Institut apk, the personal place for training and further education

The APK GmbH offers you and around 50 fellow students part-time training in the field of art therapy (specializing in design and painting therapy) and a wide range of further training and self-awareness courses. The modular training program can be completed alongside an existing professional training course or as an introduction to a new profession. In addition to personal experience, it also includes theory and an introduction to practical work.

Art therapy is a form of therapy that focuses on people's natural ability to express themselves creatively and thus to self-regulate and self-heal. It is resource- and solution-oriented. It encourages the confrontation with images that arise from the inner world or have an effect on the person from the world around them. By acting and creating, people are directly and effectively involved in their own events.

is one of the five specializations in art therapy defined by the umbrella organization OdA ARTECURA. Our training institute is recognized by the OdA ARTECURA for all modules leading to the HFP (higher professional examination) and we are eduQua-certified.

We work closely with the professional association for art therapy gpk.

Painting therapy - the therapy method at the APK

The method guides the person

• to project their inner state outwards onto an image (symbolization),
to let the image affect them as an impression (activating implicit memory)
• to reflect on oneself and the image, to experience the inappropriate and the appropriate and to move creatively in the resulting tension (by assimilating and accommodating),
• making the experience one's own (personification) and using it to further shape the picture in an active way, connected with what was in the picture and what can still become of it (presentification),
• distancing themselves from unsuitable pictorial elements and integrating suitable ones,
to continue your own actions until you reach your personal point of view: "Now it's right." (homeostasis),
• to find a language for the event, to create awareness through abstraction and to enable the experience to be stored in long-term memory (narrative work),
• evaluating experiences of trial and error, differentiation and integration and transferring good experiences into everyday life by practising and reviewing selected actions (validation and verification),
• to proceed dialogically in contact and exchange in the triad of client, work and therapist
.

Objectives of the method

Resource orientation:

The methodical interventions are chosen and dosed in such a way that they promote the inner strength and sensitivity of the person

Self-healing powers:

The natural human capacity for homeostasis is supported by the method of creating colors, shapes, forms and entire images that support the continuous search for and finding of a personal balance.

Presence identification:

Since life can only be shaped here and now, painting therapy places all therapeutic work with images in the context of the person currently shaping it. This emphasis in the method gives the person involved a self-determined choice, including in their current approach to the past and the future of their life.