Beyond the Human: Emergent Theories of Synthetics in Art Psychotherapy Research Pedagogies

Abstract

Art psychotherapy training programmes traditionally emphasise evidence-based practices focused on interpersonal and psychological change, often sidelining socio-political dimensions and critical research pedagogies. To address this gap, this paper presents a posthuman feminist approach to research pedagogies in art psychotherapy. This approach leverages arts-based practices and digital technologies as critical tools for examining complex entanglements between human, nature, and technology (techne) rendering insights into data collection and analysis beyond conventional paradigms.

This pedagogical theorisation draws on examples from collective arts-based workshops rendering posthuman theoretical concepts into practical, tangible learning experiences. The workshops presented in this paper utilise artistic processes as both methodological and critical vehicles, inviting students to explore a research workshop through the lens of two Deleuzian concepts, those being the situated material assemblage and the Body Without Organs (BWO). The key rationale is to develop critical reflexivity through using conceptual tools that that disrupt normative hegemonies in art psychotherapy data analysis by positioning data as a co-constructed material-semiotic inscription shaped by intersecting human and non-human forces.

The outcomes of this posthuman pedagogical framework, employing digital and arts-based diffractive methodologies and ethological assemblage in enacted data analyses, were a facilitated non-hierarchical synthesis in data relations between human, nonhuman and digital bodies and the stimulation of a more inclusive transdisciplinary inquiry, generating insights into systemic issues in healthcare beyond a patriarchal logic and purely anthropocentric reach. The approach positions students as active agents in co-producing knowledge that challenges dominant socio-economic structures in health research.