null Open lecture in Helsinki – Shifting the Clinical Gaze: Navigating Between Cultural Realities by Lynn Kapitan



On the 16th of June in Theatre Academy’s Auditorium 1 at 10am until 11.30am

Drawing on more than a decade of community-based participatory research in Latin America, Dr. Kapitan will engage participants in an experiential exploration of emancipatory practices for interrupting conditioned thinking and professional practices that produce unintended barriers to therapeutic understanding. Hand’s-on art, movement, and interpersonal interaction will be used to help integrate ideas and actions. 

The open lecture (free of charge) will discuss the unintended impacts of the clinical gaze as it interacts with cultural difference in contemporary practice. A review of the research on “frame switching,” and its benefits for helping the professional shift from monocultural to ethnorelative frameworks of practice will be presented, followed by interactive questions and answers, and a summary of pragmatic applications.

Lynn Kapitan, PhD, ATR-BC, is a Professor and Director of the Professional Doctorate in Art Therapy at Mount Mary University, Milwaukee, WI (USA). She is the former Editor of Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, Past President of AATA, and author of Introduction to Art Therapy Research. She has taught graduate art therapy for over 25 years, having co-founded master’s and doctoral degree programs at Mount Mary and a vibrant professional community. Lynn has worked with diverse people and settings, and currently practices cross-cultural community art therapy, primarily as a pro bono research consultant for arts and non-governmental agencies in the United States and Latin America. An art therapist activist, Lynn’s research interests have been in the evolution of art therapy as an emancipatory art form for social transformation. She has presented nationally and internationally on the global reach of art therapy as intersecting communities of practice, and has published numerous editorials and peer-reviewed papers.