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On April 4th I came back from the 1st Art Therapy World Congress that took place in Budapest, Hungary, March 30th-April 2nd, 2003. The congress was organized by Dr. Erzsbet Hasz, Chairwoman of the Hungarian Art Therapy Association and Tamas Koves, director of Meeting Budapest Organizer Ltd. App. 200 people from all over the world - art therapists, music therapists, dance-movement therapists, bibliotherapists, theatre therapists, cinema therapists and complex therapists (therapists who use more than one modality in their work) participated in the congress and gave lectures, workshops and poster sessions.

A few days later (April 8th and 9th) I participated in our national two-days congress that was organized by the north division of the Israeli Association for Creative and Expressive Therapies, under the leadership of Tamar Chazut. It took place in Kibbutz Genosar, which is located in the north of the country, right next to the Sea of Galilee - Kineret in Hebrew. This year we were blessed with lots of rain, quite unusual for us, and at this time the Kineret is full of water and the whole area is blooming. The theme of our congress was: "The power and meaning of the artistic creation in dealing with life under threat."

Two congresses, two journeys. I would like to share with you some of my impressions. First, the congress in Hungary.

The congress lasted 3 days. I heard papers given by people from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Israel and the United States. I attended lectures and workshops in music therapy as well as psychodrama and art therapy. The entertainment program of the congress included a wonderful concert of the BBC Symphony Orchestra that was part of the Budapest Spring Festival, with conductor and composer Peter Eotvos and soloist Markus Stockhausen on trumpet. A welcome reception was held on the first evening continued by "Argentine Tango" piano concert performed by Carlos Eduardo Caruso from Argentine, and on the second evening we were an active audience in a very lively playback theatre performance.

Meeting Anna Fekete, a Hungarian music therapist, was one of the highlights for me. Anna got her music therapy training in England and later completed her PhD in Hamburg. I learned from her that Music Therapy is a new field in Hungary. There are no training programs, no local music therapy literature and no access to music therapy journals and books from Europe or America, due to high cost. Most of the Hungarian people who gave papers and workshops in this congress are not music therapists and come from related fields such as acoustics, music education, psychology and psychiatry.

The exciting news is that the first accredited music therapy course in Hungary is going to open in September 2003. The head of the course is the chairperson of the Hungarian Association for Music Therapy, Mrs. Katalin Urban Varga, who teaches at the Teacher Training College for Special Education, where they have the necessary instruments for running a course in music therapy. Both her and Anna will teach there as well as other teachers for musical, psychological, psychiatric and psychotherapeutic subjects as well. There are, however, big problems and obstacles on the way. As the course in now accredited and is therefore running under the administration of the College and the University, they have set rather impossible conditions for the course: it cannot be started unless there are 30 students, and the tuition fees are very high. The hope is that there will be enough applicants, who will be good enough to be accepted.

I also learned from Anna that for Music Therapy to become a psychotherapeutic discipline, the Association for Music Therapy needs to be recognized as a training organization, and that still hasn't happened. In Hungary it is the psychiatric profession that rules over psychotherapy, and they do not recognize Music Therapy as psychotherapy. They think it is a kind of sing-song or drumming-around for patients to pass time, perhaps to cheer them up, but do not see it as a psychotherapeutic tool. This is partly due to their own professional resistance against anything new and for them unknown, but also to the fact that many untrained persons call themselves music therapists. Since it is not considered as a profession, people who start the course in September come from other professions who will use their new diploma in music therapy in the professional area of their first MA.

So, for a person to become a music psychotherapist, they need to do 12 years training to first become a psychotherapist, and then they have to do the music therapy training (2,5 years), but for that they need to be trained musicians. Anna is afraid that music therapy will never become a profession in Hungary, unless the system is willing to make some adjustments.

During the congress, Dr. Erzsebet Hasz organized a round table discussion with higher education experts in the art therapy professions. Participants from various countries like music therapists Helen Patey Tyler and Rachel Darnley-Smith from England, Anna Fekete from Hungary and myself from Israel, together with others shared their ideas and experiences in dealing with issues concerning training and education. Dr. J. Harmatta, a psychiatrist who is the Head of the Hungarian
Association of Psychotherapy, and Dr. Erzsbet Moussong-Kovacs, who is a professor emeritus in Semmelweis University, Psychiatry Group, listened to what we had to say and my hope is that they will help to establish the arts therapies as a profession in Hungary.

