within the community. To enhance tr

within the community. To enhance trust in the community, these feelings must
be discussed openly. The co-created community is an important factor in the
ability to learn.
SUMMARY COMMENTS
Person-centered expressive arts therapy utilizes the arts for spontaneous
creative expression that symbolizes deep and sometimes inaccessible feelings
and emotional states. Conditions that foster creativity occur both within
the participants and within the group environment. The conditions for free
expression require acceptance of the participants, a nonjudgmental setting,
empathy, psychological freedom, and the availability of stimulating and challenging
experiences. Participants respond with nondefensive openness to experience
and an internal locus of evaluation that receives but is not overly
concerned with the reactions of others. Offering guidelines to participants at
the beginning of the process is helpful and stays within the person-centered
framework because the guidelines place the responsibility and authority
with the participants. Using the person-centered philosophical base of Carl
Rogers, Natalie Rogers has developed an active group approach to personal
growth and emotional health.