Dr. Julia Byers – Humanitarian Expressive Therapy: Establishing Resilience In The Aftermath Of Severe Physical Trauma

This is a free event, with no ticket required.

Dr Julia Byers is widely acknowledged for essentially creating the idea and practice Humanitarian Expressive Therapy: deploying Expressive Therapy with populations that have been deeply damaged and traumatized by natural or man-made disasters.

When we say the word therapy or psychotherapy, the image that immediately comes to mind is of a client speaking with his or her therapist. Communicating through spoken language the therapist and client come to an analysis and understanding of what is going on with client; and then, based thereon, further use spoken language to achieve a therapeutic effect.

Beginning in the mid-1950’s a small group of pioneers made an observation as profound as it is simple:  language is but only one way in which human beings express themselves. In fact, language perhaps more so than other forms of human expression lends itself to obfuscation and self-deception. And so was born the field Expressive Arts Therapy: the use of other forms of human expression—the visual arts, music, dance, play—as tools of psychological analysis and therapy.

By the mid-1970s, that small group of pioneers gave rise to a formal discipline and a first generation of professional trained expressive art therapists and expressive arts therapy university educators. Our speaker this evening, Dr. Julia Gentleman Byers was a member of that first generation. Beginning it the early 1980’s and over her ensuing 40 year career, Julia established herself as one of the leaders and true innovators in the field.  Among her academic achievements, at Concordia University in Montreal she established and directed the first Canadian graduate program in Art Therapy.  Recruited to Lesley College in Cambridge, MA as Division Director of Expressive Therapies and Mental Health Counseling, she established the first doctoral program in Expressive Therapy of its kind in the United States, thereby turning Lesley College into Lesley University. Upon her retirement from Lesley in 2017 she awarded lifelong status as Professor Emerita. She is also a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Northeastern University Global Resilience Institute.

Julia’s work has taken her everywhere from Uganda to work with survivors of the horrific massacres by Koney’s Children’s Liberation Army, to the Philippines in the aftermath of a massive mudslides that buried entire villages, to the Middle East over 20 times to work in Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank.

The focus our discussion with Julia this evening is her most recent experience in Lebanon working with refugee Syrian children who are severe burn victims as a result of the continuing conflict in the region.

Facilitating our discussion with Julia this evening is her partner, Steve Holtzman, himself a serial entrepreneur, Rhodes Scholar and a trustee of the Berklee College of Music.

Enjoy pre-lecture music by Shaina Graff and her ensemble, Shaina's Strings, for 30 minutes before each performance.