I want to end this first part of my column with Anna's own words concerning the music therapy literature in Hungary. "In the book stores in Hungary there are no books in English (or any other foreign language) about music therapy because obviously that would never bring any profit. Nobody has ever written a book about music therapy in Hungarian. For any translations to be made, the translators have to be paid, but there is nobody to pay for it. Books written in foreign languages would cost even more to be translated and published. There is always the possibility to order books from the internet, but western book prices are for us basically unaffordable, and also there is the chance factor in ordering a book from the internet: you never know about a book whether it is worth buying or not until you look into it, and this you cannot do on the internet. Also, we have very little live contact with foreign professionals who could help us to know what good books are around and what to buy and where once we are abroad. If I go into a bookstore in Vienna or in Germany or in any other country, there might lie around five or six books about music therapy but they are rarely meant for professionals. I wouldn't know where to go to buy professional books about music therapy in any other country, even if I had the money for it."

It was a good journey. I visited the lovely city of Budapest, met wonderful people and learned a lot about music therapy in Hungary. One of the things that I have been asking myself is how can we, the music therapy international community, support and help our friends in Hungary. Maybe you, the reader, can share your ideas in Voices' discussion section.

And now to my second journey - the Israeli congress in Genosar
During these two days 330 art therapists, music therapists, dance-movement therapists, bibliotherapists, drama therapists and psychodramatists gave lectures and workshops. Some of the themes were: Dealing with loss and bereavement, working with PTSD, working with children and adults who were hit by terrorism, helping therapists in trauma, creating under threat, meetings between Jews and Arabs in therapy and education, getting to know "the other", multi-cultural issues, and using the arts in supervising therapists who are dealing with threat and trauma.

What a powerful dichotomy between the theme of the congress and the beauty of the environment where we were. Inside the congress we dealt with issues of loss, bereavement, trauma and threat and experienced feelings of sadness, anger, frustration, helplessness and fear. Outside - the beautiful, blue Kineret, full of water, surrounded by gracious mountains, green trees all over the landscape with flowers in all colors - so relaxed, so calm, so peaceful.

Inside and outside mixed together. Both inside and outside we listened to stories, watched films, painted our emotions, screamed our fear, played our helplessness. We cried together, laughed together, danced together. We shared with and supported each other. We felt drained and at the same time felt empowered. We experienced helplessness, yet talked about hope.

One of the exhibitions that were in the congress was of drawings of Arab and Jewish
Children. They were asked to paint their dreams concerning the future. This was a very moving exhibition for me. The paintings were full of images of peaceful and quiet life, with the very present and powerful wish of living together in harmony. One of the visitors wrote to the children: "We, our generation, didn't succeed in bringing peace. Maybe you will".

Concluding remarks

Being in nature is a very healing experience for me. It almost always makes me feel alive and brings beauty and joy into my life. Being with people whom I love and respect has the same effect on me. Both things help me cope with the tension and craziness of my life here in Israel. In both congresses I experienced these two things: Walking in nature, enjoying the Danube in Budapest, the Jordan river and the Sea of Galilee in Israel, admiring the naked trees that just starting to have buds in Budapest and having a moment of awe while watching all the green areas filled with red, yellow, pink, purple and blue flowers in the Galilee - together with meeting old and making new friends in both places. This brings hope, joy, strength and courage. And now with the war in Iraq still going on, let us all hope for peace and a better present and future for us and our children - for this is, as I understand it, the ultimate goal of our profession.

How to cite this page

Amir, Dorit (2003) Two Congresses, Two Journeys: Impressions from the 1st Art Therapy World Congress in Budapest and from the National Congress of the Israeli Association for Creative and Expressive Therapies. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 10, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2003-two-congresses-two-journeys-impressions-1st-art-therapy-world-congress-buda