What Is Art Therapy? • 41Art therapists also are likely to use drawings as sources of information (Brooke, 2004;
Malchiodi, 1998a). Although some have focused on a single prescribed task (e.g., Gantt &
Tabone, 1998), most art therapy assessments have involved a series of tasks (Levick, 1983,
1986, 2001; Silver, 2001, 2002), as in the Diagnostic Drawing Series developed by Barry
Cohen and his collaborators (www.diagnosticdrawingseries.com). Most art therapy draw-
ing assessments are very different from the psychologists’ standard house-tree-person or
human figure drawings, often offering a larger space on which to draw and colorful drawing
materials (cf. Kwiatkowska, 1978). (See Chapter 6, this volume.)
Psychodynamic therapists have been especially attracted to the use of art in their work
because of the ability of imagery to bypass defenses. Indeed, many were using art to assess
and to treat people long before the profession of art therapy was defined and developed as a
separate discipline (cf. Bender, 1952; Jakab, 1956/1998; Milner, 1969, 1987; Winnicott, 1971a,
1971b). And since art materials can be used by a wide range of people without specialized
training, it is no wonder that many clinicians have offered art media to those they are inter-
viewing, like child psychiatrist Robert Coles (1992) (DVD 2.8).
With the increasing interest generated in part by the growth of the field of art therapy,
even more clinicians are interested in incorporating art into their practice. Indeed, there
has long been a division within the American Psychological Association (APA) named the
Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (www.apa.org/divisions/
div10), which, while it emphasizes experimental aesthetics, also includes psychologists
interested in clinical applications.
In addition, the American Counseling Association (ACA) has a recently initiated divi-
sion, the Association for Creativity in Counseling (www.aca-acc.org). The ACA bookstore
has not only distributed Art Therapy Has Many Faces (Rubin, 2008a) since it was released,
but screened it in a conference film festival in 2007 and 2008.
When I first began work at the Pittsburgh Child Guidance Center in 1969, most of
the social workers who saw children used art materials in activity group therapy. In
fact, part of my job was to acquaint them with a wider range of good quality media and
ways of offering art that would be most successful. This included what to do with the
work that was produced; that is, ways of reflecting on it, especially verbally. I was also
asked to do workshops for other clinicians who needed help offering and inquiring
about art.
In fact, since retirement from practice I have continued to meet with the Child Psychiatry
Fellows for an annual workshop. Having therefore spent much of my teaching career at the
University of Pittsburgh instructing trainees in other mental health disciplines, I finally
decided to write the book called Artful Therapy (Rubin, 2005a) for non-art therapist mental
health professionals.
Since they are increasingly interested in using art, imagery, and other creative modalities in
their work, but often have little background or access to help, it was my feeling that they would
be more successful with a bit of advice on how to do so effectively. That book does not aim
to make other clinicians into art therapists; indeed, it includes a chapter about the profession
and examples of ways in which readers might make use of the services of an art therapist.
I suspect that another reason for the increased interest of others in the use of art is the
fact that more and more patients have suffered trauma of some sort, where nonverbal meth-
ods are most effective in accessing memories buried in the body and no longer conscious.
This is a population well served by art therapy, a fact that is evident in the rapidly growing
literature dealing specifically with its use with survivors of abuse and other kinds of trauma
(Arrington, 2007; Brooke, 1997, 2007; Carey, 2006; Gerity, 1999; Gil, 1991, 2006b; Hagood,