What Is Art Therapy? • 39settings and specialize in many different areas. Those with an affinity for visual expression
have integrated art into their work.
John Allan, who called what he did “art counseling,” worked with schoolchildren in
Vancouver and authored two books describing ways of using art and writing to help children
in schools (Allan, 1988; Allan & Bertoia, 1992). The American Counseling Association has
recently published a third edition of a book on the use of the arts in counseling (Gladding,
2005). For many years, the George Washington University Counseling Center offered art
therapy to students. On the DVD (E), you can see an excerpt from a session conducted by
Sondra Geller.
A relatively recent development in the field of art therapy, designed primarily to help
students to secure licensure, is the addition of counseling courses to the curricula required
for master’s training programs approval. This is felt to be compatible because understand-
ings and skills in both assessment and therapy are basic to being a competent art therapist,
and calling them “counseling” as it has developed in the United States is a realistic way for
graduates of training programs to be able to practice their specialty under umbrella coun-
seling license bills.
Other Clinicians Who Use Art (DVD 2.7)
Art Therapy and Occupational, Recreation, and Activity Therapy
There are many superficial similarities between art therapy and ancillary treatments that
use art activities. In the 1960s, occupational therapy (OT) departments were usually psy-
chodynamic in orientation. Since such approaches stressed the dangers of repression and
the values of expression, it was natural that art activities were central in OT (A). Hands is a
1962 film about a woman in a psychiatric hospital whose progress is reflected in the sculp-
tures she created in occupational therapy (B).
When I was asked to consult to the large and well-equipped OT program at Western
Psychiatric Hospital & Clinic in 1969, art therapy pioneer Margaret Naumburg advised me
Figure 2.10 An art therapist works with a pediatric burn patient.