Josée Leclerc, PhD, ATR-BC, ATPQ

Education and training

• PhD in Humanities, Concordia University
• MA in Art Therapy, Concordia University
• BA in Women's Studies, Concordia University
• Post-graduate training in Psychoanalytic
  
• Psychotherapy, Argyle Institute of Human Relations

Josée Leclerc is Professor in the Art Therapy Graduate Program, Department of Creative Arts Therapies. A board-certified art therapist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist, she has been working in private practice for the last 25 years. Dr. Leclerc obtained her PhD from the interdisciplinary Humanities Doctoral Program at Concordia University. She pursued her interdisciplinary research on the convergence between art and psychoanalysis with a three-year research grant from the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et culture (FQRSC), which culminated in the publication of Art et psychanalyse: pour une pensée de l'atteinte [Art and psychoanalysis: When the image strikes], as well as several articles. Her current research focuses on art and trauma. She has obtained a three-year research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the study of survival strategies in the art of six women deported from France to Nazi's prisons and camps. More recently, she has been studying the usefulness of response-art to foster awareness of racial discrimination. She has been offering workshops in Europe, the US and in Canada. Dr. Leclerc has published her work in monographs and scientific journals in Canada, the U.S., and in France, and has lectured extensively both at the national and international level.   

Professional affiliations

• Registry of holders of the psychotherapist permit, Ordre des psychologues du Québec
  
• Board Certified-Art Therapist Registered, American Art Therapy Association.
• Professional Member, Association des art-thérapeutes du Québec
• Professional Member, Association des psychothérapeutes psychanalytiques du Québec
• Associate Clinical Member, Argyle Institute of Human Relations

Research interests / expertise

Art and Trauma: To examine the survival strategies in images produced in the context of genocides (SSHRC funded research). To study how response-art may foster awareness of racial discrimination (Concordia Seed Grant)

Research questions include:

• Can drawings made by deportees in the Nazi camps be understood in terms of their embodied survival strategies?
• How does the portrait, as representation of a fellow being, both subvert and define the principles of an ethics of reception of concentration camp images?
• How can the witness function incumbent on the contemporary viewer of the images from the camps be conceived of and defined?
  

• Since the art therapist who bears witness to the "image as event" makes herself both subject and object of knowledge, how can the epistemological stance of the psychoanalytic art therapist be explored and defined?
• How can psychoanalytic and postmodern theories inform the ways in which countertransference to both patients and images takes form in the framework of art therapy?
• How can the relationship between psychic expression and creative expression be conceived of?

Grants / awards

• Dispositifs thérapeutiques et institutions de soin: enjeux cliniques contemporains de la consultationthérapeutique, Commission Recherche UniversitéParis 13-SPC; PI: Dr. Catherine Matha, Psychologie Clinique, Université Paris13 (24,500 Euros), 2015-2016.

  Therapeutic settings and care-providinginstitutions: Contemporary clinical issues in the therapeutic consultation, InternationalPsychoanalytic Association. PI: Dr. Isabelle Lasvergnas, UQÀM(15,300 US), 2016-2017.

• Répondre de l'image, Concordia Seed Funding Grant, 2012-2014.
• Art as Witness: Art, Art Therapy and Trauma Resolution International Conference, Sept. 18-20, 2008, Concordia Aid to Research Related Events.
• Étude des retombées thérapeutiques d'un programme d'art-thérapie oncologique: un avant-projet, Concordia Seed Funding Grant, 2007-2009.
• Art et trauma: Étude des stratégies de survivance dans l'art concentrationnaire, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 2005-2009.
• Quand l'image s'écrit: Une anthologie d'écrits d'artistes sur le thème de dessaisissement créateur, Fonds québécois de la recherche en société et culture (FQRSC), 2002-2005.
• Faculty Research Development Personnel, Concordia University, 2000-2003.
• Quebec Art Therapy Association Distinguished Service Award, 1997.

Theoretical orientation

• Psychodynamic (Post-Freudian Theory, Object Relations, Attachment Theory)
• Theories of trauma
• Post-modernism

Teaching / course offerings

• ATRP 600 - Readings in Art Therapy
• ATRP 620 - Advanced Art Therapy Clinical Skills
• ATRP 623 - Advanced Art Therapy Supervision I
• ATRP 624 - Advanced Art Therapy Supervision II

Select publications

• Leclerc, J. (accepted). What Seeks to be Represented: On the Sayable and theVisible in the Analytic Situation and in Mediated Psychotherapy.
  London, UK: Routledge.
  

• Leclerc, J. (accepted). Dispositif, disposition : le cadre de l’analyste en institution. Paris : Carnet Psy,Ed. Éres.

• Leclerc, J. (sous presse). Ce qui cherche à se figurer : du dicible et du visible dans le cadre de l'analyse et en psychothérapie à médiation. Monographie: Filigrane..

  
  

  Leclerc, J. & Drapeau,C-E. (2018). Response-art as a reflective inquiry: Fostering awareness of racism, The Arts in Psychotherapy Journal, 60,
  

  9-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2018.05.001.

  
  

• Thaler, L., Drapeau,C.-E., Leclerc, J.,Lajeunesse, M., Cottiera,D., Kahana, E., Ferenczy, N. & Steiger,H. (2017). An adjunctive, museum-based art therapy experience in the treatment of women with severe eating disorders. The Arts in Psychotherapy 56,pp. 1-6.

