Read the full announcement on the academic website
About the Volume
What happens when people bring their dreams, fantasies, memories, personal myths, and unconscious experiences into psychotherapy—not simply through spoken descriptions, but through creative works that can be seen, heard, performed, and experienced?
Throughout the history of psychotherapy, clients have used images, stories, objects, movement, music, and creative expression to communicate psychological experiences that may be difficult to articulate verbally.
The collection will engage the work of Carl Gustav Jung, Wolfgang Giegerich, James Hillman, and other depth psychologists, alongside psychoanalysis and contemporary psychotherapy approaches. Its theoretical scope includes Jungian analytical and archetypal psychology, CBT, narrative therapy, trauma-focused work, and expressive arts therapies.
Painting, clay, sculpture, sandplay, photography, music, psychodrama, filmmaking, digital storytelling, virtual reality, and AI-assisted creative expression are among the modalities through which individuals may explore memories, emotions, conflicts, identities, and imagined possibilities.
Contemporary digital technologies, including virtual reality, interactive media, and generative artificial intelligence, expand these possibilities. Yet the fundamental clinical question remains: How do therapists understand and respond when an individual's internal psychological experience becomes externally represented?
This proposed edited collection will bring together diverse theoretical traditions, clinical practices, and research approaches to explore the therapeutic meaning of externalized psychological experience, including dreams, fantasy, personal myth, and creative expression.
The volume is not intended primarily as a book about artificial intelligence. Rather, it examines the broader relationship among imagination, creative expression, psychological interpretation, and the therapeutic encounter.
The collection spans painting, clay, sculpture, sandplay, photography, music, psychodrama, filmmaking, digital storytelling, virtual reality, and AI-assisted creative expression across psychotherapy traditions. AI is one tool among many, not the primary subject.
Video Examples
Areas of Interest
Contributions are invited across the following overlapping areas.
1. Dreams, Imagination, and Personal Myth
- Dreams, nightmares, and dream interpretation
- Active imagination and symbolic expression
- Archetypes, complexes, and individuation
- Personal mythology, identity, and life narratives
- Fantasy, projection, and unconscious processes
2. Creative and Expressive Modalities
- Clay, sculpture, and three-dimensional expression
- Painting, drawing, and visual art
- Sandplay and miniature-world construction
- Music, sound, songwriting, and improvisation
- Drama therapy, psychodrama, and therapeutic performance
- Photography, phototherapy, and photographic self-representation
- Film/video-based therapy, animation, and digital storytelling
- Movement, embodiment, and interdisciplinary expressive arts
3. Psychotherapeutic Traditions and Clinical Interpretation
We welcome perspectives from:
- Psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy
- Jungian and post-Jungian analytical psychology
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
- Trauma-focused and exposure-based therapies
- Narrative and constructivist psychotherapy
- Humanistic, existential, and person-centered approaches
- Family systems and group psychotherapy
- Somatic and integrative psychotherapy
Authors are encouraged to examine how different therapeutic traditions understand, use, and interpret externalized psychological material, including points of convergence and disagreement.
4. Trauma, Memory, and Psychological Transformation
- Trauma narratives and post-traumatic growth
- Grief, loss, and remembrance
- Identity reconstruction and personal transformation
- Cultural memory and intergenerational experience
- Therapeutic relationships, witnessing, and meaning-making
- Ethical challenges associated with representation and interpretation
5. Emerging Technologies as Expressive Tools
- Virtual reality and immersive storytelling
- Therapeutic video games and interactive environments
- AI-assisted visual storytelling and filmmaking
- Digital representations of dreams and imagined experiences
- Authorship, privacy, consent, and psychological interpretation
- The distinction between human creative intention and algorithmically generated content
Artificial intelligence is welcome as a subject of critical examination or as a creative modality, but its inclusion is not required.
Central Questions for Contributors
Proposals should address one or more of the following:
- What changes when internal psychological experiences become visible, audible, embodied, or otherwise externalized?
- How does the chosen creative medium influence psychological expression and interpretation?
- How do therapists engage with client-created material without imposing interpretations?
- How do different psychotherapy traditions conceptualize the relationship between creative expression and psychological change?
- What ethical, cultural, relational, and clinical considerations arise when clients share personally meaningful creative works?
Types of Contributions
We welcome theoretical chapters, critical literature reviews, empirical research, clinical-methodology chapters, ethically presented case studies, and interdisciplinary scholarship.
Contributions should demonstrate a clear relationship to psychotherapy, psychological theory, or clinically relevant research. Descriptive accounts of artistic techniques alone are unlikely to be sufficient.
Chapter Proposal Submission Requirements
Please submit:
- Proposed chapter title
- 300–500-word abstract outlining the central argument, theoretical orientation, methodology or evidence base, and contribution to the volume
- 5–7 keywords
- Author name, credentials, institutional affiliation, and contact information
- Brief biography of approximately 100 words
- Identification of the primary creative modality and psychotherapeutic tradition
- Disclosure of any generative-AI use in preparing the proposed work
Coauthored and interdisciplinary submissions are welcome.
Anticipated Chapter Requirements
Selected authors will be invited to develop chapters of approximately 6,000–8,000 words, subject to final editorial and publisher requirements.
Chapters should demonstrate scholarly rigor, engage relevant literature, distinguish empirical findings from theoretical interpretations, and discuss implications for clinical practice, research, or professional education.
Any clinical material must follow applicable confidentiality, informed-consent, and ethical requirements. AI-generated material must be appropriately disclosed and should not be presented as independent clinical evidence.
Selection Process
Abstracts will be evaluated for:
- Relevance to the central theme
- Theoretical and scholarly contribution
- Clinical or research significance
- Methodological rigor and ethical considerations
- Originality and contribution to a balanced, interdisciplinary collection
Selection will also consider the overall coherence of the book and representation of different therapeutic traditions and expressive modalities.
An invitation to submit an abstract does not guarantee selection. Acceptance of an abstract does not guarantee chapter acceptance or publication and does not constitute a publishing contract.
Submission Information
- Chapter abstract deadline
- February 15, 2027, at 11:59 PM Pacific Time
- Submission route
- Email your proposal directly to Dr. Cohen.
Submit a Chapter Proposal
Submit your proposal using the form below by February 15, 2027, at 11:59 PM Pacific Time. Your information and proposal will be emailed directly to Dr. Cohen for review. This form does not create a searchable online submission record or accept file attachments.
Privacy and project status: Please do not include confidential or identifiable client/patient information. This is a proposed scholarly edited collection being assembled for submission to Routledge / Taylor & Francis; publication is not guaranteed, no publishing contract has been finalized, and submission does not guarantee selection, chapter acceptance, or publication.
Need to include a document? Send your proposal and optional PDF or Word attachment directly to Dr. Cohen by email.
Publication Status
This is a proposed scholarly edited collection being assembled for submission to Routledge / Taylor & Francis. Publication is not guaranteed, Routledge has not approved or contracted the volume, and no publishing contract has been finalized. All proposed contributions remain subject to editorial review, final selection, and any required publisher approval.
Proposed Editor
Dr. Joshua L. Cohen, PhD
Founder, Film/Video-Based Therapy™
Editor and coeditor of three Routledge volumes on filmmaking, psychotherapy, trauma, and post-traumatic growth.