30 • Introduction to Art Therapy
While it is customary to explain to those who can understand the purpose of the art activity,
that is not always possible. But even the very young and those with language problems soon
grasp the special nature of art in therapy.
I was reminded of this by the response of some children I saw in a pilot program at
a school for the deaf, like the boy on the DVD (F). When some of the teachers asked to
observe the art sessions, the children declined, perhaps needing to keep their often-angry
and confused imagery private. Similarly, a teenager signed out the window to his friend
that he was with “an art lady who helped him with his problems,” although we had never
discussed the purpose of his visits or called them “art therapy.”
The same thing occurred with a group for women fighting substance abuse that a drama
therapy colleague and I conducted at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Even though all
of the participants were in a residential treatment program for substance abuse, coming to
the center was explained to them by their social worker as an opportunity to be creative
in a class. She feared that they would be resistant to art and drama therapy, because of the
intensive individual and group counseling in which they were required to participate as part
of their recovery program.
Nonetheless, from the beginning of the twelve-week group, the women used the sessions
to create images related to their concerns, talked about them freely, and often said how
therapeutic they found the experience. Frequently they took what they had created in the
group back to the residential setting in which they lived, so they could explore issues in the
artwork further with their individual therapists (Figure 2.6). Their openness and awareness
is evident in the brief clip on the DVD (G).
So there is a difference between art for pleasure and art in therapy, but it is not always
visible or easy to explain. Of course, there are times in art classes when the activity is thera-
peutic, whether at the level of release or of reflection. Similarly, there are times when what
goes on in art therapy is mainly educational or recreational, where learning or pleasure is
the focus for the moment. But the differences in the primary goals remain, for both teachers
and therapists.
Figure 2.5 Family members jointly creating a mural.