Art therapy is the default treatment based on painting. It is classified in the category of expressive art therapy with music therapy, dance therapy, and drama therapy. The definition of art therapy: Therapists use creative expressions to allow visitors to explore individual problems and potentials through non-verbal expression and artistic creation experience so that visitors can improve their self-esteem, build inner strength, and improve their skills of getting along with the outside world. Therefore, the key to art therapy is on non-verbal media.
Non-verbal media not only include painting, but also the use of clay and plasticine creation, as well as weaving and some computer and interactive media.
Art therapy has two main orientations:
1 Art is healing: art therapy tends to be artistic. Even if the meaning of the subconscious is not revealed and explained, the expressive artistic medium itself and this process will achieve therapeutic effects.
2 The combination of art and psychotherapy: Art is a window of subconsciousness. The healer can analyze psychology by interpreting the symbolic meaning of the artistic image and listening to the creator's own interpretation—Margaret Naumburg (the psychotherapist-oriented art therapy theorist).
Naumburg (1973) asserted that Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy which is a unique non-verbal technique using art media as its primary methods to express and communicate. Art, in art therapy, is a diagnostic tool but a solution to solve emotional problems. Arnheim (1992) considered that art therapy could help those people who have no artistic talents to face their inner fairs.
Naumburg described 'Joy and wonder grow as the patient begins to discover his own original ways of expressing such buried conficts and repressions. Hidden doubts and fears, unvocalized hates and anxieties, begin to be liberated in both imaginatuuve and objective from through such work.' —— 《An Introduction To Art Therapy》
Reference：
Arnheim, R. (1992) To the Rescue of Art : Twenty-Six Essays. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Naumburg, M. (ed.) (1973) An introduction to art therapy: studies of the 'free' art expression of behavior problem children and adolescents as a means of diagnosis and therapy. New York: Teacher College Press.
Comments