Florence Cane

Florence Cane (1882-1952) was an art therapist, and the older sister of Margaret Naumburg, the "mother" of art therapy. Though Cane did not describe herself as an art therapist, Hinz (2009) claims that Cane is considered the "grandmother of the expressive therapies."^[1]

Professional background

In 1910, Cane and Naumburg were trained in Jungian analysis with Beatrice Hinkle. This heavily influenced her work as well as therapeutic and educational approaches. Naumburg established The Children's School, now known as Walden School, in 1914.^[2] Four years after establishing the school, Naumburg asked Cane to teach art at the school. Cane often criticized traditional art teaching methods. Cane felt that "creativity and individuality were being crushed".^[3] Cane chose to move away from the skill teaching method typically used in schools and instead used an integrated approach. While Cane taught at The Children's School, she continued to teach private lessons in her own home. After leaving The Children's School, Cane spoke at teaching seminars and began her own school at Rockefeller center. In 1936, Cane became the director of art at the counseling center for gifted children of the school of education at New York University and remained in that position for 14 years.

Publications

One of Cane's publications was The gifted child in art(1936);^[4] an article in the Journal of Educational Sociology. Cane's first and only book, The artist in each of us, was published in 1951.^[5] A year after her book was published, Cane passed away.

Therapeutic approach

The psychoanalytic and intellectual views of the time heavily influenced Cane and her techniques. Cane's integrated teaching approach involved emotional creativity and free association.^[1] Although Cane was not officially an art therapist, she considered herself to be a psychologically-informed art teacher. Junge said that Cane had patients referred to her by psychiatrists and analysts that were aware of the importance of art imagery as a therapeutic tool.^[3] In Cane's book, The artist in each of us,^[5] she expressed the importance of recognizing symbols in a child's artwork. Cane believed that once symbols are made known to the art therapist/teacher, it can be easier to determine the child's issues and needs.

Cane discovered common difficulties among the children she worked with. The difficulties the children had, like fear, pride and inertia, often caused a creative block and were usually underlying symptoms of a psychological attitude.

Inertia, or resistance, is often due to a lack of psychic energy. The reason for a lack of energy for art activities, is because the child's energy is spent doing other things. This energy can be spent on problems at home or school, or if the child has a busy schedule. Cane found a way to break through the inertia and help the child get past the creative block. One way Cane got past the child's block, was by giving the child a previous, unfinished drawing.^[5] The child can then look at the unfinished drawing and decide how to finish it. The hope is that when the child is finished with the drawing, there will be enough energy to begin a new piece of art.

Fear can also cause a creative block. When a child is fearful, safety becomes an issue and the child may become hostile or develop feelings of guilt.^[5] Cane would give a fearful child a simple art activity that was easily executed so that the child could feel satisfaction. If the art activity was too difficult, the child would get discouraged and become afraid of failure. Cane developed the scribble method as a way to get through the creative block and be satisfied with the artwork. The scribble is the child's own design and can't be compared to anyone else's.

Children can have two types of pride. Th child can have pride that causes conceitedness or the type of pride that causes feelings of inferiority. Cane's approach to conceited pride was to not give the child what they wanted. Cane would not give the child rewards or praise for their artwork. The reason for this was to break the child from making artwork solely for attention. Cane approached the children with inferiority pride in a different way. Cane noticed children with inferiority pride were afraid to create artwork that was less than perfect. Cane used art activities, like the scribble method, to give the children satisfaction in their artwork. Cane stated, "The scribble is a kind of play with a freely flowing continuous line,".^[5] When doing the scribble method, the eyes can be opened or closed. However, keeping the eyes closed helps the line or scribble move freely without the mind trying to direct it. After the scribble is done, children can usually find images in their scribbles. The children are asked to reinforce the scribble lines that form an image. Cane developed this exercise to bring out imagination and unconscious imagery.

References