Imagining Animals explores the making of animal images in art therapy and child psychotherapy. It examines two contrasting primitive states of mind: the investing of the world about us with life through animism and participation mystique, and the lifeless world of autistic states of mind encountered in children who are hard to reach. Caroline Case examines how the emergence of animal imagery in therapy can act as a powerful catalyst for children in autistic states of mind, or with a background of trauma, abuse or depression. She also looks at animal / human relationships, and animal symbolism, as well as three-dimensional claywork and the development of personality. Subjects covered include: * animals on stage in therapy - anthropomorphic animal objects * the location of self in animals * entangled and confusional children: analytical approaches to psychotic thinking and autistic features in childhood. The book concludes with a compelling extended case study, which describes analytic work with a child with multiple symptoms, using the various therapeutic tools of play and art, painting and clay, and the development of character, plot and narrative. Imagining Animals offers a unique insight into the role and representation of animal imagery in art therapy and child psychotherapy, which will be of interest to all arts and play therapists working with children as well as adult psychotherapists interested in the use of imagery.

Imagining Animals explores the making of animal images in art therapy and child psychotherapy. It examines two contrasting primitive states of mind: the investing of the world about us with life through animism and participation mystique, and the lifeless world of autistic states of mind encountered in children who are hard to reach. Caroline Case examines how the emergence of animal imagery in therapy can act as a powerful catalyst for children in autistic states of mind, or with a background of trauma, abuse or depression. She also looks at animal / human relationships, and animal symbolism, as well as three-dimensional claywork and the development of personality. Subjects covered include: * animals on stage in therapy - anthropomorphic animal objects * the location of self in animals * entangled and confusional children: analytical approaches to psychotic thinking and autistic features in childhood. The book concludes with a compelling extended case study, which describes analytic work with a child with multiple symptoms, using the various therapeutic tools of play and art, painting and clay, and the development of character, plot and narrative. Imagining Animals offers a unique insight into the role and representation of animal imagery in art therapy and child psychotherapy, which will be of interest to all arts and play therapists working with children as well as adult psychotherapists interested in the use of imagery.

Imagining Animals offers a unique insight into the role and representation of animal imagery in art therapy and child psychotherapy, which will be of interest to all arts and play therapists working with children

We are currently facing the sixth mass extinction of species in the history of life on Earth, biologists claim—the first one caused by humans. Heise argues that understanding these stories and symbols is indispensable for any effective advocacy on behalf of endangered species. More than that, she shows how biodiversity conservation, even and especially in its scientific and legal dimensions, is shaped by cultural assumptions about what is valuable in nature and what is not.

There are complex & often surprising connections between our imagining of animals & our cultural environment. Topics discussed in this collection include fox hunting, pet cloning, animatronic characters & how we displace our fear of aging onto our dogs.

This interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collection reflects the growth of animal studies as an independent field and the rise of 'animality' as a critical lens through which to analyze society and culture, on par with race and gender.

How can literary imagination help us engage with the lives of other animals? The question represents one of the liveliest areas of inquiry in the humanities, and Mark Payne seeks to answer it by exploring the relationship between human beings and other animals in writings from antiquity to the present. Ranging from ancient Greek poets to modernists like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, Payne considers how writers have used verse to communicate the experience of animal suffering, created analogies between human and animal societies, and imagined the kind of knowledge that would be possible if human beings could see themselves as animals see them. The Animal Part also makes substantial contributions to the emerging discourse of the posthumanities. Payne offers detailed accounts of the tenuousness of the idea of the human in ancient literature and philosophy and then goes on to argue that close reading must remain a central practice of literary study if posthumanism is to articulate its own prehistory. For it is only through fine-grained literary interpretation that we can recover the poetic thinking about animals that has always existed alongside philosophical constructions of the human. In sum, The Animal Part marks a breakthrough in animal studies and offers a significant contribution to comparative poetics.