撮影した写真の振り返りによる大学生の自己表現および自己発見 <研究論文>

Photo therapy is a form of art therapy that was advocated by Yamanaka (1976). However,
the findings related to photo therapy are quite scarce. Therefore, this study focused on the
stimulation of self-expression and self-discovery that occurred when university students took
photographs and reviewed them. University students were made to review photographs taken
with the motif of an “attractive landscape.” The result was that reviewing photographs left the
university students feeling satisfied that they were able to express their feelings or thoughts.
Moreover, it was apparent that they reaffirmed their own interests or preferences or became
aware of new aspects of themselves. This suggests that photo therapy stimulated
self-expression and self-discovery in university students. It was also indicated that the act of
reviewing photographs did not make people resistant to expressing or facing themselves. Also,
the linguistic data related to the “awareness of self” that were obtained through these reviews
were organized into categories. The resultant categories were “preferences,” “living
conditions,” “features of the self,” and “the internal factors leading to taking photographs.”