Drawing, painting, and modeling can be used to bring unconscious material to light. Once a series has become dramatic, it can easily pass over into the auditive or linguistic sphere and give rise to dialogues and the like. - Carl Gustav Jung, 1941
Art therapy is the process of creating visual images and responding to them within a safe, contained and supportive environment and relationship with a therapist to express and explore inner conflicts, feelings, and thoughts for the purpose of emotional healing and growth. It is for individuals of all ages, ability levels and cultural backgrounds presenting a variety of social, psychological and physical difficulties. No special talent in art or previous experience with art materials are necessary.
Some people have no words or only limited words for what has happened to them. They need a visual voice because their verbal voice was taken away from them. Art Therapy can help them form and express clear and precise pictures of whatever is sucking them into downward spirals and blocking their ability to be present, to grow, and to become who they want to be.
Visual art materials, art-making process, created images, and clients’ responses to all the above play a central role within the therapeutic relationship. Clients’ responses to their art are viewed as representing their concerns and conflicts. The art therapist's intervention is based on her familiarity with art-making process as well as with human development, psychological theories, and different models of treatment for reconciling emotional conflicts, reducing anxiety, increasing self-esteem and fostering self-awareness.
Art therapy takes place in a studio, a therapeutic space that is ideally located in a quiet, bright, comfortable and safe building. Ideally, the art therapy studio incorporates good quality art materials laid out on a table, natural lighting from windows, private sink and washroom, paper storage area, shelving for the wet paintings and clay works, recycled and found objects, artworks on the walls, plants and fountain, and inspiring music from tapes or radio stations. All these elements, together, would create an atmosphere that is claimed by feelings, transmits a creative energy and confirms that it is a safe place to do art.
Advantages of Art Therapy
Art therapy has many empowering aspects and advantages over verbal psychotherapy.
- It offers many possibilities for opening up, involving you in a tactile, visual and kinetic way, in works that use physical sensations, feelings and ideas.
- It enables those who cannot verbalize what is going on in their lives and how they are feeling, to express themselves.
- It enables those who over-verbalize and thus block their real feelings, to express themselves.
- It provides you with a means of communication that is more holistic and closer to the spatial way the mind works, instead of struggling to come up with the right sentence or logic.
- It accelerates connecting to the issue, as art making for self-expression cuts quickly to your soul.
- It is boundlessly flexible in relation to children's and adolescents’ developmental level, as it allows them to create and express themselves with the help of whatever knowledge they would have at the time.
- It is helpful for abused children and adolescents who cannot engage in an insight-oriented verbal psychotherapy with an adult authority figure.
- It allows for the process of objectification whereby you externalize your feelings in an art product that serves as a bridge for you to get in touch with your inner self and connect to the outside world. Looking at an art object that embodies your dilemma, you can recognize it and integrate your feelings more readily.
- It enables you to produce something tangible and visible out of what is within your heart and soul, bringing it to conscious awareness in a concrete manner.
- It offers you a container, in the form of the art medium, for your sometimes uncontrollable feelings.
- It offers you the possibility of tapping into deep layers of the collective unconscious by exploring the world of myth and dreams, something that is not available in ordinary talking therapy.
- It inspires in you the desire to create out of your discomfort. It allows you to master your anxiety through creative expression and thus have a corrective emotional experience.
- It strengthens your healthy ego instantly by offering you the twofold venture of releasing the unconscious material (sublimation) and receiving satisfaction from the finished art work.
- Finally, artistic acts of empowerment help you to transform yourself from victims to survivors or heroes.
Art Therapy Session
Art therapy uses the same underlying principles that verbal psychotherapy does: Identifying an issue (where, why, how are we stuck), getting the inside out (thoughts and feelings), looking at and understanding it better (developing insight), realizing what action is needed to change the dynamic involved, and taking constructive action in your life (applying what you've learned). But, unlike purely verbal therapy, art therapy is hands-on and action-oriented from the start. An art therapy session usually consists of two parts: the process of art-making, and the exploration of the art-making product.
Process of art-making
Art therapy is more about the process of art making and the experience of creativity, than with producing a fabulous image.
- Many people find the simple act of holding a crayon and making a mark to be powerful. With those of you who have not done any art since primary school, working with images would bring back your childhood memories. As you work, your hands sometimes seem to have something to say. This curiosity opens the door to insightful surprises as you shift into a fresh way of listening to yourself.
