46 • Introduction to Art Therapy
Darley & Heath, 2008; Dokter, 1994, 1998; Frostig & Essex, 1998; Hornyak & Baker, 1989;
Innes & Hatfield, 2001; Kluft, 1993; LeNavenec & Bridges, 2005; Levy, 1995; Payne, 1994;
Seki, 2008; Waller, 1999, 2007; Waller & Mahony, 1999).
Two deal with all of the expressive/creative arts therapies, each with contributors from
each art form (Brooke, 2006; Malchiodi, 2004). Others consider the relationships among
the different approaches (Feder & Feder, 1981, 1998; Johnson, 1999; Jones, 2005; Karkou &
Sanderson, 2006; Warren, 2008).
Choosing a Multimodal Approach
Certain groups naturally evoke multimodal expression. In my work with young children
(F), related modalities often emerged spontaneously, as with Carla. A child might use finger
paint as make-up, and create a role (1). He might create a prop, like a sword, and then use it
to attack in a drama (2). Or she might pick up a clay sculpture and start to speak for it as if
it were a puppet, as Terry did with her horsie (3).
Violet Oaklander, a Gestalt therapist, has used art and other creative modalities in her
work with children and adolescents (4). And Natalie Rogers, who first worked as a play
therapist, has advocated the use of all of the arts with people of all ages in an approach she
calls the “creative connection” (Rogers, 1993) (G).
In addition to population as well as personal and philosophical predilections, geo-
graphic isolation and the search for kindred spirits is probably a factor in the adoption of
a multimodal orientation, as with CREATE in Toronto. In Pittsburgh, for example, there
were so few creative arts therapists that in 1973 we founded a multi-arts organization,
the Pittsburgh Association for the Arts in Education & Therapy (PAAET), which is still
going strong.
One of our colleagues at the Pittsburgh Child Guidance Center was Penny Lewis, author
and editor of publications on both dance and drama therapy. She later published another in
which she used art, drama, and music as well as movement (Lewis, 1993). Penny’s embrace
of multiple creative modalities (H) may have been enhanced by the groups she and I co-led
with Ellie Irwin, our drama therapist colleague.
A multimodal expressive therapies approach seems to many to be as natural as children’s
play or religious ritual. But it is not for every client or for every practitioner. It has always been
popular in the “human potential” movement, from its early beginnings in the 1960s to its
revival in the 1990s. This is evident in the numerous multimodality arts workshops offered at
growth centers like Esalen or Omega, and described in periodicals like Common Boundary.
In 1981, Ellie Irwin and I were asked to develop a department at the Western Psychiatric
Institute & Clinic (WPIC). We chose to have a multi-arts therapy team, and hired music,
dance, drama, and art therapists. We called it CEAT (Creative & Expressive Arts Therapies)
because we couldn’t choose between the richness associated with both expression and cre-
ation. An article written about our program was entitled “Words Can’t Say it All.” One book
on expressive art therapies was subtitled When Words are Not Enough (Levy, 1995). As we
had by then discovered in our clinical work many times over, no single art form says it all,
or is right for every person or for every purpose.
There is as yet no consensus about the meaning of terms like expressive or creative thera-
pies. As they are currently used, they deal with two different phenomena. One involves arts
therapists from distinct disciplines working together collaboratively (Jennings & Minde,
1993). The other is a genuinely integrated expressive arts approach by an individual thera-
pist, who offers more than one modality (Lewis, 1993; Gong, 2004; Rogers, 1993).