At this time in the development of AAP, which is still in its infancy in terms of the state of research and theory development, it is necessary to find a way to understand the mechanisms behind the processes that occur in AAP.  In the Appendix B, there is a list of various roles an animal fulfills in psychotherapy, according to various psychological theories, which throws much light on this subject.  In this chapter, we come from a different direction, describing a sort of unifying image/model that delineates the implications for the psychotherapy process of the presence of an animal, in all that this presence entails, as a medium through which the process of psychotherapy takes place.  This is an image/model borrowed from the world of philosophy, scientific literature and literature dealing with culture and specifically with areas of art.  In psychoanalytic writing, the concept medium is borrowed from the world of communication and from the world of art criticism.
     From our experience, compared to the mediums of other psychotherapies, the presence of animals in the therapy setting adds a richer and more multi-faceted medium, characterized by a width and depth that deserves inspection.  This conceptualization of the presence of the animal as a medium, as a source of enrichment for the therapy process, was born out of the authors' discussions of Ishai, Oren and Ishai’s article, “Medium for Expression and Medium for Healing – On Medium in Therapy” (2013). This article stimulated a rich discussion that eventually led to this chapter..

Form the first  chapter of the book
Oren, D., Parish –Plass, N.(2013).  The Present of Animals and all its Implications as a Unique Medium in Psychotherapy, Chapter 1, in  Animal-Assisted Psychotherapy: Theory, Issues and Practice (New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond), Edited by Parish-Plass, N. Purdue University Press.


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