ABOUT
Xavier Dany Girard M.A.
Sexologist – Psychotherapist.
OPSQ and ASQ member. Psychotherapy license issued by the OPQ. Accredited EMI practitioner.
“Créer des liens, des ponts et des images qui font du bien, du bon et bon ménage.”
I have been a therapist and clinician for the last twenty years. I studied as a sexologist and psychotherapist at Université du Québec à Montréal. I am also using art mediums in therapy and offering, along with my private practice, personal growth workshops called Art Ému. I am working, in association with sexologist Annette Vaillancourt, as co-founders, on a project dedicated to the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay… clientele and their families, Chrysalides 23. I also specialize in neurotherapy technic EMI: Eye Movement Integration.
My humanistic spirit, my clinical studies and my professional development as an artist are closely related to the phenomenological approach. Within Art Therapy, I advocate a movement inspired by this approach that I call PhénoménArt. In 2005, as speaker at the XVIIth World Sexology Congress, this PhénoménArt movement took off. In 2002, I also wrote the article: “L’art en thérapie, un autre outil, un autre langage”, in the Sexologie Actuelle magazine, vol. IX, October, 2000.
I am also illustrator and author of three poem books entitled: Une saison à peine connue, Rouge, Poil Fin.
On a personal note, my parents as well as myself are native from Saint-Henri des tanneries’district in the south west of Montreal Island. I studied piano, did my primary school at l’École Sainte-Mélanie on St-Antoine street, my classical high school at Esther Blondin at George-Étienne-Cartier park. Then, my need for freedom and my creativity soon led me to superior studies in arts in 1971, wood sculpture studies in 1984, at l’École de sculpture de Saint-Jean-Port-Joli in Québec. Much later in 1999, I was interested by the art therapy program at Concordia University in Montreal.