Trauma detection through poetry therapy

Author and Art Therapist Mehmet Çağan’s album “Poetry Therapy”, which aims to provide therapy with poems for therapists and individuals who want to find themselves in the world of emotions, has been completed. With the experimental phase of the work, it was scientifically proven that art affects emotions and thoughts very much, and it was revealed that trauma can be detected with poems.

The poetry album titled “Are You Aware?” prepared for poetry therapy, the first stage of the art therapy series, which is one of the points where science and art meet, met with its listeners on digital platforms. The works prepared by Writer, Art Therapist Mehmet Çağan for art to exercise “memory memory” were performed by master dubbing artists such as Sungun Babacan, Gülen Karaman, Uğur Taşdemir, Rıza Karaağaçlı, Arda Aydın, Ahmet Saraçoğlu, Eser Eyüboğlu, Bedia Öztep, Murat Atıl, Seyfi Dinç and Tarkan Koç. Çağan’s poems, which came to life in the breath of master names, were brought to a cinematic dimension with specially prepared music, undercurrent frequencies and sounds.

The poems, which also touch on the person’s past traumas through emotional memory, enable the individual to accept the “therapy” more easily with the motto “Notice, accept, act and manage”. In this context, the restorative power of art on the human psyche has been scientifically proven through experiments conducted on a group. The studies, in which it was determined that art is very effective in emotions and thoughts, were also published in an international refereed journal.

The effect of poetry on human emotions and thoughts was measured

Doğuş University Psychology Department Head Assistant Professor Kahraman Güler, who is involved in the scientific leg of the study, explained the meeting of art and science with the following statements:

“It is possible to say that symbols and words reflect human psychological experiences a lot. We know how important poetry is in a person’s love and emotional life or human relationships. A society and an individual cannot exist without art. Poetry is about creating sentences with small words and bringing together big spiritual experiences in those small words. In the album created, poems were prepared with beautiful melodies and words. We also took part in the scientific part of this study. We measured the effect of poetry by conducting pre-test and post-test studies with a group of people without breaking away from science.”

“Art has a lot of influence on emotions and thoughts”

Stating that art is indispensable for a person to make sense of himself and his environment, Güler said: “Art has a very important place in people’s lives, but when it comes to emotions, thoughts and mental states, it is useful to act more scientifically and systematically. This is what we have done in this study and we have seen that no matter which field of art it is, it has a great influence on people’s feelings and thoughts. Especially poetry is extremely important for people to reveal their own feelings, to recognize and understand themselves, and to make sense of their feelings towards other people. Therefore, poetry, literature and art will continue to take place in psychology and will become more and more effective.”

The poems were composed by writer and art therapist Mehmet Çağan

Author and Art Therapist Mehmet Çağan, who stated that they created the poems with the aim of therapy, said: “Thanks to my 20 years of art experience and 10 years of science studies, poems with the aim of therapy were created. Çağan wrote these poems for therapists and individuals who want to find themselves in their own emotional world. We care about people. Because not every person can afford therapy. On the other hand, they may not be able to find a suitable therapist. This album will be a companion for these people.”

“Realize, accept, act, pass and manage”

Noting that they created the poetry album in the light of science and art, Çağan stated that especially subconscious traumas can be accessed with the poems and said, “Every work of art actually works with the ‘memory memory’ in the subconscious. So when you listen to any poem, you can go to the traumatized region of the subconscious with emotions. If you feel negativity while listening to the poem, the content of the poem may be a trauma of your past. So when you listen to this work, you may encounter your trauma. The biggest feature that distinguishes this work of art from others starts here. When you listen to any poem in the work, you can encounter your trauma through emotional memory. With this, you can experience awareness. With notice, accept, act, pass and manage, this therapy ensures acceptance. It instills acceptance and hope,” he said.

Master names performed the poems

“When you use Turkish well and make music and sounds close to perfection, it becomes easier for the subconscious mind to accept,” said Çağan, adding, “Caring about detail is caring about therapy. For this reason, we worked with dubbing artists. We embarked on this path wholeheartedly together. We worked with Turkey’s most important dubbing artists such as Sungun Babacan, Gülen Karaman, Uğur Taşdemir, Rıza Karaağaçlı, Arda Aydın, Ahmet Saraçoğlu, Eser Eyüboğlu, Bedia Öztep, Tarkan Koç, Murat Atıl, Seyfi Dinç. Dubbing artists brought poetry to the dimension of cinema. It became poetry theater and poetry cinema. With Serkan Sönmezocak’s touch, we saw the restorative power of art very clearly.”

“We cared about the sensitivities of mind structures”

Musician Arranger Serkan Sönmezocak, who gave life to the works with his music, stated that they carried out a collective work and said, “In this work, I designed music, undercurrent frequencies and sounds. As a valuable branch of art, music and sounds have the ability to affect people’s emotional memory. When you access people’s emotional memory, you actually enter the subconscious field of the person. When you enter the subconscious field, you have the chance to change the mind structure of that person and influence them. When we look at the psychiatric field, when you examine mind structures, you see that some mind structures work differently, function differently. While doing our work, we paid attention to the sensitivities of these mind structures. While placing art within the framework of science, we embraced the sensitivities of the clients and listeners.”