art psychotherapy

Art psychotherapy is a psychodynamic therapy that allows image making as part of the dialogue between us in the room. A protected title, it can only be practiced by professionals that have completed a masters level training that results in accreditation with the hcpc. Its roots began in the 1940’s with Adrian Hill and Edward Adamson and their pioneering work at the Netherne Mental Hospital. Prior to this early psychoanalytical writing gave support to the idea that art was an important aspect within psychotherapy: “ What a doctor does is less a question than that of developing the creative possibilities latent in the patient himself.” Carl Jung 1883.

We are all born as creative beings. Every aspect of a child’s learning and discovery is a creative act. Trauma, difficult early and later life experiences, the judgments and prohibitions of others all impact this natural connection to our creative selves. Mental illness could be described as a severing or blockage of some important link within us. At the Netherne Mental Hospital it was found that even severely disturbed patients began improving when given space and encouragement to engage with making.

Reconnecting to one’s creativity is not about producing better art works or developing more discriminating taste in soft furnishings, but is about connecting more deeply to oneself, finding more fluidity in our thinking, and becoming less stuck or narrow, and more creatively adaptable to all the inevitable difficulties life throws at us.

Sometimes feelings are difficult to put into words, or even to be known by us, and the process of making an image allows something to be expressed or even discovered from a deeper layer of ourselves than our habitual thinking. Unlike ideas of ‘art lessons’ or art images made for public viewing where one’s emphasis is on the finished image and getting it ‘right’, art therapy images are centred in the process of making, and the feelings that are brought up through this. One may begin an image with a certain intention and then the ink blobs or the line shakes, the intention falls flat and something else emerges. Or one may begin with no intention at all, no idea, just doodling or exploring the feel of the material being used. Allowing oneself just to be pulled along by the process and to give up on controlling the outcome allows something unknown to us to emerge, something of our inner to be discovered by ourselves. Images cannot be judged as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and there is no ‘wrong’ way of making images. However they unfold illuminates in just the way that is needed.

The witnessing therapist in this process holds a similar role as in spoken therapy. As it is important to have the therapist hear your thoughts and feelings, in art psychotherapy it is important that the therapist sees with you what you begin to see. These experiences can then be discussed further together in the often natural move from making to talking that can happen in a session.

Images made in art psychotherapy are held as confidentially as the words that are spoken in sessions. Any images you make are yours, and you can take them home with you when you wish, but sometimes it is helpful to keep them stored with the therapist until our work together is concluded. This allows them to stay private, and to be available to be reflected on in later sessions should that feel appropriate.