A Brief History of Art Therapy

This week I mostly just researched the history of art therapy. Here's a brief summary of what I learned:

Some people argue that the seed for art therapy was planted when psychoanalysis was first developed in the late 1800s, when Freud observed that patients who were unable to describe their dreams in words often said that they were able to draw them. Another famous psychologist, Carl Jung, encouraged patients to draw their dream images, arguing that it was important to bring out images hidden in the unconscious.

The development of art therapy was also aided by the interest of many psychiatrists in the art of patients with mental illnesses. In 1876 and again in 1888, psychiatrist Paul-Max Simon published a series of studies on the artwork of patients with mental illnesses. Hans Prinzhorn also studied the art of patients with mental illnesses, and argued that patients could express themselves through art.

New art forms developed at the beginning of the 20th century are also said to have set the stage for art therapy. Expressionism, made famous by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Wassily Kandinsky, emphasized the depiction of emotion. Surrealism, made famous by artists such as Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst, was influenced by Freudian psychology and emphasized imagery from the unconscious as well as dream and symbolic imagery. Art that stresses emotion and the expression of inner feelings and thoughts? Sounds a little bit like art therapy...

Two people in particular were responsible for establishing art therapy as a recognized field in the United States: Margaret Naumburg and Edith Kramer. In the 1940s, Naumburg argued that art therapy was a distinctive form of psychotherapy and believed that art made by patients was a form of symbolic speech, aiding in expression and communication. Kramer, however, was more focused on the actual process of art making rather than the product produced by patients like Naumburg was. In the 1950s, Kramer argued that creativity, and not just communication through symbolic speech, was the key to art therapy being beneficial.

Other people besides these two women advanced the field of art therapy. For example, Hanna Yaxa Kwiatkowska in the ‘50s and ‘60s introduced art therapy to family sessions (now a very common use of art therapy). In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Janie Rhyne wanted to use art therapy to help her patients express themselves and achieve self-actualization. She also brought up an important point that is still followed by art therapists: the patient should be the one to interpret their artwork and not the art therapist.

By the 1960s, art therapy was recognized as its own field of psychology!