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Introduction to Emotional Triggers in Visual Images (Pair Exercise - class divides into pairs). 1st year Undergraduates (UK) in Psychology of Counselling

• (1) Briefly describe how your artwork and project theme connects to the overall grade curriculum.
• The lesson plan introduces undergraduate counselling psychology learners to the importance of cues and prompts in the visual world through analysis of visual artefacts like this painting. This is part of a core introductory curriculum which looks at the relationship between phenomena in the world that we access through our senses, whether that be sight, hearing, smell and touch. For counselling learners the learning is related also to how people communicate with mutual empathy about the thoughts and feelings created by such stimuli. This first lesson emphasises how we access common structures of feeling and thought linked to the word 'home' and how we both introject and project feelings and thoughts. However, at this point of the curriculum and this lesson, we are concerned only with visual cues. Much of the learning will be based on sensitive listening and attempts to empathise using different modes of expression between the paired learners.
• (2) Describe two activity goals of your assignment and explain how they connect to the work of art. NOTE: The large learning group will after viewing and writing about the Wyeth panting be divided into pair groups. 
• (2a) Each participant will be able to demonstrate that they have responded in writing to the picture in terms of the emotions and thoughts that the picture as a whole and its formal elements create. In pairs they will also demonstrate the ability to communicate their thoughts orally, conveying a sense of what they saw and how they felt and thought about what they saw.
• (2b) In those same pairs, each participant will be able to demonstrate that they can listen to another person's response to the same visual stimulus that they themselves have just seen and reflected upon it in writing. From what they hear from their partner, they will draw a picture (aesthetic considerations will not come into this) which reflects what their partner saw and felt rather than what they saw and felt about the picture. The pairs will discuss together the drawings produced in terms of their responsiveness to what they themselves thought.
• (3) Write clear instructions for how another teacher should lead your activity.
• A class of 10 learners in counselling psychology (who are already known to each other) will be briefly introduced to the activity. It is a 3 hour session. They will all see a picture. This picture may be a very large poster reproduction or a projected slide. For 5 minutes, they will be asked to look at it silently allowing themselves to respond both with thoughts and feelings about painting. They will have been instructed not to talk to each other about the painting at this time.
• A standard open-ended question questionnaire will be handed out. (link opens in new window)
• Each person will fill out the questionnaire for a fixed duration of 25 minutes. They will have been instructed that they will be divided into pair-groups (being counselling learners they are familiar with that) and that the purpose of their answers will be to be communicate what they have written clearly in oral form to their partner in the pair.
• At the end of 25 minutes a comfort break (of 10 minutes) is given but people must leave their completed questionnaires upside down on their writing table. During this time the large reproduction of the painting will be removed.
• On return each person will retrieve their completed questionnaire. At this point a list of pair groups will be produced. The pairings will have been produced by random allocation by the teacher.
• In their designated pairs (named A/B), A will be given 10- minutes to talk about their responses to the painting (no longer on show of course) to B. B will then (for no more than 5 minutes ask A any questions they think will clarify what A saw and felt and thought about what they saw. Then roles will be reversed and the process repeated.
• There will be a 10 minute break. Pairs are asked not to communicate within their pairs during the break.
• On return, each learner will be instructed to make a drawing or sketch (aesthetic considerations will not be important and that is made clear to the learners) that demonstrates the central features of what their partner in their pair saw in the stimulus and how it made their partner  feel and think and why it did this. (They have 20 minutes and can leave the room to find a private space in the adjacent quiet room if they so wish).
• On return again, they give their pair-partner the drawing. Without communication, each pair-partner will reflect on the drawing they have been given for 5 minutes on their own.
• The pairs will reform. Taking each partner in turn (about 15 minutes each), the pairs will discuss how they felt about the picture completed by their partner stressing things they found that reflected their personal visual responses as they saw it best and anything they felt that was either an inaccurate reflection or one that challenged them to rethink how they felt. The pairs will ensure that they retain a good and empathetic relationship during that period.
• There will be a 10- MINUTE BREAK. The painting will be returned to view.
• On return the whole class will discuss the painting (now available again) and how it has changed for them in the course of the session,
• They will be given feedback forms and asked to return them during the next hour to the tutor's pigeonhole. On the feedback forms they will be given instructions on seeking a personal debriefing should they want one.

The Artwork Again