, board games, and healing books, all originally conceived and created by the child, to provide another dimension of therapeutic experience. Both the storytelling metaphor and the artistic metaphor have the special focus of integrating left- and right-brain functions on conscious and unconscious levels via multisensory approaches. Imagistic aspects of the artistic metaphor involve conceiving and visualizing the new creation. Emotional aspects involve drawing upon the problem area of painful feelings as well as evoking a resource area of past pleasant feelings. The "Pain Getting Better Book" was created as a metaphorical tool to help children cope with physical pain. Its purpose is to provide an artistic implement by which painful sensations can be objectified, and at the same time, untapped inner resources can be accessed. The purpose of drawing the larger resource pictures is to further anchor the resources into the child's unconscious mind.
