Have you ever answered "fine" when someone asked how you are, not as a lie, yet knowing it was more than that and not knowing where to begin? Sometimes what can be said is a little less than what is felt. What if you didn't have to say it right first, and could draw it instead?
So the situation at the start needn't mean you are being dishonest, or that you don't want to say. Art therapists hold that some experience can't yet be put into words: it is too early, too tangled or too painful. An image needn't make sense first, so it can be the first step; once there is an image, there is something to talk about, slowly. This is the approach's theoretical claim; how much it achieves, and for whom, is for the evidence section below. Jungian therapists also work with drawing and active imagination; that thread is on the Jungian page.[9,13]
Hence art therapy: it is psychotherapy led by a professionally trained therapist: art materials (paint, pastels, clay, collage and the like) serve as the main way of expressing and communicating, within a therapeutic relationship. The American Art Therapy Association (AATA) describes it as combining active art-making, psychological theory and the therapy relationship; the British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT) stresses that clients need no art experience or skill.[1,2,16]
The commonest misunderstanding is that the therapist reads the picture like a test. BAAT's definition says plainly that the therapist is not primarily concerned with making an aesthetic or diagnostic assessment of the client's image. What matters is the making, and how you talk about what you have made.[1,16]
The profession has two complementary roots. In the United States, Margaret Naumburg treated spontaneous drawing as a kind of symbolic speech inside psychoanalytically oriented therapy, with therapist and client exploring what the image might mean. Edith Kramer instead stressed the power of the making itself: in her work with children, sustained absorption in a piece of work could already help someone organise feelings and recover self-respect. Most therapists today move between the two ends as the client needs, and Judith Rubin's work sets the various approaches side by side.[6,7,8,9]
Another core idea is the "third". Donald Winnicott held that therapy takes place in the space where two people play together; art therapy gives that space a concrete object. Joy Schaverien and others call it a triangular relationship: client, therapist, and the image the client has made. With the image set between you, talking is safer than talking directly about yourself, and the distance is workable: you can look at it, change it, push it away or pull it closer, without having to begin by speaking about yourself, much as you needn't first answer "how are you?".[9,10,11]
Two distinctions are worth making. Expressive arts therapy is also therapy, but it links several art forms (visual art, music, movement, drama and writing) in one process; "art therapy" usually means work centred on the visual arts. Colouring classes, "healing art" workshops and colouring books are another matter: they can relax, but they aren't therapy, since there is no trained therapist, no assessment of your situation and no therapeutic relationship.[2,3,5]