- In the process of art making in the therapeutic studio, the art therapist is in your company as you make art, engages in making art along with you, and accepts and honors your art work. The difficulties that you face in the process of art making could mimic obstacles you create in your daily lives. Developing your creativity and having this process witnessed and supported is an effective way to question these difficulties. As trust develops between you and the therapist, the art making becomes a source of nourishment and strength, a framework for risk taking, and gradually more goal oriented and focused on important issues.
- Creating something with the energy of your anxieties and expressing your issues in some kind of creative form is most healing. Creating a form out of your difficulty transforms you from the object of this difficulty into a strong creative subject. Once your expressed difficulty can be seen as an art work, it does not have to live inside you anymore. Once you give the energy of anxiety a form, you can name that form and by doing so, you can make it lose its power over you.
- There are many different inspirations for you to begin the art making: memories, feelings, dreams, body sensations, ideas, doodles, or attraction to a specific colour. You would then use art materials to examine these sources by giving them a physical form.
- The art therapist may intervene in your art-making process by using techniques that are designed to help you get in touch with your inner feelings. Some of these techniques are more spontaneous, while others are more directed. You may be invited to express yourself freely, and not to worry about planning the picture. You may be invited to relax and begin to draw free lines or make scribbles on paper. Then, you are asked to try to see what you can find in the scribbles and form a picture from these scribbles and tell a story about it.
- You can be given one or more pieces of paper that already have a few lines or simple shapes on them. These shapes or lines act as a starting point for you, and they are to be incorporated into a larger picture. The art therapist might draw a circle and ask you to draw inside or outside of the circle. You may be asked to use your non-dominant hand and to choose the specific materials or colours with which you wants to work. You may be asked to paint or draw three wishes you have, or to paint something happy, something sad.
- The art therapist may use guided imagery, leading you through a relaxation and then taking you on a journey while your eyes are closed and your body relaxed. Then you are asked to draw what you see at the end of the journey. You may be asked to select one statement from "I am", "I feel", "I have" or "I do" and paint about it. The art therapist may give you one minute to draw yourself. You may be asked to draw yourself as any kind of animal, or as the animal that you see yourselves as most similar to. You may be asked to draw a house, a tree and a person in one picture, or create a collage as your personal world out of pieces of pictures you choose.
Exploration of the art-making product
In the second part of the art therapy session, you and the art therapist look at your art work together and collaborate in an effort to understand it.
- The art therapist does not interpret or analyze your artwork, rather she allows you to tell the story behind your artwork. The therapist has ideas, questions about and responses to the pictures and sculptures, but ultimately does not know the meaning of the work beyond what you confirm. By having respect for your art work and for the autonomy of the image itself, the art therapist allows you to feel safe from interpretation and judgement. Even in silence your art work stands as a concrete yet mysterious statement that may or may not be understood.
- Simply looking at your art work offers insights. Seeing that you have drawn yourself with no mouth or sharp nails can evoke ideas and feelings about yourself that may not be easily defined. In abstract art, suddenly it might feel important that two shapes are kept apart, or that they are connected.
- A difficult issue often seems more approachable when it is embodied in an image. Because it’s "out there" it may be easier to talk about and look at. As the art becomes a container for overwhelming feelings, it is sometimes a safe place for catharsis. It can be an important learning seeing your anger asserted visually, and having those feelings witnessed and accepted.
- Within the play of making art, often a metaphor holds several layers of meaning at one time. The artwork may concretely express ambiguous feelings or seemingly unrelated experiences. The wall that you have painted to repel your mother's criticisms, may also become a device that brings you power when you need it. In the art, there is no need to decide if it is one thing or the other. Staying within a metaphor that emerges in the art, you can respond to your imagery directly. You can find a restful position for the frail and weeping clay girl. This kind of response can both prompt deep feelings and give those feelings concrete expression.
- Another aspect of art therapy is that the product of art-making remains beyond the session as a source of further reflection. Also, private rituals can evolve around the artwork; a clay piece connected to grieving can be placed by the sea to dissolve with the tide. An angry image can be burned or smashed. An enigmatic picture can be framed for further reflection.
, Azadeh Azad
