Art Therapy, Art Therapy Schools, Art And Therapy, Art

Applied Ecopsychology and Art Therapy are two experiential modalities concerned with self-discovery and wellness. Both therapies are in use today as individual avenues for promoting change and healing in people with emotional and in some cases, physical disturbances in behavior. The purpose her is to provide justification for a unique handbook this author has written that merges these two modalities. The handbook contains experiential art and nature activities designed for self-growth and restoring and/or maintaining a sense of overall well-being.

    This paper begins by defining and discussing the history of art therapy and Applied Ecopsychology as separate therapeutic disciplines. Evidence from the literature is cited concerning their individual effectiveness. An argument is then made for merging these approaches into an integrated modality. To illustrate how such a modality might be made practical, the author discusses the conception, creation, content and intended audience of her original handbook. Qualitative results from 4 case studies of people using the author's approach are presented in the appendix. The paper concludes with suggestions for the handbook's use and a recommendation for further exploration into the author's ideas.

Dallas art therapist Ms. Linda L. McCarley, founder and director of the Art Therapy Institute and currently serving on the Educational Program Approval Board of the American Art Therapy Association, says that society usually expects us to deal with its reality even when we are not internally convinced of what that is. She says that often when we describe our dreams and emotions we use verbal expression to conform to what we think we should be saying and feeling. Society wrangles a person into feeling conflicted between wanting and needing to express his natural, authentic self and donning the false mask he must wear to conform to cultural pressures. His true being gets buried under nature-disconnected words and labels to the point where he is no longer consciously functioning with natural integrity. To argue her point, McCarley paraphrases "Picasso [who] said every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain one after growing up."

In the same vein, Ecopsychologists argue that every child is born sensually whole and bonded to the Earth. The problem as they see it, is how to remain nature-connected in cultures which thwart and break inherent sensory bonds before the child has any idea he ever had them. In both art therapy and ecopsychology, the underlying question is the same--How to help one recover an integrated sense of themselves in an indoor verbal playground--in an artificial cultural reality lacking natural integrity and threatening self-esteem because it doesn’t match one’s own internal authentic knowingness.

Applied Ecopsychology and Art Therapy are two experiential modalities concerned with self-discovery and wellness. Both therapies are in use today as individual avenues for promoting change and healing in people with emotional and in some cases, physical disturbances in behavior. The purpose of this paper is to provide justification for a unique handbook this author has written that merges these two modalities. The handbook contains experiential art and nature activities designed for self-growth and restoring and/or maintaining a sense of overall well-being.

    This paper definese and discusses the history of art therapy and Applied Ecopsychology as separate therapeutic disciplines. Evidence from the literature is cited concerning their individual effectiveness. An argument is then made for merging these approaches into an integrated modality. To illustrate how such a modality might be made practical, the author discusses the conception, creation, content and intended audience of her original handbook. Qualitative results from 4 case studies of people using the author's approach are presented in the appendix. The paper concludes with suggestions for the handbook's use and a recommendation for further exploration into the author's ideas.

    Art has played a role in healing, self-expression and inter-personal communication since ancient times. Throughout the ages there has been art that has been practical and also art that has sustained and nurtured humanity on a psychic level. This is evidenced by discoveries of cave paintings, masks, primitive pottery, the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and religious art and symbols created by past generations. Ancient Hebrews and other historical societies depended upon music and the arts to restore and maintain emotional well-being (Fleshman & Fryrear 1981). The mandalas of Eastern religions and Native American sand paintings depict how art has also been used to unleash spiritual power (Fleshman & Fryrear).

    Humans have long recognized our creative imagination and ability to interpret reality through the arts. Art however, was not formally studied as a tool for emotional healing until the early 1900's (Junge, 1994) when French psychiatrists Ambrose Tardieu and Paul-Max Simon both published studies on the artwork of the mentally ill (Ford-Martin, 2001). They believed that similar symbols and elements found in the artwork of these patients suggested that art could be used to help identify mental illness. Since then, interest in the use of the arts in therapy increased steadily (Gladding, 1992).

    As milieu therapies began to be used at psychiatric hospitals, so did creative activities that encouraged self-discovery and personal empowerment like making art (Ford-Martin, 2001). From the early 1900's until the 1950's, Margaret Naumberg, today recognized as the official founder of art therapy as a profession (Ford-Martin), experimented with blending art into psychotherapy in her practice with patients. She based her theories upon the ideas of Freud and Jung about the subconscious and the unconscious, which assumed that visual images are the most accessible and natural form of communication to the human experience (Ford-Martin). Naumberg taught how through art therapy, patients could be encouraged to create and then self-interpret the thoughts and emotions they could not talk about (Ford-Martin).
The theories of Susan Langer also greatly influenced the development of art therapy and should not be overlooked. Langer was considered by some (Julliard & Van Den Heuvel, 1999) to be “the patron saint of art therapy”, even though she was not an art therapist herself. Langer (1957) wrote that the arts are a language of emotion and as such, human feelings and emotions are much more “congruent” with forms of art than they are with verbal language. Langer believed that art-making allows a person to represent his/her internal feelings and subjective cognitive reality, externally, in perceptible forms (Julliard & Van Den Heuvel). It is this relationship between the client's art and mind-the artwork's meaning and it's significance to the client's thought processing that underlies the basics of art therapy (Julliard & Van Den Heuvel, 1999).

The field continues to evolve as evidenced by the following recently updated definition of art therapy given by the American Art Therapy Association. In 1995, the definition was broadened to include the word “transpersonal” indicating that spirituality is now recognized as a key aspect in human growth and development:
Art therapy practice is based on knowledge of human developmental and psychological theories which are implemented in the full spectrum of models of assessment and treatment including educational, psychodynamic, cognitive, transpersonal and other therapeutic means of reconciling emotional conflicts…” (American Art Therapy Association, 1995).

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