25CHAPTER 2
What Is Art Therapy?
Anything that is to be called art therapy must genuinely partake of both art and therapy.
Elinor UlmanArt + Therapy =?
In one of the first issues of the Bulletin of Art Therapy, when the field had only recently
been born and named, editor Elinor Ulman (Figure 2.1) wrote about how hard it was
to classify this new discipline, with its roots and branches in so many areas. Ulman
concluded simply and clearly that art therapy needed to be true to both art and therapy.
She defined therapy as “procedures designed to assist favorable changes in personality
or in living that will outlast the session itself.” And she defined art as “a means to dis-
cover both the self and the world, and to establish a relation between the two.”^1 She also
called art “the meeting ground of the inner and outer world.”^2 Her statement on their
relationship was clear: “the realm of art therapy should be so charted as to accommo-
date endeavors where neither the term art nor therapy is stretched so far as to have no
real meaning.”^1
Despite Ulman’s early and inclusive definition of the newborn profession, there were a
series of what might be characterized as rather impassioned custody battles. The biggest
source of tension—still evident in varying forms—was whether art or therapy would be
designated the dominant parent. Those who felt that art therapy’s primary contribution
was in the healing power of the creative process were drawn to what came to be called “art
as therapy.” Those who felt that art therapy’s primary value was as a means of symbolic
communication sometimes called it “art psychotherapy.” If you peruse the literature you
will notice that, while most refer to the field as “art therapy,” some call their work by other
names, such as “expressive analysis,” “clinical art therapy,” “psycho-aesthetics,” or “expres-
sive therapy.”