Counselor Linda Foster shows excerpts of Toy Story to students at Erwin Middle School a technique called cinematherapy. It helps children identify their emotions and, in this case, discuss what it takes to be a good friend.

It could be Beaches, or Casablanca or The Lion King, but most people have a movie they consider a sentimental favorite, often because the film has a scene or theme that mirrors their own experience.

Counselors here use this empathy as a tool for communicating with clients, especially children who need to express their feelings but don't have the words to do so. It's among the many techniques counselors have devised in recent years to address rising incidents of drugs, violence, abuse. and other emotional issues among students.

This cinematherapy works because clients often see a character's emotion or circumstance they identify as one of their own. That helps them to talk about it, said Linda Foster, a counselor for students at Erwin Middle School and the UAB Campus Counseling Center.

"We're using pop culture to try and help students gain insights into their feelings and thoughts," Foster said. She earned a master's degree in counseling from UAB in 1997, and she's working on a degree as an education specialist.

Foster said cinematherapy helps her tremendously during classroom guidance lessons, in consultations with teachers and students and in small group sessions for children with various issues.

"It can be an animated movie or a live-action movie," Foster said. "In a classroom, it's been great for discussion. I recently showed a first-grade class scenes from Toy Story, and it prompted great conversation among 6-year-olds about friendship."

Clips from movies, such as the animated Toy Story or the live-action Good Will Hunting, can prompt people to talk about their feelings and explore socialissues that they might not otherwise be comfortable discussing.

She said clips from movies and television are useful in initiating conversation about problem-solving and help children recognize emotions or feelings for which they have no words.
Clips from movies, such as the animated Toy Story or the live-action Good Will Hunting, can prompt people to talk about their feelings and explore socialissues that they might not otherwise be comfortable discussing.
For example, scenes from The Lion King have been useful in talking about death, feelings of guilt and grief.

"You can talk about the feelings that Simba bad when his father dies, and it helps the children identify with it, even if they can't verbalize their feelings," Foster said. "Watching a movie clip, the kids can say 'That's me, that's how I feel.' Then we can see what we can do with that."

Using film and television clips, counselors often are able to help clients relive an experience or recreate a situation, she said. Among adults, the clips enable counselors to ease the discomfort a client might feel in talking about a particular problem.

"This is a current trend in school settings and individual counseling sessions," Foster said. "There's beginning to be more research on it, on the process and the results."

Assistant Professor Larry Tyson (Education) said this technique works well with counseling students at UAB, too. For example, scenes from the movie Good Will Hunting help students identify good and bad counseling techniques, and portions of Oprah Winfrey's performance in Beloved can be used to help them recognize signs of mental illness or impairment.

Tyson and Foster also are interested in the ways other counselors use cinematherapy. Along with counselor education student Cindy Jones, they plan to set up a Web site for counselors to share examples of cinematherapy techniques that work and list useful movies and topics they can discuss with clients.

"It will be a site that is constantly changing," Tyson said. "The whole, basic idea is that there are very few people that go to a movie theater that have not been moved by what they've seen on-screen. We go to the movies to become emotionally charged. The key is the counselor's ability to find something in a film that their client can relate to."

During Counselor Awareness Month, Foster will give a presentation on cinematherapy in school counseling 6 p.m. May 19 in the Education Building. For information, call Foster, 853-5995.