Lucia Capacchione

Lucia Capacchione (3 November 1937 – 28 November 2022) was an Italian-American psychologist, art therapist, former graphic designer and a writer who has been bestseller of twenty-two books based on child therapy and self-help, including The Creative Journal (1979) and Recovery of Your Inner Child (1991). She discovered the use of 'writing and drawing with the non-dominant hand' method in art therapy, which she first mentioned it in her work The Power of Your Other Hand (1988). She was the director of Head Start program during the period of President Johnson's war on poverty. A long-time member of American Art Therapy Association and International Expressive Arts Therapy Association, she was also a consultant to Walt Disney Imagineering from 1983 till 1993. Due to medical complications that lead to neurological imbalance Lucia died by suicide on November 28, 2022.

Early life
Capacchione was born to a Roman Catholic Italian immigrant family on November 3, 1937, in West Hollywood, California, United States. Her father and grandparents hailed from San Ferdinando di Puglia, Apulia, Italy who moved to Los Angeles County somewhere between 1908 and 1920. She spent her preschool days in New Chinatown before moving to Crenshaw where she attended Roman Catholic convents schools such as St. Paul's Grammar School and St. Mary's Academy. She was exposed to major talent of the time attending live opera, concerts. musicals and plays at the L.A. Philharmonic and Baltimore Theater. In 1950, at the age of 13, she began Saturday classes at the Otis Art Institute in the Harrison Gray Otis mansion in Los Angeles. She graduated from Immaculate Heart High School in 1955, with classmate Mary Tyler Moore. She married Peter Pearce in 1960 and has two daughters with him.

Education
According to her Facebook profile, after completing her studies from Immaculate Heart High School in 1955, she pursued bachelors in fine arts and English literature from now-defunct Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, graduating in 1959. She further pursued masters in psychology and art therapy from Goddard College in Plainfield, graduating in 1975. She holds a PhD degree in psychology from Summit University of Louisiana in New Orleans, graduating in 1990.

Career
Capacchione started-off her internship as a trainer in various programs of American Montessori Society in the 1960s. She was later appointed as a Child Development Supervisor for Catholic Charities (an affiliate of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles) in December 1965 and even got certified through Dr. Thomas Gordon's Parent Effectiveness Training and Teacher Effectiveness Training. She resigned from the Archdiocese in 1967 but remained a consultant to both of the organizations' programs in Pasadena and New Jersey. She also produced two documentaries while being the director of Head Start program, Learning to Learn and I Wanna Be Ready.

In 1973, Lucia fell mysteriously ill and was misdiagnosed by doctors several times. As a result, she suffered with the side-effects of wrong medications. She then started venting her emotions and thoughts in sketchbooks and saw them morph into journals. She mentioned this new self discovered healing method of the inner-child in many of her works, such as The Creative Journal (1979). In 1976, she discovered the use of 'writing and drawing with the non-dominant hand' method, which she first mentioned it in her work The Power of Your Other Hand (1988) and also a method of reparenting which she documented in her book Recovery of Your Inner Child (1991). She was a consultant to Walt Disney Imagineering for ten years from 1983 till 1993 where she worked with designers and builders on various Disney theme parks and stores.