Art Therapy in Group Settings

Art therapy appears to have emerged as a discrete psychotherapeutic discipline in the 1960s and 1970s. The tone of the literature of the early stage suggests that it was thought to be something of an adjunct to traditional--indeed Freudian--psychotherapeutic approaches, perhaps a helpful bridge to initiating communication with patients in a clinical setting (Ulman, 1966). However tentative the earliest theory of art therapy may have been, evidence of its clinical utility over the last 40 years or so has mounted. The result is that it has found application in a whole range of psychological interventions and schools of practice, from person-centered to Gestalt to self-psychology to object-relations and beyond (Rubin, 2001).

One important fact about art therapy is the emphasis theorists and practitioners place on defining the term. Rubin's definition of art therapy (1982), for example, holds that both art and therapy must be involved in a clear understanding of that term. Walle

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use of art materials and activities to evoke overt patient expressiveness. Riley (2001, p. 54) says that "imagery taps into a person's earliest way of knowing and reacting to the world" and may externalize by making visual the sources of emotional stress. Additionally, externalization of the stress makes it objective to client as well as therapist, thus available for comment and therapeutic intervention. Without the objectification that art fosters, a therapeutic intervention could seem "intrusive" and antithetical to the project of building an environment of safety (Dunn-Snow & D'Amelio, 2000). Another response that art-therapy clients may engage in is related to the notion of expressing themselves but can be distinguished from it: using art as an outlet for emotions, particularly negative or aggressive tendencies. For example, Moffat and Friedman (1973) report the case of a schizophrenic man who not only worked obsessively on producing art works while hospitalized but also actually sold some of the art and in the process found a new career. Their main point is that the patient responded to art in a way that allowed art to help manage and bring under control his erotic and aggressive pathologies. A similar dynamic is described b
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Approximate Word count = 2918
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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