The Joint Painting Procedure: Parents and children creating shared space

Abstract

The Joint Painting Procedure (JPP) is an art-based assessment and clinical intervention that evaluates and focuses on implicit aspects in parent–child relationships in middle childhood. The JPP has been utilized in parent–child art psychotherapy and various other clinical settings over the past 15 years and involves the parent and child painting together on the same sheet of paper using gouache or tempera paints. The JPP enables multi-dimensional expression and representation of implicit qualities of the relationship that cannot be expressed verbally. Sharing the same space and creating together enables transformational processes such as fostering mutual recognition, encouraging reflective function and creating mutual regulation. The JPP offers the painting dyad a meaningful non-verbal intersubjective experience, as well as ways of looking at various aspects of their relationship. The JPP and its clinical aspects are being examined and validated through rigorous research.

Keywords: Dyadic art psychotherapy, art-based assessment, mutual recognition, mentalization