User:Anne9853/Barry Cohen

Barry Marc Cohen, born November 1954, is an American scholar, art collector, art therapist, and entrepreneur.

Early life

As a teenager, Cohen was mentored by Charles "Li" Hidley, an expressionist painter who trained in New York and Mexico City. Cohen studied painting and stage direction at Hampshire College. He studied Art Therapy at the University of Louisville, where his primary influence was pioneer art therapist Janie Rhyne.

Career

Scholar

In 1991, Cohen co-authored Multiple Personality Disorder From the Inside Out, personal accounts of what it means to live with the disorder written by people with the diagnosis. . Cohen and his co-authors Esther Giller and Lynn W. were given the Distinguished Service Award by the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation (now, the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation) in 1991 for bringing information to the lay audience about this often misunderstood condition.

The Diagnostic Drawing Series

See also: Art therapy

The Diagnostic Drawing Series (DDS) was developed by Barry Cohen and art therapy colleagues (Cohen, Hammer, & Singer, 1988). Cohen was interested in developing an assessment tool capable of visually depicting psychiatric information about patients, their perception of the world, and their existence within it. The DDS is notable as the first drawing assessment to be directly linked through research to diagnostic categories as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-IV-TR] (APA, 2000). In 1983, Cohen and his colleagues Shira Singer and Anna Reyner were awarded the annual Research Award of the American Art Therapy Association in recognition of the multi-site research design of the DDS. As an assessment tool, the DDS significantly differs from traditional methods of art-based interpretations that have dominated in previous decades (Cohen, Hammer, & Singer, 1988). The development of the DDS has purposefully shifted away from interpretative, subjective approaches in hopes of creating a more empirically-based assessment and research tool. In doing so, Cohen and colleagues have demonstrated a relationship between art elements and psychiatric diagnoses.

Cohen is the Director of the DDS Project, an international network of mental health professionals who use the Diagnostic Drawing Series clinically and for research. Communication between interested professionals is possible by means of the DDS listserve. More than 65 studies related to the Diagnostic Drawing Series, many of them norming the graphic profiles of various psychiatric diagnoses and controls, have been completed . Cohen offers an annual DDS Research Award with cash prize.

Cohen established the Diagnostic Drawing Series Archive as a resource for researchers near Washington DC. It contains DDS drawings by people aged 13 and over, collected by art therapists and other mental health professionals according to a standardized protocol. In 2000 the Archive was described as including "approximately 1500 Series made by Controls and patients representing 30 clinical diagnoses (about 4500 pictures). It also contains Drawing Analysis Forms for most of the collection, and unpublished papers by DDS researchers." The size of the Archive had doubled, approximately, by 2010.

Art collector

A collector since his youth, Cohen amassed works of interest that have been loaned to museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (1987), the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia (1996), and the Museum of Craft and Folk Art (1990). Pieces from his collection have been featured in books on fine art and art by untrained artists.

Exhibitions

• "From the Collection of Barry M. Cohen." Show organized by the Folk Art Society of American, Meadow Farm Museum, Glen Allen, VA, 1984.
• One person show of paintings, Art Association of Harrisburg, PA, 1984.

Art therapist

In 1989, Cohen founded the Eastern Regional Conference on Trauma (also known as the Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and Multiple Personality and the Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse, Trauma, and Dissociation), which he chaired and managed in Virginia for its seven year duration.

Two inpatient psychiatric units for the treatment of survivors of trauma, particularly those who were highly dissociative, were co-founded by Cohen and his partners.

In 1995, he co-authored Telling Without Talking: Art as a Window into the World of Multiple Personality Disorder with Carol T. Cox, and the workbook Managing Traumatic Stress Through Art: Drawing from The Center with Mary Barnes and Anita Rankin.

Barry Cohen is the Executive Director of the non-profit organization Expressive Media Inc., established by Judith A. Rubin and Eleanor C. Irwin, which creates and distributes training films and videos on the expressive therapies. In 2010 he convened the Expressive Therapies Summit in New York City as a training conference for expressive therapists and other mental health professionals, which also functions to support the educational efforts of Expressive Media Inc. The conference has convened annually, managed by Cohen, since then.

Entrepreneur

As an entrepreneur and owner of b4rTIME, Inc., Cohen created and promoted antiques fairs in York, PA, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and Santa Fe. His Historic Indian and World Tribal Arts show in Santa Fe featured vetting by the Antique Tribal Arts Dealers Association (ATADA) to ascertain the authenticity and integrity of the objects offered for sale. These shows were well-received in reviews in the trade (Maine Antiques Digest) and general (New York Times) press.

Publications

• Cohen, B., Barnes, M., & Rankin, A. (1995). Managing traumatic stress through art: Drawing from The Center. Lutherville, MD: The Sidran Press. Sold 8,000 copies in English. Korean edition: 예술을 통해 외상 후 스트레스 관리를, 2006.
• Cohen, B. & Cox, C. (1995). Telling without talking: Art as a window into the world of multiple personality. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Sold 6,000 copies.
• Cohen, B., Giller, E., & L.W. (Eds.). (1991). Multiple personality disorder from the inside out. Lutherville, MD: The Sidran Press. Sold 70,000 copies.

Papers and reports

• Cohen, B. & Mills, A. (1999). Skin/paper/bark: Body image, trauma, and the Diagnostic Drawing Series. In J. Goodwin & R. Attias (Eds.), Splintered reflections: Images of the body in trauma (pp. 203-221). New York: Basic Books.
• Cohen, B. (1996). Art and the dissociative paracosm: Uncommon realities. In L. Michaelson & W. Ray (Eds.), Handbook of dissociation: Theoretical, empirical and clinical perspectives (pp. 525-544). New York: Plenum.
• Courtois, C., Turkus, J., & Cohen, B. (1994). Development of an inpatient dissociative disorders unit. In M. B. Williams & J. F. Summer (Eds.), Handbook of post-traumatic therapy (pp. 463-473). Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing.
• Cox, C.T. & Cohen, B. (2005). The unique role of art making in the treatment of DID. Psychiatric Annals, 35(8).
• Mills, A., Cohen, B. M., & Meneses, J. Z. (1993). Reliability and validity tests of the Diagnostic Drawing Series. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 20 (1), 83-88.

Interviews

• Internet: "For the Love of Creativity: The Passionate Pursuit of Self-Taught Artists: A Conversation with Barry M. Cohen, Collector." David Low, National Endowment for the Arts. 1993. http://www.ils.unc.edu/dpr/path/outsiderart/online.html#indexes
• Radio: "Multiple Personality Disorder," The Larry King Show. Mutual Broadcasting Network, with Frank W. Putnam and Cornelia B. Wilbur. August 14, 1989.
• Radio: "Drawings and Diagnosis," All Things Considered, National Public Radio, November 1, 1984.
• Journal: “Therapist seeks correlation between diagnosis, drawings”. Carol Turkington, American Psychological Association Monitor, 16(4), 34-36. 1985.