Talk

MPS Art Therapy presents David E. Gussak, PhD, ATR-BC, HLM, who will give this year’s Valery Daniels Memorial Lecture “Understanding the Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence.”

There seems to exist a natural interrelationship between art and violence. While creativity often emerges from aggressive impulses,  art making, in turn, helps mitigate aggressive and violent energy. This lecture will explore this frenzied dance by clarifying this interrelationship—and indeed, how messy and complex it can become—with the ultimate aim of providing mechanisms from which art therapists can benefit when working with volatile populations. To do so, it will provide various theoretical perspectives on violence and aggression, draw from historical examples of well-known artists who have violent tendencies, those whose works emerged from violent experiences, and the expressions of the most notorious offenders whose works perpetuated their psychopathic cycles. In addition, it will provide narratives that emerged in working with artists who are incarcerated for heinous crimes, as well as reflect on personal experiences as an art therapist with violent offenders and aggressive clients. These discussions will be followed by offering simple yet powerful art directives that the facilitator has often used to explore and mitigate aggressive and impulsive tendencies. Ultimately, this discussion will emphasize and underscore through these vignettes how art emerges from and how art therapy techniques may assuage aggression and violence.

Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to:

1)  Articulate the frenzied dance of the co-evolving, interrelationship between art and violence

2) Identify the various mechanisms that art and art therapy maintain that can be used to mitigate and sublimate aggression and violence

3) Distinguish different art techniques and processes that have been found effective in addressing and redirecting violence and aggression

David E. Gussak, PhD, ATR-BC, HLM has served as Professor for the Florida State University’s Graduate Art Therapy Program for almost 25 years and has more than 30 years of clinical and practical experience; this includes various forensic systems, several correctional institutions and settings, and serves as the project consultant for the FSU/Florida Department of Corrections Art Therapy in Prisons program.  In 2025, Gussak developed and now serves as the Director of the Florida State University Institute for Art and Art Therapy with the Imprisoned (AATI). He has presented and published extensively internationally and nationally on, amongst many topics, forensic art therapy and art therapy in forensic and carceral settings. Along with more than 50 journal and chapter publications, he has authored several books, including, Art on Trial: Art Therapy for Capital Murder Cases (2013), Art and Art Therapy with the Imprisoned: Re-Creating Identity (2019), and The Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence (2022), He is also the co-editor [with Dr. Marcia Rosal] and contributing author for The Wiley Handbook of Art Therapy. He currently serves on the editorial board for several publications, including Art Therapy: The Journal of the American Art Therapy Association and Arts in Psychotherapy, and is the Co-editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for Creativity Inside. In 2022, Dr. Gussak was granted the American Art Therapy Association’s Honorary Lifetime Member (HLM) award.

The MPS Art Therapy Department at the School of Visual Arts is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed creative arts therapists. #CAT-0054.

2.0 CE hours available for LCATs.