232 • Introduction to Art Therapy
ful for any art therapist consulting to those with no clinical background, who are providing
art experiences to vulnerable individuals.
Since our world is now so full of trauma, the American Art Therapy Association pub-
lished Using Art in Trauma Recovery With Children (AATA, 2005), which is available on the
AATA website (www.arttherapy.org).
People and Families in Crisis
The inevitably disorganizing effects of family disruptions like divorce, separation, custody
battles, stepparents, and blended families have brought many children and adults to clini-
cians for treatment. Art therapy has been helpful not only with individual clients, but also
with families, since even when people are not speaking to each other they can still draw.
During the process of divorce, art therapy can help couples to communicate, and is also use-
ful in custody evaluation (Landgarten, 1987). Family art therapy, (including multiple family
art therapy) has helped single-parent households (Landgarten, 1981; Linesch, 1993), as well
as the parentified grandparents who often bear the burden (Riley & Malchiodi, 2004).
Art therapy has also been used in the most recent attempt to stem the tide of family
breakdown—family preservation. One such program, Parents & Children Together, was an
outgrowth of one of the most original efforts to bring the benefits of art therapy to a wider
community—Free Arts for Abused Children. Started in 1977 by Los Angeles art therapist
Elda Unger and other artists, it is a program in which volunteers are taught by art therapists
to offer art to vulnerable individuals (Virshup, 1993). It has since expanded to several other
cities, serving thousands of children (www.freearts.org) (L).
When families fracture, some children end up in foster homes. Art therapy has been
used to help these dislocated youngsters deal with their inevitable ambivalence, and the
fragile attachments to which they cling. These “rejected” children, who have been neglected,
deprived, and sometimes literally abandoned, can articulate the mixed-up feelings they
can’t put into words through art (Betts, 2003). Art therapy is helpful to children from vio-
lent homes (Malchiodi, 1997), who are often unable to speak of what they have endured. I
once treated a child who had witnessed a terrible sight: watching her mother shoot and kill
her younger brother.
Art Therapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): JACKIE (7)
Jackie (M) suffered from nightmares and intrusive waking imagery. She was also mis-
erable when awake, because her grumpy behavior with both adults and peers left her
feeling very lonely. She had gone for play therapy for almost a year, with no change
in her symptoms. Her child care worker, who had attended an art therapy workshop,
finally decided to drive a long distance, in order to see if art therapy might help.
At age five, Jackie had watched her mother shoot and kill her younger brother. Like most
children with abusive parents, Jackie could not safely know or acknowledge anger at her
mother. She was afraid of losing what little good feeling she clung to on her infrequent visits
to the jail. But she could safely direct her rage at me (as the mother in the transference) in
“ugly” drawings of “Dr. Rubin’s Face” (N).
For several weeks, she put signs on my office door, warning other children not to believe
what I said, and projecting her own envy and neediness onto me, accusing me of being “a
begga r.” (O) Thus, using art, she was able to work through her confused feelings about her-
self and others. Jackie eventually integrated good and bad images of both of us, and was able
to leave therapy with a warm attachment (P).