5 myths about Art Therapy that need to be dispelled
‘Art Therapy’ or ‘art as therapy’?
All throughout my university studies and beyond, my Master’s degree has been misunderstood. When I tell people I have an MA in Art Psychotherapy (and the clue is pretty much in the title) I draw a lot of blank looks. Even more so if I refer to it as its ‘sister’ title ‘Art Therapy’.
“Oh — what’s that? Is that like teaching people art or something?”
“That sounds interesting? Is that the thing where you interpret people’s artwork?”
“Oh wow. Yeah, my brother/aunt/friend/neighbour had Art Therapy and it really helped them”. (Nine times out of ten it turns out that they attended an art group or did art as part of Occupational Therapy).
Now, even though it’s frustrating for me, I get the confusion.
Firstly, the profession of Art Therapy developed via two routes which developed in parallel — one in an educational setting, developing out of art teaching; the other from medical origins where art was used to help soldiers traumatised by their experiences of war (as outlined in the Handbook of Art Therapy by Caroline Case and Tessa Dalley).
Secondly, Art Therapists haven’t always done the best job at promoting their profession. This is certainly changing and you can now follow many national Art Therapy associations on social media and read about their work online. In addition, Art Therapists have been slower than other therapy areas (particularly CBT) in researching their interventions and measuring outcomes. Again this is changing…
To make matters more confusing many well-meaning articles are appearing online mentioning ‘Art Therapy’ when in fact they’re referring to making art as self-care or the act of art making being inherently therapeutic (it definitely is — no arguments from me on that score!). And even colouring books are now titled ‘Art Therapy’…
“So what’s the problem?”, I hear you ask. “Why should I care whether something is called Art Therapy or not?”
On the surface it’s not a problem — it’s just words. However, it comes down to what we want from this ‘Art Therapy’ thing — especially when being offered it as a ‘treatment’ or weighing up interventions being presented for your mental health. Just as with being offered medication or any other form of therapy, you need to know what you want to get out of your treatment and what it could do for you.
So here I’d like to clear up the most common myths about Art Therapy:
1. Any art-making by yourself or in a group is ‘Art Therapy’ if it makes you feel better
There’s little doubt that art making and creative activity is therapeutic (Conner et. Al 2016; Stuckey and Nobel, 2010) Therapeutic means ‘serving to improve or maintain health’ and there’s certainly a lot of evidence that art making can do this. But art making on one’s own or in a group, without the presence of a therapist is actually ‘art as therapy’ and it’s not the same thing as Art Therapy.
Art Therapy is defined by BAAT (British Association of Art Therapists) as a “form of psychotherapy that uses art as its primary mode of communication”. The aim, as with most therapies, is to: bring about changes in thinking and behaviour; to help clients to process difficult feelings; and to uncover and come to terms with traumatic past experiences.
If your treatment is referred to as Art Therapy, either one to one or in a group setting, then the person giving the treatment should be a registered Art Therapist/Art Psychotherapist (the titles are used interchangeably). In the UK these titles are protected meaning the therapist must have a Masters in Art Psychotherapy and be registered with the Health and Care Professionals Council (HCPC). If they aren’t, then it’s not Art Therapy.
2. Art Therapist are like Art Teachers
Although Art Therapists are artists, Art Therapy is a form of psychotherapy. Therapists do not teach particular art techniques, rather they use image making as a means of helping the client to express and work through issues and problems. The confusion probably comes from the fact that Art Therapy used to be aligned to teaching in the very early days of the profession. However, since the 1970s Art Therapy has been recognised as a form of psychotherapy. A major difference from art teaching is that therapist avoids praising or criticising the artwork but encourages without judgment.
3. Art Therapy is like Occupational Therapy.
Like I’ve mentioned before, although the process of creating art can often be therapeutic, Occupational Therapy is concerned with working on a conscious level and developing technique in making products whereas Art Therapy concentrates on the unconscious level of experience and spontaneous expression.
4. Art Therapists can interpret or ‘read’ artwork for signs of distress.
No, not true. We’re all individuals and we all attribute our own meanings to colour, shape, form and symbols. What an Art Therapist will do is help clients to try to come up with their own interpretations. Art Therapists may speculate or make suggestions or possible connections to the client but this is all done “within the therapeutic relationship in an environment of trust, openness, and safety”. (The Handbook of Art Therapy, Caroline Case and Tessa Dalley)
As Art Therapist Cathy Malchiodi has written, , in the Art Therapy Sourcebook, we naturally have, as humans, a tendency to project or transfer our own beliefs, impressions, ideas and feelings onto images we can see. So the Art Therapist’s role is:
“to remain open to the imagery and all its potential meaning for the client and to contain the anxiety and feelings that are generated in the meaning of the image and in the efforts to understand it.”
5. Art Therapists diagnose mental illness by looking at clients’ artwork.
We wish we had that superpower! ;-) To go back to the previous point, people are individuals and Art Therapists cannot diagnose a mental illness just by looking at an image or piece of artwork. Art Therapists do make clinical assessments, but this is done by taking overall account of the artwork and how it has changed or developed over the course of the therapy sessions.
Put simply, Art Therapy is therapy because its aims are to bring about change in human disorder. Art Therapy uses art as a way of stating mixed, poorly understood feelings in an attempt to bring them into clarity and order (Naumberg, in Art as Therapy by Tessa Dalley). This type of therapy can be particularly useful with clients who find verbal expression difficult.
I hope this has made it clear why Art Therapy offers so much more than art making, and why Art Therapists train for a long time to do the work they do. This is not to denigrate the Arts in Health services in any way — art is therapeutic and I have benefited enormously myself from art as therapy. I simply believe that more clarity is needed especially when interventions are being offered. Is it ‘Art Therapy’ or ‘Art as Therapy’? Because as we’ve seen, the two are not same.
