138 • Introduction to Art Therapy
Shape Around a Block, (4) Draw a Clock, (5) Draw a House and a Tree, and (6) Match Colors
(using chalk).
Patricia St. John described a similarly well-designed task battery for children with neuro-
logical impairment, which included copying, drawing from memory, a Human-Figure-in-
Action Drawing (someone doing something), a Story-Sequence Drawing (draw a story with
a beginning, a middle, and an end), and a Clay Human or Animal.^12 Both Conger and St.
John had given serious thought to the individuals whose cognitive ability they wanted to
assess, and had come up with tasks that would be both appealing and feasible.
With the emphasis on shortening hospital stays and using time efficiently, art therapists
can contribute a good deal to triage (screening) for psychiatric emergencies. The pressure
to gather diagnostic data as rapidly as possible has resulted in many creative ideas by art
therapists, like Nancy Gerber’s Brief Art Therapy Screening Evaluation or BATSE (1996). The
patient is asked to draw “a picture of two people doing something in a place” in five minutes
on small white paper using 8 fine-tip colored markers without using stick figures.
As in psychologist-designed projective drawing tasks, Gerber specifies the questions to
ask and what to look for. Since it is so efficient and rich, it is now a routine part of the intake
process at Friends Hospital. This has often happened with art therapy evaluations, even
those that take more than the 30 minutes of the BATSE, because such a wealth of informa-
tion can be gleaned in a very short time. The DVD (H) shows Gerber demonstrating the
procedure with a volunteer graduate student.
Assessing Sexual Abuse Through Art
Art therapists have played an important role in trying to assess possible molestation, but
are still looking for the answer to the question that pioneer Clara Jo Stember asked in 1977
(A ATA Conference Proceedings) about art therapy and child abuse: “Are there graphic
clues?” Many have looked for patterns in the drawings and paintings done by abused chil-
dren (Brooke, 1997, 2007; Drachnik, 1995; Kaufman & Wohl, 1992; Malchiodi, 1997, 1998a,
2008; Murphy, 2001; Wohl & Kaufman, 1985).
Despite the wish to be able to protect children by finding reliable “graphic clues,” whether
by anecdotal observation or through experimental research, one art therapist concluded
after twenty years of work with “child and adult survivors of sexual abuse” (including
reviewing the literature in this area) that “At the present time, it has been consistently dem-
onstrated that drawings alone cannot be used as evidence that sexual abuse has occurred”
(Hagood, 2000, p. 246).
As for adults, Dee Spring (1993) collected her observations about graphic signs of sexual
trauma in art by abused women in and described her art therapy assessment with rape vic-
tims: (l) This is Me, I Am, (2) My Space, (3) My Life’s Road, and (4) My Family and Me. The
topics would seem to be useful ones for any adult a therapist wants to get to know through
art expression.
Assessing Spiritual Development Through Art
Ellen Horovitz (2002) created the Belief Art Therapy Assessment (BATA). Offered a choice of
media and surfaces for drawing, painting, or sculpting, the person is asked: 1. “If you have a
belief in God, draw, paint, or sculpt ... what God means to you.” 2. “If you believe there is an
opposite force ... draw, paint, or sculpt the meaning of that.” Horovitz also suggested how
to ask questions and what to observe in the person’s attitude and artwork. The goal is not to
assess cognitive or emotional states, but rather spiritual development or “stage of faith.” On
the DVD (I), you can see Horovitz conducting part of such an assessment.