phototherapy.

1	2	3	4	5

methodology.

phototherapy is a subset of psychotherapy. similar to art therapy, it is a system of techniques that make use of people's personal snapshots and family albums as "openers" to access feelings and memories not so easily available to only verbal investigations in emotional counseling and psychotherapy. there are 5 basic techniques:

1. Photos of the client taken by other people (whether posed or spontaneous)

2. Photos taken by the client (whether actually using the camera to make pictures themselves, or those "taken" by collecting other people's images)

3. Self-portraits (which are actually photos "of-the-client-by-the-client"; the client is the photographer with total power and self-directing all choices)

4. Family-autobiographical photos (birth family or family of choice; photos as traditionally kept in albums or more "loosely" formed into narratives through placement on a wall, desk, wallet, etc.)

5. "Projectives," based on the (phenomenological) process by which the meaning of any photo (or any other visual stimulus) is at least partially created by the viewer during their process of perceiving it. a. Person's interpretation of any photo is at least slightly different upon every viewing, and is different from another person's interpretation. b. Helps clients become aware of how personally-selective and unconsciously-driven their interpretation of meaning about any particular snapshot (and thus, any person or event) will automatically be.