teams) conceived of their work as aiding in the spontaneous emergence of "symbolic speech" in the form of plastic and graphic art work and many of these therapists also "minimized any other special contribution of art activity to the treatment of the mentally ill" (p. 17).
Other art therapists surveyed by Ulman concentrated, instead, on the healing quality that is inherent in the creative process itself--a rationale for art therapy that was first examined in detail by Edith Kramer, another psychoanalyst, in the late 1950s (2001, p. 17). In this approach the creative act accomplishes at a metaphorical level the kind of working-out of conflicts sought by therapists. The struggle of the mentally ill person is to achieve the proper balance between instinctual urges expressed by the id and the rules the superego tries to apply. The artistic process is one in which the individual applies great perseverance and discipline in order to master skills and control materials in a satisfying manner but must also "maintain access to the primitive impulses an
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