Art Therapy - Teaching Psychology

What Next? • 275

and cerebral activity is too highly valued to the exclusion of feeling, man is turning for very
life to the means of expression in the arts.”^8 The contemporary state of disequilibrium and of
radical change in social structures is at least as great as it was then, and is both symptomatic
and scary.
But, like a crisis in an individual or a family, it can also be an opportunity for change,
for bold exploration, for freely and creatively addressing the question of how to make the
healing power of art more accessible to more people. People in large numbers nowadays are
turning to the arts as consumers. How much more therapeutic it would be if we could help
them to become creators as well.

Art + Therapy = Art for Life

Several years ago I was asked to participate as a judge in an art show competition for those
who had undergone transplant surgery. The project was called Art for Life, a most fitting
way to think not only about this particular group of artists who were indeed fighting life-
threatening illness, but also about art therapy. For it is, in a very profound and powerful
way, art for life, for life lived as well, as freely, and as fully as possible. I hope that the benefits
of art therapy will continue to be extended to ever-new people in ever-new places, and in
ever-new ways.
Like the many movements of our time that reflect a search for meaning, art therapy may
indeed help in the effort to save our world from the mess we have made of it. My own wish-
ful image of the future of art therapy is that the swords of human aggression will be beaten
not only into plowshares, but also into poems, paintings, and pottery. My mentor, Marvin
Shapiro, used to point out that the oil from a gusher can be destructive; it can kill defense-
less animals or ignite a fire. But that same energy, when channeled into a pipeline, can be a
powerful and constructive force.
Frank Barron was a psychologist interested in the creative process who contributed a
good deal through his writings, and who advised pioneer art therapist Janie Rhyne in her
doctoral studies. He reminded us that the Latin root for violence and vitality is the same—
vis. In other words, the energy can be expressed either way. And creating art has, for centu-
ries, been a wonderful way to tame raging passions into forms of beauty.
Art is sensual, enabling you to feel your impact on the physical world, an increasingly
rare experience in these technologically sophisticated but humanly impersonal times. And
if you look at the world with artist eyes, you can see more loveliness in ordinary things.
Shaun McNiff ’s (1995) Earth Angels is subtitled Engaging the Sacred in Everyday Things. Ta l k
therapists work to listen, as well as to hear; art therapists seek to see, as well as to look. To see
and to feel the beauty in the Self as well as in the World can be the gift of the kind of truly
transformative therapy, which may be uniquely possible through art.

Endnotes

1. This image, which appears on the cover of that film, is a drawing created by Betty Jane, whose
   story is told in Chapter 1.


2. Edwards, C. (2008). Art therapy outcome studies reference list. Unpub. Ms.


3. Edwards, C., O’Brien, T. & King, R. (2008). Research into process and outcome in art therapy.
   Queensland, Australia: The University of Queensland.


4. Young, J. (1995). “The Re-enchantment of Art Therapy,” by J. Young, 1995, Art Therapy, 12(3),
   193.