• Leclerc, J. (2013). Images concentrationnaires et mal d'archive, in Fabienne Charland, Katerine Gagnon & Simon Harel (Eds.) La confiance altérée (pp. 147-156). Montreal: Presses de l'Université Laval.

• Leclerc, J. (2013). A review of Through a narrow window: Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and her Terezin students, by L. Wix (2010). Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 30(1), 50-51.
  

• Leclerc, J. (2012). Quand l'image s'écrit: figures de l'atteinte dans le témoignage d'artistes (When the image writes home: The phenomenon of being struck, from the writing of artists). Montréal: Liber.

• Leclerc, J. (2012). When the image strikes: Post-Modern thinking and epistemology in art therapy. In H. Burt (Ed.) Art therapy and post modernism: Current trends and new research. Waterloo: University of Wilfred Laurier Press.

• Leclerc, J. (2011). Re-presenting trauma: The witness function in the art of the Holocaust, Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, (28)2, pp. 82-89.

• Leclerc, J. (2010). L'art-thérapie d'orientation psychanalytique. In J. Hamel & J. Labrèche (Eds.), Découvrir l'art-thérapie (pp. 88-99). Paris: Larousse.

• Leclerc, J. (2009). Desseins et destins de l'image: le pouvoir transformationnel de l'image en art-thérapie d'orientation psychanalytique, Revue Québécoise de Psychologie, 30(3), 43-56.

• Leclerc, J. (2008). Art trauma: Survival strategies in prisons and concentration camps art. Website hosting funded SSHRC research. http://joseeleclerc.concordia.ca.

• Leclerc, J. (2006). Du non-détachement. La méthode psychanalytique à l'épreuve du malentendu, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, coll. Petite bibliothèque de psychanalyse.

• Leclerc, J. (2006). The Unconscious as paradox: Impact on the epistemological stance of the art therapist. The Arts in Psychotherapy International Journal, 33, 130-134.

• Leclerc, J. (2004). Art et psychanalyse. Pour une pensée de l'atteinte [Art and psychoanalysis: When the image strikes]. Montreal: XYZ Editor.

• Leclerc, J. (2003). L'image en effet: Pour une pensée de la présentation. In Tanguay, D., Bolster, G., & Leclerc, J. (Eds.). Proceedings of Convergence: Common grounds and new perspectives in Creative Arts Therapies.

• Leclerc, J. (2002). La folie de Dieu: Parcours dans les graphies du vide divin, Spirale, 184, 30-31.

• Leclerc, J. (2001). Art et thérapie: Prolégomènes à une épistémologie de l'art-thérapie, Revue Française de Psychiatrie et de Psychologie Médicale, 50(5), 18-23.

Selected conferences

• Toward the Recognition and Regulationof Art Therapy: A Painting of the Canadian Landscape, panel, CanadianArt Therapy Association AnnualConference, Concordia U., October 12-14, 2018.

• Raising Awareness of Racism through Response-Art, research workshops, Masters’ program in Art
  Psychotherapy,Division of Occupational Therapy

  and Arts Therapies, Queen MargaretUniversity, April 23-27, 2018.

• Raising Awareness of Racism through Response-Art, research workshop, Department of Creative ArtsTherapies, June 8^th 2018.

• Genocidal art, response-art and efforts to awaken consciousness ofracism: Discussing ethics and
  methodology, J.Leclerc & C.-E. Drapeau,

  48^th Annual Conference,American Art Therapy

  Association, Albuquerque, NM,Nov. 8-12, 2017.

• La consultation psychanalytique en institution : quels transferts ?,Ciantaretto, J.-F., Cornalba, V., Lasvergnas. I., Leclerc, J., Matha, C. & Pinard, L., Paris, 3-4 mars 2017.

• Ciantaretto, J.-F., Cornalba, V., Lasvergnas. I., Leclerc, J., Matha, C. & Pinard, L., Montréal, 29 oct 2016

• Fostering consciousness of racist discrimination through response-art: A phenomenological research study, Canadian Art Therapy Association Annual Conference, Toronto, October 14-16, 2016

• La consultation psychanalytique aujourd’hui, Ciantaretto, J.-F., Cornalba, V., Lasvergnas. I., Leclerc, J., Matha, C. & Pinard, L., Séminaire franco-québécois et projet de recherche international, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, 21-22 mai 2016.

• The creative arts therapies within the context of Law 21, Creative Arts Therapies Awareness Week Symposium, March 19, 2016.

• Art-thérapie: fondements théoriques et applications thérapeutiques, invited speaker, UTA–Université de Sherbrooke, March 3, 2016.

• Response-art as a reflective inquiry: Fostering awareness of racism, J. Leclerc & C.-E. Drapeau,

  invited speakers, The Arts in Cultural Psychiatry: Identity,Creativity and Transformation, Advanced Study Institute, Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University, June 1-3, 2015.

   

• Répondre de l’image: L’art comme vecteur de conscientisation, Colloquium Art, creativity and well-being: Progress and challenges in the research in creative arts therapies, Acfas Congress, Montréal, May 12-13, 2014.