184 • Introduction to Art Therapy
The Elderly
The focus of most art therapy literature about work with adults is not on developmental
issues, but rather on specific conditions. Conversely, art therapy with the elderly, an area
that has grown in recent years along with the changing demographics of our population,
tends to focus on aspects of aging, per se, a normal condition for all human beings. As I
discovered in my own life, aging truly creeps up on you. The changes are for the most part
gradual and subtle. At around the time I was writing the first edition of this book, I had been
invited to deliver a presentation at a university conference on the elderly. My assigned topic
was art therapy for older adults.
While I was thinking about preparing for that lecture, I was on a sightseeing boat in the
San Francisco harbor with my grandson Ben who was then five years old. I watched him
interact with a family on the other side of the deck, and with a startle, listened to him say as
he pointed to me, “See that old lady? That’s my Nana.”
The truth is that I hadn’t thought of myself as an “old lady,” but Ben was a more objective
judge than I. I was already a member of AARP and within a few years of being on Medicare.
Despite the fact that I had taken up tap dancing at age 62, my body had in truth developed
a number of new “conditions,” with ominous names like hypertension, atrial fibrillation,
spinal stenosis, and emphysema. So despite my denial of being “old,” I have, like all of my
friends, had to learn about the importance of acknowledging the changes and challenges of
getting older. As Bette Davis said, it’s “not for sissies.”
People are living longer lives these days, and despite those who want to look only on
the bright side, aging carries with it inevitable and potentially painful losses—of people,
position, role, resources, and faculties. Depression is common, and art therapy can be a
powerful modality for Railing Against the Rush of Years (Ridker & Savage, 1996). In fact, the
power of creative activities to enhance and improve our lives is finally being confirmed by
well-designed studies (Cohen, 2001, 2007).
It was not always so. When I first consulted to nursing homes in the 1960s, if there was
any art at all for their elderly occupants it was limited to such impersonal tasks as making
pot holders or filling in paint-by-number pictures. Like the long-term state hospital patients
I watched pouring clay into molds, the elderly were thought to be incapable of creating per-
sonally meaningful art (Figure 8.15). While preformed approaches may indeed guarantee
“successful” products, they do so at the expense of personal expression. Worse, they do not
permit an authentic experience of mastery, which is especially vital when so many formerly
intact faculties are ebbing.
Although some prejudices still exist, they have been successfully challenged by those
art educators and art therapists who have seen beyond the limitations of older adults to
their capacity for genuinely creative work (Figure 8.16). Whether to touch the past in “life
review,” or as a way to find order in the changing present—art can be a veritable lifeline for
those whose world has shrunk, and whose days have become heavy with empty time. The
sensory aspects of art materials provide pleasure in contact. There is also a sense of pride
in having formed something new and beautiful. Art is one way to fill the need for “vital
involvement in old age” (Erikson et al., 1986).
A few art educators pioneered in bringing art to the elderly (Greenberg, 1987; Hoffman
et al., 1980). Art therapy pioneers included Dewdney (Ulman & Levy, 1981) and Zeiger, who
used the technique of Life Review (Ulman & Dachinger, 1975). Weiss (1984) published an
eloquent pictorial essay, and later a book. And Jungels described her work on film (1980) and
in writing. Wald wrote about art therapy with those suffering organic impairment (Wadeson